Narenare: Cheer for You! - A cheerleading show that unfortunately, sows more discord than harmony.
Hoo boy, where to start with the Anima Yell that could, but ultimately fizzled both in its sport and characterization? All I'm gonna tell you is that there's a reason why the "Cute Girls Doing Cute Things" a.k.a CGDCT genre has Doga Kobo being the best representative, and it's because the studio has experience adapting CGDCT series over the years that it has become synonymous with quality, as one would come to expect. On the other hand, there's P.A. Works, a studio that also has quality to back up, but most
...
of their anime, if considering just specifically the CGDCT genre, has quite the diverse range of works that aren't quite CGDCT-esque, but more towards the coming-of-age trend. And as much as the stellar studio has been one of the most consistent in recent years, sometimes they do hit a wall with new shows, as is the case of the 3 shows that they have showcased for this Summer 2024 season: the game-to-anime adaptation of Tensui no Sakuna-hime a.k.a Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin, the studio's signature original work of Mayonaka Punch from the director of Ya Boy! Kongming, and the worst offender of all: Na Nare Hana Nare, from Koudai Kakimoto, the current franchise director of BanG Dream!, thinking that he can replicate said series in a different skin through cheerleading.
A coming-of-age story that shows girls from all walks of life but with one thing connecting them: cheerleading. You have the typicals of Kanata Misora and Megumi Kaionji: childhood friends-cum-schoolmates who are connected by the sport they excel at, until a devastating accident almost broke the bond of the two, forcing one to go through therapy whilst the other having constant nightmares that she "would not be able to fly again". On the other hand, there's the unorthodox friend-couple of Anna Aveiro and Nodoka Ootani specializing in areas that are related to cheerleading, but that their interests just so happened to align with both Kanata and Megumi enough to join their bidding to wherever the cheerleading segment takes them to. And not to be outdone, the other girls that would complete the CGDCT gang, come from a rival school that boasts a well-oiled cheerleading team, and brings both Suzuha Obunai and Shion Tanizaki into the group that would go on to influence and inspire the group to do great things as they figure out what it means to cheer not just for people, but for their own selves as well.
Here's the big, and I mean, BIG problem for the anime: it just doesn't know what it wants to be. Try to get this: Like most athletes suffering from the yips, Kanata obviously was in total suffering after her best friend got injured from her grave mistake and is in a dilemma of her own after getting the boot from her cheerleading team. Enter Anna Aveiro, the Portuguese girl whose interest in the pursuit of trying to be a YouTuber, ropes both her friend Nodoka and the coincidental meet of Kanata and Megumi into producing content for her growing channel. From one moment to the next, Kanata is both getting dissed and inspired by the girl whose moves are like ninjas, Suzuha Obunai being a master at parkour with her petite figure to give the former a fighting spirit to come out of her rut. All of this sounds alright for the incoming premise to come...and then the infodump comes of a music shop on the verge of closing down, the typical school competition to create a sense of rivalry, and then the usual character-driven moments of conflicts gone wrong to the point of sacrificial love from one that is stubborn to listen and not work in concert with everyone else. Cheerleading is a team sport, but as much as the series sure likes to give them their individual moments to shine, for some unexplainable and plot-device reasons, it just doesn't come altogether, and more often than not, the girls, going by their cheerleading team name of PoMPoMs, end up executing not just the traditional cheerleading course of action, but doing things that don't quite define the sport to begin with.
As a result, the show feels disjointed trying to teach the audience about what defines cheerleading, as much as the girls who're just beginning to discover what it means to really do cheerleading and execute it to a degree that most people are already familiar with. To add insult to injury, the melodrama, which is its own Deus Ex Machina of asspull scenarios to get people to like PoMPoMs all the more amidst their own conflicts, can actually be easily resolved, if the writers ever care for them in the first place. If there's just one thing to take away, Doga Kobo's Fall 2018 show of adapting mangaka Tsukasa Unohana's CGDCT series of Anima Yell! does the entire genre so much justice, even its characters, which is just outright embarrassing when a nearly 6-year-old anime has so much potential than this show.
