What’s this?
There is a three-year competitive horse racing academy that trains boys to become jockeys. Those who wish to enter must not only pass an academic test but also a physical and fitness test. Yū Arimura is a former popular idol who falls in love with horse racing after seeing it for the first time and wants to join the academy. Shun Kazanami grew up on an island and only experienced horse racing through radio transmissions growing up. Amane comes from a high class family in England and her father is a former jockey. The show follows these three 15-year-old boys and others at the academy.
fanfare of adolescence is an original anime and airs on Crunchyroll Saturdays.
How was the first episode?
James Beckett
Classification:
I’m going to have to use one of my ADHD Passes on this one. I’m on my meds, I swear, and I even had a half cup of strong coffee right before I saw fanfare of adolescence. I closed distracting tabs, avoided Wikipedia and Twitter at all costs, and even put my phone in the other room. However, even with my best precautions, I had to reboot this premiere three times just to get through the first ten minutes. My brain just wouldn’t entertain the idea of being able to focus on fanfare of adolescence for more than a minute or two before I began to wander, wanting to fill my time with literally anything else. Twice, just as the psychedelic ghost horse appeared to guide our hero Yu past the world’s most obvious visual metaphor, I got up to do chores.
Personally, I’m not into horse racing, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to automatically dismiss a show for having a theme that doesn’t specifically suit my interests. I care about ice skating as much as I care about equestrian sports, and that didn’t stop me from loving it. Yuri!!! on ice. the problem with fanfare of adolescence It is not that it is a niche sport. The show just makes the same mistake that a lot of really specific sports and hobby shows do: it assumes that, as long as the main stunt is covered and you have a cast of vaguely good-looking anime guys (and girls) to throw the screen at, the audience won’t will notice that you have completely forgotten to think of a decent story.
We are talking about a main character who is throwing away the life of a professional pop idol and abandoning his fame to pursue a career. as a horse rider. How the hell does a guy like that end up being the least interesting member of a cast made up of other guys whose only defining characteristics are their hairstyles? When the hilariously heartfelt Psychedelic Ghost Horse came on, and I finally got to the second half of the episode, I was hoping I could at least enjoy the show’s unintentional camping factor a bit, but nope, we can’t even trust a goofy acid tripping ghost to stick around long enough to keep things interesting.
Instead, once the non-drama of Yu’s arrival at Horse School is over, we’re treated to the equally terrifying Real Live Horses the boys (and girl) have to deal with, and I’ll give them fanfare of adolescence this: Even if the CGI horses look really awkward, I was kind of excited to see them get scared and run around a lot. I knew it was too much to ask for one of them to legitimately kick one of the characters in the head, though my hopes were briefly raised when old Yu got it into his head that he could win a chicken game against a 600-giant pund with foot stones. Still, at least the show about horse racing was kind enough that the jockeys and horses actually did things for a bit, and that kept my brain off long enough that I got through the rest of the premiere relatively unscathed. .
I didn’t hate fanfare of adolescence, but its tone and style are diametrically opposed to my own sensibilities, and it will take a lot more than C-level characters and cookie-cutter clichés to win me over. However, I’m sure it will be just what some people need, which means, hopefully. Psychedelic Ghost Horse can still ride again.
Rebecca Silverman
Classification:
Let me start with what I really admire about this first episode: the symbolic student of the prestigious hockey academy, our hero, stops being an idol to attend and is allowed to wear pants. That’s right, her uniform is exactly like the children’s and no one is treating her ambitions as less than the children’s; in fact, they are much nicer to Eri than they are to Yu, the aforementioned former idol. It would have been so easy to go the typical anime route here and put her in her uniform, and I wasn’t inclined to take this any more seriously than I might have otherwise.
Although the ghost horse made of sakura petals that guides Yu on the right path to school is too much. Like the instructors’ band-uniform appearance and Shun’s supernatural natural abilities that allow him to read the wind, stand still on the bow of a speeding boat, and perfectly mount a horse for the first time while chasing other. frightened horse There’s definitely some imbalance in this episode, and that takes away from its more grounded moments, like the very real crap poor Yu is getting for deciding to do something with his life that no one expected, and the body language of the horses. (Her ears of him, specifically.) It’s hard to tell how closely this will stick to the realities of learning to work and ride horses professionally and how many weird metaphysical things will get in the way.
However, the premise isn’t bad, and it’s not hard to support Yu’s desire to do something different with his life. We can simultaneously see how good he is at showing himself publicly and how exhausting it is for him; Preferring to be addressed by his real name instead of his stage name is one of his strongest moments in this episode, as he scolds the reporters at the end. The mixed reactions of his classmates to his presence are also handled decently; most of them don’t quite know what to make of him, while one is visibly annoyed by his presence, possibly suspecting that this is all some sort of publicity stunt. As with most sports shows, there are plenty of named characters thrown at us early on, but at least they’re color-coded nicely for those of us who don’t remember the names. I don’t like the look of the show, mostly because (other than the ears) there’s something a little off about the way the horses are drawn and animated. This feels like a very in-between introductory episode, and I suspect his enthusiasm for horses may determine whether he decides to follow it.
Nicholas Dupree
Classification:
This show was going to have an uphill battle with me from the start. Not because of the premise: I’m not really into horse racing, of course, but I like sports stories and animals, so a series about horse riders could definitely be great. No, my problem was with the title. fanfare of adolescence It sounds like a fake and joke anime that you would see in a real show. It’s flowery as hell without telling you anything about the story or the characters, and you could put the name near any high school drama anime and it would fit right in. It’s a bad name and they should feel bad about it.
The other problem that he ran into early on is that I just don’t care about the big conflict of our main character in this premiere. Arimura may be a perfectly nice guy with a ridiculous horse sense, but when all his fighting is he suddenly stops being a super popular idol to become a horse rider, and every part of the conflict throughout this episode it’s about the media harassing him, it’s just hard to relate to any of them. I don’t care how awkward targeting him is because of all the press, or how some of his classmates think he’s just doing this for attention. I want to see some horses, fucking, running or resting, and get a sense of how all of these characters relate to the creatures they’ll presumably be working with throughout the season. Get to it instead of prefacing it with all this showbiz drama.
Fortunately, things pick up a bit once a random accident loosens a couple of horses, and our first-year riders have to try and deal with them. It’s certainly a cliché, and the way it actually happens is pretty ridiculous, but it allows us to see the interesting part of this premise for the last few minutes of the premiere, at least. It’s not exactly dazzling material—Arimura and her new friend ride horses together, control a second, and have a hilarious, over-the-top teasing moment to top it off—but it’s a conflict you wouldn’t find in any other sport. program airing this season. And while the CG of the horses leaves a lot to be desired, at least it looks good in motion and manages to sell the speed of everything. It’s a helpful introduction to why you’d want to watch this show over any show about cute anime boys in high school, and I wish the rest of this premiere had been more like it.
Overall, the premiere equates to being pretty good. It’s not terrible, although it’s pretty boring until someone rides a horse. The biggest flaw is that, for all the focus on Arimura’s character, she doesn’t really have a very discernible personality, and her co-star is instantly more appealing as some sort of Horse Savant. I might just stick around to see if they can put the idol plot behind them after this, but for now it’s doubtful.