Tribe Nine

I’m a huge Danganronpa fan, and while I didn’t catch Akamatsu Drive I figured I’d check out Tribe Nine this season. Unfortunately, this promotional anime is as the kids these days say “mid”.

So what about the good stuff? Well the music is great at least, Masafumi never disappoints with his compositions. You still have the excellent bops you have in other games he’s worked on, but the OST is definitely closest to Danganronpa’s. The character designs by Rui are also still real unique and have that edgy, rebellious style that works great with this series. Also sometimes, the animation genuinely is good and there’s one ... big twist around ep 3 that I did not expect.

However past that, the writing for this show just does not quite know what it wants to be. It constantly switches from a sports show to incredibly generic shonen. Characters survive lethal blows for no reason, and some scenes just felt nonsensical. I’m actually half surprised it didn’t bring back alive a certain char that dies, considering the way the writing was going.

The story of Tribe Nine is mainly just a general story of one time rising to the top. You have several eccentric and quirky characters you’ll forget by tomorrow make up the other teams the protags fight. They of course beat them, and then have one final battle against Ojiro and his dudes. That’s about it really, there’s hardly any nuance and feels like the worst bits of Kodaka’s previous works, where it’s just constantly escalating even if it’s nonsensical.

So what about the characters? Well most of the cast is fairly bland tbh. Haru and Taiga do grow as characters, but it’s very standard stuff. Shun is cool I guess, Kazuki joins later, and without spoiling has an alright dynamic with Ojiro. As for Ojiro, he’s kind of just a very typical “only the strong shall thrive” villain. The overall conflict of this show is standard stuff where “guy with power of friendship fights villain with no friends and shows him power of friendship”. I actually like this trope, it’s just very mediocrely done here. Perhaps the most notable thing about Ojiro I can say is that Corpse Father plays him in the dub.

If it sounds like I’m repeating myself, it’s probably because I am. There’s really just not much to say about this series, it’s incredibly average in most everything. The animation is fine most of the time, sometimes getting good but not to the point it would really affect my score. The voice performances are good in sub like usual. This anime mostly just sort of exists to promote the game like most anime of its type.

Overall, I’d give it a 5 maaaaybe 5.5/10. Peep the soundtrack when it comes out, but I wouldn’t really rec watching it, unless you’re a Danganronpa fan just absolutely starving for more stuff similar to it. Even then though, all you’re gonna get is a few crumbs.

Ask me anything; I'll be the first one to tell you I love danganronpa, for a long time now too, I wanted to make a Fanganronpa by the time 2 came out. BUT, if there's something I find redundant is excusing mediocrity trough legacy.

Right of the bat, you can tell that everything here was created with a purpose: Promote a high budget game by a popular group. Because this anime is nothing more than a marketing campaign, to the point where they slap a QR code to their main site -front and center- in one of the first episodes. Anyone who has ... seen the promotional material of tribe nine can easily tell a lot of budget is going into the game, and it's mobile nature will easily lend itself to monetization. This anime is only here to boost the game, because it doesn't compare in Visual or Written quality to anything realistically passable, and I can only hope they believe the game will do a better job at it all.

Story:
So, it's a story about a new Extreme baseball, right? It'd be logical that they explain what is still the same as in baseball, and what is new to this modality, but they never bother to. Suddenly you got people scoring points for touching first base, then next episode, the sides aren't changed once a team accumulates 4 outs, next episode, NOW they respect conventional rules.
I don't know anything about baseball, couldn't name a single team, but if I can tell something is off from the most basic knowledge I got from Wii Sports, you've done something wrong with your sports anime.
They never even tell you who's on first most of the time. But the story itself isn't especially bad, you're at least going to be entertained, and it's very consistent, so there's no parts that are especially good or bad.
Note; that's just the bare minimum.
There's no giant tonal shifts or unbelievable moments within the scope of the story, and nothing struck me as out of left field. That also means that it's mostly predictable, and the unpredictable parts are more often than not just the characters being dumb and doing illogical things for strange reasons...
On that Note about characters.