Look, I have no problems dealing with stereotypical character archetypes, but Na Nare Hana Hare just delivers unsatisfactory insanity to the point where you can separate fakery from the truth, and the acrobatic-heavy Kanata is at the epicentre of all the possible conflict caused by human selfishness, thinking that she has to shoulder the new group's responsibility all on her own. To the degree/extent, I admire Suzuha's character because of her impressive athletics alone, as well as the foreigner girl of Anna that puts family and her friends at the forefront that gels PoMPoMs together most of the time and is unafraid to call out when things are not doing well. As the close confidante, Megumi is trying her best to get through her therapy so that she doesn't need to worry Kanata as much, and both Nodoka and Shion are keeping tabs as fellow cheerleaders trying to get their heads together to actually do cheerleading together, for broke or for woke. If it weren't for Kanata, who shoulders the world on her own shoulders, PoMPoMs could've made a bigger wave than what they've been doing in the show, but it's the unnatural interaction and forced relationships that just have to be the straw that broke the camel's back, or in this case, the sturdy cheerleading pyramid.
This anime is P.A. Works going all-in to showcase a rather unkempt consistency that they're in for the new times of AniManga producing more in quantity than focusing on quality. Unfortunately, I have to say that this rather "bold" tactic of the studio just outright backfires so hard that I don't know what to say to salvage what's good about the show overall. Sure, it has the seal of quality that we've come to expect from P.A. Works, but bear in mind that decent quality-produced shows can even appear deceiving at face value, and this is where director Koudai Kakimoto and his team of scriptwriters of himself, Yuniko Ayana, and Midori Goto (who all hail from the BanG Dream! franchise as series composers and screenwriters) just falter in trying to deliver their version of an alternate BanG Dream! that just doesn't corroborate that well to begin with.
The OST is just there, and I'm not gonna lie if the music ever DID come through for the overblown scenarios and the like, because I did not feel one hinge where the music is used to good effect. More than anything else, rookie VA Rika Nagakawa is still in her growing phase after only having her debut as Momiji Ito in Summer 2022's Shine Post, and her second role as Kanata Misora is pleasing at the beginning, but it quickly grates on the ears that she still has a lot of work voicing on main roles. The unfortunate reality of voicing Kanata slowly pushed her character to the edge of hate, and it does not make for good impressions being hired for future shows to come. Also, while the ED is your typical VA-esque average character song, I have to say that I quite liked the catchy OP for its worth.
Regardless, Na Nare Hana Nare is the literate definition of "jack of all trades, master of none." The show itself is directionless, written like it needs characters of all sorts leaning to where the central group goes, and ultimately undermined by the shine and polish that is the studio recognition's name in trying to deliver a stellar product overall that is "all style, no substance".
P.A. Works, you've done yourself a big blunder from this show. This is NOT the way to do CGDCT shows, and you got the short end of the stick being chosen for this haphazard work.
Alternative Titles
Japanese: 菜なれ花なれ
More titlesInformation
Type:
TV
Episodes:
12
Status:
Finished Airing
Aired:
Jul 7, 2024 to Sep 22, 2024
Premiered:
Summer 2024
Broadcast:
Sundays at 23:45 (JST)
Licensors:
None found, add some
Studios:
P.A. Works
Source:
Original
Genre:
Drama
Duration:
23 min. per ep.
Rating:
PG-13 - Teens 13 or older
Statistics
Ranked:
#80442
2
based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.
Popularity:
#4286
Members:
31,571
Favorites:
79
Available AtResourcesStreaming Platforms | Reviews
Filtered Results: 16 / 17
Sort
Your Feelings Categories Sep 22, 2024
Narenare: Cheer for You! - A cheerleading show that unfortunately, sows more discord than harmony.
