Nov 22, 2020
I went into this anime intrigued at the concept of stride. This anime had potential, given stride as a sport is very interesting. However, the plot seemed extremely shaky and was rushed way too much.
The anime makes the sport of stride to be about connecting with your teammates all while running, doing parkour and relaying to the next person. Sounds cool right? It sure would have been if there was slower character development, more build up, and a better plot line.
The basic idea of this anime is good but the followthrough is poorly conceived.
The plot line is rushed. A large amount of
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critical events happen in the very first episode, all shoved together one after the other instead of spreading it out, putting in more effort and building up to it. It makes the dramatics seem almost silly given the amount of time the team has been together. This is the case a lot of the time. The dramatics wouldn't seem so stupid if there was more build up and more struggle from the characters. If they had gone through a harder time and experienced more loss before honing their skills the dramatics would seem completely justified.
The soundtrack to this anime I found was very well done. The song, "Gotta Show Me" is a really great choice while seeing the characters running and connecting with each other. It really provides a certain energy that translates to the viewer and gets them pumped up about the competition. Many of the songs have a similar effect in this anime. I also found the intro song, "Strider's High" very enjoyable. Overall, very good choices.
The characters personalities are stereotypical and mostly unexplained. The main character, Riku Yagami is an all around nice guy, very silly and athletic. His foil is the stoic Takeru Fujiwara whose only interest is stride. Like hardcore, he thinks of almost nothing else ever, though it is only vaguely explained why later. Nana Sakurai is the only girl on the team and joined a school because she thought the stride team was cool. She's extremely eager but only touches briefly on why she likes stride and never fully understands it herself until about midway through.
The three original members, and our main characters senpai's are, Heath Hasekura (Captain), Kyousuke Kuga, Hozumi Kohinata. I find Kyousuke's 'delinquent with a heart of gold' personality the most irritating. He gives no reason as to why he likes stride, we are given no explanation of his background, and he says very little overall. He comes in to replace Ayumu Kadowaki, a character I felt could have developed a lot more if given the chance. Instead they replace him with Kyousuke the first chance they get, whose skills are already fully formed rather than pursuing Ayumu's character anymore. Ayumu still participates in his own way, more as the comic relief and cheer squad but overall his character was wasted.
The most enjoyment I got out of this show was watching the races, seeing the characters push themselves harder and successfully pulling off their parkour moves. Although I feel if there was more parkour training and more gimmicks successfully carried out in their competitions it would have been way more fun to watch.
I still believe this show had potential, it was just not carried out well and was rushed too much. I think had their been more episodes it would have been a better build up, that way certain characters could have had an arc in which they evolved and grown as an athlete and as a person in order to get a better understanding of themselves and their team as a unit. It would have made for a better payoff later on had it not been so squished together. More character development is imperative, and a more steady pacing when it comes to critical events. Overall not a complete waste of time, but not exactly good either.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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