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It would be natural to compare Kids on the Slope to Your Lie in April. Both series came around the same time, have a relatively similar premise, and are romances with the backdrop of music. I was wholly disappointed in Your Lie in April due to the writing, the hamfisted dialogue, the lack of nuance, the characters, and the inability for the series to let music breath and tell its own story.
So, with that knowledge, I was cautious going into Kids on the Slope. I was aware that it was a similar, romance-driven series that utilized music to occasionally back-end certain plot elements. I understood where this show was coming from. Unfortunately, I still couldn't help but feel disappointed with the fact that once again, this was an anime that simply refused to promote the elements it clearly excelled at.
Instead, Kids on the Slope regressed in its middle half and ended up only peaking its head from the fog of boring writing in the last couple episodes. This series Started off strong by establishing characters who I found quite endearing, such as the rambunctious and rough Kawabuchi. Our protagonist, Nishimi, who was never the highlight, struggles with the move to a new school in a new town. These characters were easy to buy and the friendship that springs up was decently believable. I liked how our protagonist had trouble fitting in due to his wealth, rather than the other way around. It created an interesting dynamic.
They ended up forming a small jazz-group that jammed out in the basement of a jazz shop. Nishimi was on the piano, Kawabuchi was on the drums, and Pops, the owner of said shop, was on the bass. It was a neat little idea that, for lack of a better word, felt cozy. Occasionally a fourth member would come over from Tokyo, Junichi, who would whip out the trumpet and jam out with them as well. These moments were the show at its best. We had character growth, some light-hearted comedy, and infinite potential for realization. Are they going to form a band? Will music help them in their personal lives? Will they grow closer to one another through their mutual interests?
Nope. None of that happens. The series chooses to focus on the romance. More specifically, a quasi-love rectangle that is as frustrating as it sounds. The majority of the series was light on music and heavy on melodrama, and while the melodrama was somewhat more palatable than the tedium that twenty-four episodes of Your Lie in April made me sit through, it wasn't without its utterly baffling and cliche moments. Miscommunication, characters unable to speak to one another, needlessly angry outbursts over nonsense. It was all the teenage romantic bullshit that I've seen too much of.
Which is all the more frustrating when it back-ends a genuinely good story of friendship between our two protagonists. It is ultimately such an annoying experience because friendship is honestly all someone needs to make a story interesting. The romance here felt so forced and injected simply to have drama suffocate this potentially engaging series. It wasn't bad, in fact, there were a few inspired moments that brought this show past its mediocrity when it wasn't getting bogged down by the romance, but it was far from as good as it could've been.
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[Characters, Story, and Music]
This friendship between Kawabuchi and Nishimi is the chain that grounds the series. It is also the beating heart of some of the most frustrating moments when their friendship is tested because of miscommunication and totally irrational, stubborn moments. Maybe Japanese boys are different but seeing two teenagers discuss girls was such an unsual experience in this series because they were being needlessly vague about their interests.
When I was a kid and I was discussing my infatuations with my friends, I was blunt and clear because, at the end of the day, we were two guys having a good time and talking about the girls we like was a quintessential teenage "thing". Especially when clarity is deathly important to avoid clear conflict. These hair-pulling moments where our protagonist could've avoided two episodes of bitching if he was clear to his friend is the biggest fault of the show. I simply couldn't enjoy the majority of these moments.
This is a bummer because there is a lot to enjoy here. The music, for one, is great. Unlike Your Lie in April and its incessant monologuing over every single musical moment in the series, Kids on the Slope was so smart to actually let its tunes breath. The moments where these characters are jamming out with one another and we see kinetic, frantic editing, hopping seamlessly from one instrument to the next, mixed with properly awesome animation is beyond entertaining. It's everything I wanted! I'm not a huge jazz-head, but seeing these scenes animated was flat-out exceptional. Specifically, the drumming had some ludicrously well-animated cuts.
As I said, these moments are few and far between, especially during the middle-half of the show, where episodes drag on seemingly endlessly as one romantic interest fades and another blooms. One moment, Nishimi is walking down the street and monologues, "why can't we stop falling in love with each other?" I don't know! Why can't you? The idea that romance is needed to make anything interesting is such a cliched, old idea that I can't imagine why they have to force these characters in these situations. I was a teenager, I remembered the moments of infatuation, and then I remember waiting a few weeks and those feelings faded and I realized they were simply infatuations. There were no big, emotional, tear-soaked outbursts that defined my life and that's perhaps why I can't relate to these kinds of melodramatic shows.
