Tribe Nine

I am a huge fan of Chiharu Sawashiro, who plays Taiga. I’m mentioning this because, when it comes to anime, I tend to have an “I’ll watch it if Chiharu Sawashiro is in it” mentality. While it may have led me to watching some absolute gems like Tsukipro, I really need to stop having that mentality, because it also led me to watching Tribe Nine, which might just be the worst anime I have ever watched in my entire life. The worldbuilding makes no sense, I hate most of the characters, and it genuinely confuses me that someone looked at this monstrosity of a show ... and thought it was okay to subject the public to it.

The main character, Haru, is… fine. He’s alright. Personally, I find him a bit annoying in his weird passiveness, but there’s nothing actively wrong with him, I guess. This can be said of the vast majority of characters, in fact, because barely anyone has anything going on besides being extremely basic, stock image character tropes (the newbie, the singular girl, the big guy, the little guy who’s a huge perv, the big bad villain who just wants power, etc.), with two exceptions that I’ll discuss in the next paragraph. That doesn’t mean they’re tolerable characters by any means, though. They all kinda suck.

The two exceptions are Taiga, and the members of the Ota Tribe (so, technically, there’s six exceptions, I guess). Taiga is easily my favourite character (and it’s not just because he’s voiced by Chiharu Sawashiro, I swear), even if his character motivation kinda stopped making a ton of sense after episode 4 (no spoilers). He seemed to actually care about the things around him— both XB and the other characters— compared to the other members of his tribe who seem infuriatingly take-it-or-leave-it about everything. This is interesting considering that Taiga is a total newbie to both the sport and the area, being from “overseas” (the dub decided that he’s Irish?), and thus has every reason not to care. There was even a moment where something bad happens involving Saori, and he’s the only one who wants to help her, despite everyone else being theoretically her longtime friends. The show seriously treats him like a punching bag, calling him “arrogant” and “stupid” for wanting to do things that are the completely logical thing to do in the given situation. There’s also several moments in the show where he says to the other characters that he’s the only reason that they’re alive, and the show treats those moments as if he’s being dumb and overconfident, but if you follow the plot up to that point, it’s literally just the plain truth. It’s absurd, and my boy deserves better.

The Ota Tribe are just funny, honestly. They’re so gimmicky but it’s in a genuinely enjoyable way (very #edgy and rawr XD if I’m being honest, but in a funny way). Sonoda is a delightful antagonist, all he wants is chaos, and that includes keeping a guy who’s constantly trying to murder him by his side. The puppet show sent me into actual hysterics. Episode 9 was the only good episode of this show and it left me wanting the Ota Tribe as the protagonists.

The animation and art style are horrific. Most of the main characters have grey skin, the hairstyles completely change shape depending on the scene, and the limited colour palette makes my eyes hurt. The purpose of a limited colour palette is to make sure your colours look nice and cohesive in any scene, but they chose the absolute worst colours possible so there’s no point of making it limited in the first place. The shading also doesn’t make any sense in most scenes, neither does the lighting. It’s all godawful and I really shouldn’t have expected anything else from the people who made Danganronpa of all things.

The voice acting isn’t terrible, but the mixing in the Japanese dub made it almost unwatchable at certain points, even if the casting and voice acting was good. The music was super loud and invasive, and the voices were stupidly quiet in most scenes. The English dub fixed a lot of the problems, even if there wasn’t much vocal diversity compared to the Japanese cast. I still don’t entirely understand why Taiga was Irish, but Phillip Sacramento was honestly phenomenal, so it’s hard to even care. It was nice that they made it clear where he was from, compared to the Japanese dub which just said “overseas.”

The overall standout was probably Junta Terashima as Sonoda, though— he really captures how absolutely batshit the guy is, even when he’s saying stuff in an objectively calm manner, and especially when he was trying blow everything up for the sake of some “chaos.” Also, once again, the puppet show sent me into hysterics and I think about it regularly.

Everyone in the dub was about equally good with no real standouts, with my only real complaint being, unfortunately, Ojiro’s casting. I don’t hate Corpse Husband or anything, but he wasn’t… um… acting. He just seemed to be reading the lines as himself, or something. A bit disappointing considering his voice is obviously very unique and I think he could bring something really cool to the dubbing industry, but he really dropped the ball here. Hopefully he’ll get better over time, though!

Before I continue, I also really feel the need to mention all the misogyny in this show. It’s awful. Saori’s constantly getting sexualized (groping, getting walked in on, etc.), the main female villain’s gimmick at the end is just an excuse to draw her basically naked, and the only other female characters (Enoki and Minami) barely existed. Minami is basically just a prop to her male boss in most cases. It’s hard to say anything else without spoiling stuff, but please, if you’re going to watch this, be prepared to be practically assaulted with misogynistic bullshit. It’s very reminiscent of the humour of older, “haha they’re threatening to rape the girl, isn’t that HILARIOUS?”-type shounens, and it’s seriously uncomfortable to watch.

Overall, holy shit, don’t watch this show unless you’re some kind of Danganronpa mega fan, though even those people seem to be disappointed judging by some of the other reviews. It’s a complete mess of a show with a bad plot, bad worldbuilding, bad art, bad characters, and bad development as a whole.

