「はじめてのチア」 (Hajimete no Chia)
“My First Time Cheerleading”

Join the Chair Club!

Anima Yell! is the story of a bunch of cute girls who form a cheerleading club. There’s Hatoya Kohane (Ozaki Yuka), the airheaded heart of the club; Sawatari Uki (Izawa Mikako), the tsundere best friend who still hasn’t admitted she wants to join; and Arima Hizume (Yamada Yuina), the serious cheerleading veteran. Also there are two others, because spoiler ED, but we don’t know their names yet (unless you’ve gone to the site page, but shut up). And they do cute cheerleading things. End of post!

Oh, and it’s made by Doga Kobo. That should be enough to decide whether to watch it, right? End of post!

Okay, okay, I’ll say a little more. The storytelling in this first episode is more than a little lazy. Lots of tell rather than show, and things are done out of order (like showing how Kohane puts others ahead of herself near the middle, instead of right at the beginning) when doing them in order would have made more sense, and given the decision to pursue cheerleading more impact. The characters themselves are pretty good, though, in a relaxed sort of way? There’s not a lot of urgency to the comedic bits, this is definitely slice-of-life comedy, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t funny, and it’s certainly relaxing. And Kohane should stop hounding strangers to join her club, though the heartfelt talks later on were fine (shoulda led with those).

The honest truth is that this is a small show, concerned with small things, produced in a respectable enough way that any deficiencies (storytelling whiffs) are made up for by other areas of strengths (consistent animation, cute characters). It all really comes down to you. Do you want a tiny show, one which won’t challenge but will relax? I doubt I’ll end up raving over this one when the season’s over, but I like to have one or two of these in my rotation, because sometimes, you just need an undemanding anime to unwind with. That’s what Anima Yell! is, and it does its job well enough.

My SECOND novel, Freelance Heroics, is available now! (Now in print!) (Also available: Firesign #1 Wage Slave Rebellion.) Sign up for my email list for updates. At stephenwgee.com, the last two posts: An Author’s Review of: Freelance Heroics, & An Author’s Review of: Wage Slave Rebellion.

 

ED Sequence

ED: 「」 () by ()
Watch the ED!: Streaming ▼

Preview

13 Comments

  1. Oh, and it’s made by Doga Kobo. That should be enough to decide whether to watch it, right?

    Right!

    …Except for that pedophile show they’re also doing this season. I’m skipping that.

    Wanderer
    1. That’s generally not how anime production works. Remember, even for studios with house styles or a culture of creating certain kinds of stories, the studio is mostly a label with which to pour staff and money into, in order to get an anime out.

      What matters most is the staff and the money, and if the money is there (which comes from different sources for most every series—production committees, manga/light novel publishers, etc), they can hire the staff (often freelancers) they need with little to no overlap between the two productions.

      So if the money is there, and the staff of both series looks good from the beginning, they won’t interfere with each other. Studios are not people; they can focus on more than one thing at a time. And when the teams are split up like this, they’re like two not-people, each of which can focus on multiple things at one time.

      That means, whether two anime by the same studio succeeds, comes down to the money and the staff. And if those are there, it’s all down to how that team executes, and whether the production committee meddles, and luck. At that point, they have hardly any connection to each other at all.

  2. I just want to write that i fell for this anime, the cuteness and stuff are good. the emotions on their faces seems real (as long anime are real)

    So i am now on an back burner to speed up the episodes i lost

    Worldwidedepp

Leave a Reply to Stilts Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *