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.