If you want a show about a semi-post-apocalyptic Japan where a new government takes over and instates a law declaring that people have to fight with something extremely specific other than weapons, causing the 23 wards of Tokyo to form groups and essentially start a turf war, I would suggest Hypnosis Mic: Rhyme Anima, where it’s basically just Tribe Nine’s worldbuilding but with rapping and infinitely better. If you want “existing sport but EXTREME,” try Prince of Stride, which is about track racing but with added parkour. If you’re like me and will watch anything with Chiharu Sawashiro in it, try Cheer Boys, which is about male college cheerleading, or Tsukipro, an incredible chill and delightfully “nothing happens” idol anime. Alternatively, watch literally anything other than this.

Sometimes you only really appreciate what you had once it's lost, and just how deeply it was embedded into everything else beings to tear everything else apart.

Well, enough with the dramatics - Tribe Nine never set itself up as anything other than a dumb action type of show. Let's play baseball, but this neon dystopian city is our playing field, and dying in the game is not only normal, but downright commonplace! Tragically though, this show immediately displayed that it was already sorely lacking half of what makes a show like this fun - proper directing to give the action weight and pazzazz. The matches, ... while kinda fun, don't convey any sense of where everyone is relative to each other, and it doesn't focus too much on setting any rules. It could still be fun with a rule of cool sorta deal, but it just doesn't have that either. It's just sorta bland.

But nevertheless, the first three episodes were enjoyable. It had big sections of these kids just fooling around, giving each other silly nicknames, and everyone reacting to the zanyness that is their leader, Kamiya Shun, delightfully portrayed by Akira Ishida who is obviously having a lot of fun. It felt like the show, while not all that well-balanced, didn't take itself too seriously and that despite all the brutality, this show still gives off the vibe of a group of outcasts who found each other in this unlikeliest of places and are just trying, day in day out.

And then episode 3 happens.

I won't say why, but by the end of it, a huge shift to the general, somewhat comfy dynamic occurs that just... initially, it effectively pulls out the rug from under the main cast and lets them adjust to new circumstances, but after that? It still had some minor ideas I kind of liked... but the one other thing this show had going for it - the dynamic of the cast members with each other - is gone. There is no longer anything to really care about.

That's not to say a big mood shift is a bad thing, or that I think the show is bad because it wasn't going "my way", but just that it lost the one thing it had going for it despite kinda botching its initial premise. And with that one thing gone... the episodes just blended into each other, feeling like a random baseball show with just more brutality to it. And that kind of thing isn't even done well here. If I want outlandish violence, or if I want baseball, I have plenty of better options - and heck, if I want both there are Jun Maeda baseball episodes that deliver on this premise much better, safe for the gore. So while this show isn't the worst thing ever, it's uneven, and worst of all, honestly just pretty boring.

While at a glance the main poster looks like its going to be a banger, this was an anime pill that was excruciating to swallow. I would not recommend, there are better things to waste time on, like staring at a ceiling contemplating existence.

The concept is already kind of off whack. In the future, gangs can only settle disputes by Xtreme Baseball, and any other form of disputes will trigger some bots to noscope your ass from across the alleyway or something. Even worse, the story doesnt really do any worldbuilding, it just tosses you things cause "its like that".

The art is reminiscent of Danganronpa, ... and I dig it, but the animation is clear where there is and isnt budget. Early on they spend alot on VFX for the high tension action scenes to hook in the viewers, but the quality just evaporates not even halfway through the season. Heck, the sound balancing is off whack, there are parts where the voice and music are equally loud, making it difficult to hear what the characters are actually saying. The SFX in certain parts is also very misplaced.

Most of the characters are kind of just plain annoying, and there is no real development in their characters since the start. Some are slightly more interesting, but even ruffians change over time. While Tribes are supposedly built up as some "major power" in the synopsis, it never felt that way at all. The characters all feel like theyre playing around at an after school club, hoping to get into the big leagues and beat actual delinquents with kindness and friendship.

If inazuma eleven it's the to go super stupid sport anime with a lot of heart and charm, then this is like the total oposite, and i don't know how many times i've seen characters designed by Rui Komatsuzaki, and i still don't find them appealing, i don't know what it is, but they don't click with me, and add to that super corny and cringy dialogue and i'm gonna dislike them even more. And what it's the point of adding baseball if mid match it turns into a fuckin free for all, you can remove the baseball and i don't think anything would change, ... this literally could be a generic battle anime. The animation it's good most of the time, but the some characters look weird, aoyama it's the one that comes to mind, he looks off most of the time, i think his hair might be the problem, because komatsuzaki can't draw a character with normal hair even if his life depends on it, and one last thing, 12 episodes anime shouldn't be allowed to kill characters, specially this kind of anime, because it feels funny of how sudden and outta nowhere that it is, and how the characters try to be sad and gloomy, but the anime it's short so the plot has to keep moving, so they grieve for like a couple of minutes and move on, funniest shit i've seen, and one last thing, the soundtrack fuckin slaps, specially in the last two chapters, i'll probably end up adding some of the songs to my playlist because they went hard