It's just boring. Even when the series begins wrapping up and getting into the final three episodes, injecting some much-needed life into this wilting flower. I was already kind of soured to the experience. What I did appreciate was the subversion in the last episode, where instead of going the obvious route they pulled a fast one on the viewers and we got a somewhat melancholy conclusion. Unfortunately, it was reverted, somewhat, however, I was okay with it since it focused more on our protagonist's friendship than it did on convincing us that these fifteen-year-old boys were experiencing true love.
The main love interest here is Ritsuko and I just think they dropped the ball on her character. Not only was she simply not developed at all, but she lacked any distinguishing personality traits that were so good in characterizing the other two protagonists. But frankly, her flaws were awful. Not in the sense that they made her unlikeable, but rather that they were the same flaws that every character like her has. She's shy and soft-spoken. And this is pushed to an extreme with her voice actress seemingly trying to make her voice as squeaky as humanly possible. That didn't help. I swear I was listening to a dog-whistle in a few scenes.
The conclusion and semi-twist that occurs does help her character a little, but at that point, it is just too late. The same can be said about the majority of side-stories here. The only one that had any actual impact on the character's and their development was Junichi's detour which occurred in the latter half of the series. It was decent. The biggest positive here is that it trimmed down this love-rectangle and made it more palatable. Every other side-story was just pointless. Nishimi has father issues that seemingly resolve themselves and are made to seem like a bigger deal than they were. Kawabuchi also has father issues which kind of play themselves out by the end. These stories really go nowhere.
Is it too much to ask for a series that focuses on the music if it wants to be considered a "music" show? Not only that, if you don't want to constantly be music-oriented, that's fine, but at least fill these gaps with entertaining material. Don't montage past the actual music-bits in favor of making room for yet another confession near a train. I swear, in this short series we had around four scenes that all had some kind of love-oriented moment in a train, where one character was looking from a moving train while another was looking at them from the station. Not only is that just a flat-out cliche at this point, but to use it that many times? Come on.
Overall the story here isn't all too engaging. It is serviceable if only because of the endearing friendships created. Friendships, as the series so bluntly puts it, last forever, and that is more resonant to me than some puppy love melodramatic bullshit that plagues these kinds of series'.
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[Presentation]
It's good. The art is consistent in quality and while the character designs aren't stand-out by any means, they are decent enough. The animation is okay until it comes time to flex those muscles in song and it becomes pretty incredible. The first moments we see Kawabuchi pick up a set of drumsticks and begin is so great because I wasn't expecting such a dedication to animating the drumming.
It felt like they had a separate animator come in for these moments as it was like I was looking at a different show. There was a lot of smears in these moments too, which further emphasized how dissonant the drumming scenes were from the rest of the series and its animation. Which isn't really a bad thing, I'm just happy these scenes were here because they brought some life into the jazz.
Apart from those specific moments, the presentation is consistent throughout. I can't say I saw a single episode where I could say was the "one" where they were clearly trying to save time by not animating as much as they could just to make room for the next musical moment. But even admitting that I can also say that there weren't enough musical moments to even warrant an episode like that in the first place.
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[Conclusion]
It is okay. I'm hard-pressed to say anything more than that. I'm happy that it turned out better than Your Lie in April in just about every way. The presentation was more consistent, the music was actually listenable because they decided to not speak over it, and the characters were significantly less frustrating to deal with. While it was covered, head to toe, in rampant romantic cliches, and they undoubtedly lowered my final score, they weren't enough to fully make this series something I regret watching.
Kids on the Slope didn't have enough of the slope. They brought up this hill a few times, however, it just wasn't enough of a theme to tie this show together. I interpreted it more as a metaphor for life rather than a literal slope they had to climb every day to school, but regardless, it could've been a bit sharper. What resonated the most with me, as it often does, is the friendship these characters experience. Dramatically, this series is at its best when it is dissecting friendship and the feelings one feels when they believe their friends are drifting away.
This element more relatable to me, because I personally can't relate to endlessly crying over high-school crushes when my relationships in high school were always a bit more relaxed and enjoyable than these endlessly melodramatic ones are. If you are looking for a series that is more romance than it is music, with more melodrama about being afraid to admit your feelings for someone than anything else, then Kids on the Slope might be perfect for you. It is wholly better than Your Lie in April simply because it didn't feel as though it was trying to wring tears out of me and failing miserably. It did have moments of inspiration and some genuinely touching scenes towards the end of the series. Unfortunately, Kids on the Slope struggled to climb that hill, as it was chained down by the weights of melodrama and unneeded romantic conflict.