Hoo boy, where to start with the Anima Yell that could, but ultimately fizzled both in its sport and characterization? All I'm gonna tell you is that there's a reason why the "Cute Girls Doing Cute Things" a.k.a CGDCT genre has Doga Kobo being the best representative, and it's because the studio has experience adapting CGDCT series over the years that it has become synonymous with quality, as one would come to expect. On the other hand, there's P.A. Works, a studio that also has quality to back up, but most ... Oct 1, 2024
While Na Nare Hana Nare may appeal to CGDCT fans, I don't think it's quite fair to reduce it to such. It focuses more on drama, characterization and "healing" (iyashikei). In fact, much more so than Sports — a label which it gets purely by convention. The theme of this show is less cheerleading itself and more 応援 ("ouen", i.e. rooting for or supporting someone in a general sense).
As a Brazilian viewer, my score and review for this anime come from obvious motivation. Anna-chan might genuinely be one of the most accurately portrayed Brazilian characters I have seen in anime so far. In fact, a ... Sep 27, 2024
On paper, this anime seems to have a promising setup, a former national star cheerleader trying to regain her confidence after a life-altering event, surrounded by new friends with their own diverse talents. However, what the show delivers is a scattered narrative that never quite finds its footing.
The primary issue stems from the show's structure. While it's common in ensemble cast shows to focus on individual characters in episodic arcs, the anime fumbles this approach. Instead of weaving these individual stories into a cohesive narrative, the show feels disjointed. After the girls initially come together to form a cheer squad, the show loses sight of ... Sep 15, 2024
Man, why the hell did I ever force myself to watch this trainwreck of a show? One of three anime produced by PA Works for the summer 2024 season, Nanare Hananare, or Narenare for short, is a "cute girls doing cute things" anime focused on...cheerleading? We already had an anime about cheerleading, Anima Yell. Remember that show? I only checked out Narenare because it looked cute, but man do I regret it. I'm not going to mince words here, I haven't seen many anime that PA Works have made, but out of the ones I've seen, Narenare is the worst thing they put out. No,
...
Sep 23, 2024
PA works had an insane summer season with 3 anime original series airing. Two of which being in my top 10 of the season. For me, Narenare was just slightly below Mayopan, but I still loved it. A cheerleading anime was novel for me. The girls were great, the plot lines were compelling and I learned a lot about competitive cheer. Despite PA works usual Yuri bait, I enjoyed the chemistry between the characters as well. There’s a powerful message of accepting friends with disabilities throughout the show that gave me a newfound appreciation for the studio. This was just a really good CDCT watch
...
Sep 16, 2024
I started watching the series because one of the main characters is Brazilian (because I'm also Brazilian), but it's really good, it has a lot of plots, twists and turns, it's like a prologue to an organized fan club. When I watched it, honestly, I put on some famous Brazilian memes, the sound of the Brazilian team when they score a goal, or a samba when Anna appears, since I watched it, I loved all the characters. And I'm curious to know how it will end. At this point in this post, the series she's heading towards to final arc, i hope the productors susprise
...
Sep 23, 2024
I'm not going to lie to you, I came into this anime out of curiosity to see how a girl in a wheelchair would participate in a cheerleading club. Fortunately, I stayed because of the interesting topics that these girls bothered to expose.