Characters:
And the characters, they become smarter or dumber for whatever the plot finds accommodating.
For example, one of the characters tells another that 1- They're terminally sick and need to drink their medicine for it, and 2- "I'm going to raise a death flag" then proceeding to give out a will...
And yet this other character doesn't bother to do anything about it, it's like the dying character decided to die and the other one allowed them, because the plot would see it fitting. No insistence.
The few characters that have arcs kinda work, but most of them don't have anything going for them, they are very inconsistent too with their personalities and ideas, but I'll let you decide weather or not that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Sound:
But you know what's INFINITELY more horrid? SOUND DESIGN.
I swear to you, I can't recall a single anime with sound design so bad, it's actually adding difficulty when watching. I've seen some things like the damn Bible Black dub, which actively attempts to be bad, and yet it's still better than this.
Masafumi Takada, composer of this soundtrack, IS A GOD, he makes the best music, but I don't understand what COMPELLED them to mix the music at the same volume as the vocals!!
That's right!
If the characters are having a big emotional moments, all you can hear is Takada's viper slamming on the table.
Again, all the respect to the composer, but you actually have to tune your ears to listen to the japanese audio.

WATCH THE DUB.
If you value the ability to listen, avoid the japanese version at all costs.

I'd regularly say "well, the seiju are [this] and [that]", but I can't properly listen to their work under the hellscape that is my brain during the watching experience. it's distracting and disrespectful to the voice actors, yet such a basic concept that it's unfathomable to mess it up. If people on youtube can slap a compressor on their background music, I don't see why an anime studio can't

Art:
Now, here's the commendable part, right? The designs are really good, right!?
No, but also yes.
Look, I can complain about the plethora of characters that look like danganronpa redesigns, in fact, I call most characters stuff like "Kaito 2" and "Chihiro 2", but that's not the anime's fault. If anything, I'm glad to see the character designer is actually making characters that don't look like "X 2".
By themselves, they are probably the best part of this anime, colorful, memorable, one of them is just a chubby human pikachu guy! (later a moropeko) It's not anywhere near bad. If the animation was up to par, there would be no complaints, but of course, most art is very 2 dimensional. that's not to say the more ambitiously animated scenes look bad and have huge mistakes, but it's fair to say they are at least pretty jagged, so don't expect the prettiest animation. If the characters weren't as nicely designed, then there probably wouldn't be any saving grace for a lot of these visuals. There's a huge missed opportunity with these cyberpunky environments getting boring background art.

I'm down to watch anything Tookyo puts out, I like the people working behind the projects, I know they have what it takes, they create amazing stories, but I'm sad to say this story is simply not one of them, go watch akudama drive instead if you're looking for something more on par with danganronpa.
Overall it's very average, and it's bound to be better received trough it's legacy, but I personally see a lot of the things the show does that are inexcusable, and any positive review is probably attributed to the legacy of danganronpa, their creators, designers and writers.
For it's own merits, the show does not stand as anything good, it's fun, but "fun" can be 300,000 different shows.

This might not be worth your time if you're not interested in the game this serves to promote.

Tribe Nine Review (6.1)

Rip-off of the baseball game that has power.The story is boring.It's boring to watch because the animation and the effects are ugly but it was improved in the last episode.The character designs are not well done, not very detailed.The song is very nice which is my favorite song right now.

STORY:5/10
This is a rip-off of baseball games that make the game of baseball ugly because they made it ugly,Baseball Bat,Pitcher and catcher have power and those rules are confusing especially the field is so big because they are playing in the city.Boring and corny to watch it would have been better if the ... production and storytelling were good

ANIMATION:5/10
Episodes 1 to 3 are boring to watch because of the ugly animation because their work is not very detailed. But it got a little better later on.

CHARACTER:5/10
The character designs are ugly,especially their hair,which is poorly made.They are not well introduced and the character development is like nothing,and they always get beaten up in the end.

SOUND:9.5/10
The intro is my new favorite song.

I didn’t know much about this anime when I first wanted to watch but I was not expecting it to be a sports one. It’s more of a combination of sports x action x futuristic tech, and I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it. I thought that the main storyline was mediocre at best and was annoyed how the most interesting character was only in 3 episodes, and there’s the overused trope of a “group of guys + 1 girl” which I find a little sad. Also, it can get unnecessarily violent at times which I didn’t expect and kind ... of put me off from watching any more episodes. On the other hand, the animation was nice, the VAs did a good job, and the character introductions and designs were interesting.

Really wish I could explain why it’s getting this score because on paper, this is a pretty solid show. By no means one to get the emotions rising but pretty solid in a lot of respects.

I watched the dub and do absolutely enjoy it. Great casting choices and the VAs gave very good performances despite a few lacking experience.

There is also occasionally some great animation in this show and I generally like the character design.

I guess the stuff I am less keen on is all the picture things. Characters are fine but many aren’t as fleshed out, I am not a huge fan of the ... plot or themes, humor and action doesn’t really excite me as much as it. It’s very middling in a lot of regards. I absolutely do think someone could come away loving this and I can see why they would, but this didn’t scratch any itch I had.

As a standalone anime, this is simply bad. But luckily, the Tribe Nine game finally came out, so this isn't standalone anymore. Though.... if i discovered tribe nine through this anime, i'd have never given the game a chance. Luckily, this anime came, like, 5 years ago....??? so there was no chance to use this as marketing in the first place, lol.

This anime gives some context for the world and characters you find in the game, sorta like a very bad history lesson. It's pretty neat to visit as someone that s some ways into the game rn. Is it mandatory watching? No, and frankly, ... it has worse writing and character interactions than the game, which makes it painful to watch. If the premise intrigues you, just play the game. Don't go through this. (Or do, after u played thru the game?)

The game improves on the cringy dialogue, the chemistry between the characters, the characters themselves, the story overall (though we're early on. Comparatively, it's still better...), the misoginy (all the girl characters have relationships with eachother and not just the men, they're never sexualised, they're strong and plot relevant etc)...... The protag, Yo, is different than the one in this anime. We dunno what happened to him. Or half the cast of this anime anyway. I'm sure the devs are cooking somethin though.


If you want a review of this as a standalone anime, well... u can read the others. It's paced horribly, the charcaters have little chemistry between them (they are very peppy and cute though. They're clearly friends, but something feels off about them as a group...), the XB matches are lame cuz the main cast always needs some other tribe's help to win a fight (and they keep insisitng they are strong...? No, the one guy that made yall strong died, you people are useless in a match), the protag is boring, Taiga (red head guy) is the only one with some sort of character development that made me enjoy seeing him on screen--- and of course, the animation, art and sound mixing is god awful.

Cool worldbuilding (delivered poorly so it looks more lame than it is, but im doin compliments rn-), good voice acting, and..... uuh, i really wanted to say a third thing, but i can't.... 3rd compliment is that as a tribe nine player, it's nice to use the anime for lore speculation, like the identity of some characters in the game..... but yeah. Bad anime that gets bumped up because i care about the characters in the game this was meant to promote.


Tldr: Are you here because you're playing the game? Watch this (on 1.5x speed), it's worth it for the lore. Are you here randomly and have no idea what tribe nine is? Skip this.

I'm losing my mind here!
The show starred off extremely boring and confusing. Like what are the teams? Are they gangs who play this game instead of fighting? Who are half of these characters? Why should I care about them? Why is it even a sports anime to begin with? This makes no sense!!
Very little is explain. I feel like I'm getting punished for not playing the game the show is based off.
The only reason I watched the show was for Corpse Husband, but I don't even think he could saved this show.
I shouldn't have to play the original material just to understand the show! ... The anime should stand on its own.
To me, it just feels, lack of a better word, stupid.

Side note, the main character is extremely annoying! "I just love how he is perfect at the game while he has never played." Like wow. Come on!! This trop need die!