I'm not a regular in the CGDCT genre, I think this was my first experience. I thought that throughout 12 weeks, I would only see happy girls trying to make more people happy. I couldn't be more wrong, because even though the girls were children, they never tried to infantilize their problems. Post-traumatic stress, yips, spiral of self-destruction, the search for personal dreams, ... Sep 23, 2024
**A forgettable story with a forgettable set of characters**
Going by the description that it is a sports anime but with cheer dance, I expected it to be school-based. It defied my expectations. It's an after-school cheering club for girls from different schools. It's what is called an ensemble, but the problem with having too many characters is that you need to be with them for a long time to get to know them. Sometimes 26 episodes aren't enough, let alone 12. There is this character named Nodoka that I forgot who she is and what her role is, and if only she had her own character ... Oct 3, 2024
What is growth if we do not experience hardships, suffering, pain, loss, and lack of motivation. This is what Cheer for You will make you see as a viewer. This is more than CGDCT, this is more than just cheerleaders, this is about real human emotions. That we all as people have had to go through in life to get to that next point in our lives. Through the slow burn that this anime helps build up, you see that no matter how you are in life with success. Success can last for minutes, days, hours, or years. It is how you use it
...
Sep 22, 2024
When the Summer Season was announced, two Anime Originals were announced for PA Works, Na Nare and Mayonaka Punch. I initially thought, that given that this show is largely made by a lot of the same people behind MyGo, I had assumed that this show would be the better of the two with a focus on character drama. Oh how wrong I was.
While ostensibly about using cheerleading to bring cheer to others, the show actually has very little cheerleading in it. In fact, most of my gripes with the show is how it seemingly doesn't know what it is about. Several plot points and character ... Sep 24, 2024
Narenare takes the structure of idol or music band anime, replace the theme with cheerleading, and does one different thing: the girl group formed with no grand goal in mind, they just wanna cheer. This key difference may make the anime feel all over the place as it lacks a general direction. The group leader, Anna, would casually say things like getting rich or famous, but she never cared about those stuffs. The lack of promise, the lack of a clear destination, would frustrate the viewers, but it also makes their progress unpredictable and open to wider options. Most importantly, this approach is in line
...
Sep 28, 2024
I won't beat around the bush: I dropped this anime.
The reason I dropped is pretty simple: It doesn't really know what it wants to be. There are about four different threads to this anime, and they're kind of unrelated to each other. Thread 1: Cheerleading. I guess this anime is about cheerleading. It's about a bunch of "cute girls" who like cheerleading, and there's a plot thread of a couple of the girls being unable for a couple of different reasons, and trying to transcend that. Okay. Typical sports anime so far. Where they go with it ... Feb 10, 2025
It's okay, I suppose.
Na Nare Hana Nare is clearly meant for preteen girls, so it doesn’t appeal very well to older audiences. The story isn't anything particularly deep. There are too many main characters for each of them to have a fully fleshed out storyline within 12 episodes. As a result, the pacing is rushed. This issue could easily have been solved by cutting down the amount of main characters, or only focusing on the stories of two or three characters. Character design is also an issue. The main cast lacks memorable designs. It is a struggle to differentiate a couple characters from ... Sep 23, 2024
Na Nare Hana Nare is probably one of the best cheerleading animes, considering there is two that I can remember, Arima Yell which completely forgot it was supposed to be about cheerleading. That being said, as an anime, it struggles with stuffing too much in one season.
Na Nare Hana Nare's animation, music and upbeat nature is a treat. The girls look fine, the cheer choreography is great. Every character feels like they are their own entity and have relevance to the world. The only problem with this show, is because the characters are actually realistic, they all have problems that are entangled and the show ... Sep 27, 2024
Possibly the worst PA Works has produced so far?
Excusing the story being about nothing and going nowhere, as there is another review that talked about it much better than I could, I think what is unexcusable is that the cast wasn't devoid of radiance, but could not shine at all in how the show was executed, and they had no chemistry. There are countless scenes where they're just hanging out, doing homework and eating yokan, but it never sells the friendship, their conversations are mostly plot progression, exposition or a gag that develops nothing. What brings them together and keeps them together isn't tangible, it ... Aug 22, 2024
the only thing good about this anime is the graphics
i dont really like the director threat this anime phasing meh somethimes too fast sometimes too slow story mid u can get soo many shoujo ai anime with story far more better than this one scene just cut and jumping randomly made my head hurts and there is no transition beetween scene ... |




