Prince of Stride – Alternative #01 — Parkour is the Greatest Thing EVER!
January 5th, 2016
I'll honestly never really get Japan's media's weird view of literally every sport.
It amuses me that I christened my images2016 folder with "pos1". Also, I kind of dropped the ball here. This airs early enough that I could've covered it before I go to work. Stuff airs damn early this season all across the board, although March will push that back an hour. Might have to get used to waking up a little earlier than usual and covering things while drowsy again. Aside from tomorrow and Monday at least.
Impressions:
I have to ask, Madhouse, do you think people's noses emit a net dissolving spray? Because that was freaky looking, especially when the nets weren't dissolving for anything else… like the hands right next to the faces. Anyway, this was a show of two distinct parts, parkour for about a third, and comedy for the rest. Unfortunately, it wasn't really great at either. Starting with the parkour, it really reminded me of K in how it was all style, no substance, the animation was sped up to look 'cool' but just looked janky, and godawful CGI would leap out of nowhere. Yeah, we all knew it'd be a photo finish, but about ten seconds from the end, one guy is in a flat out sprint, vaulting over rails and stuff, and the other guy… spends about 5 seconds and multiple shots planting his foot. Whereupon both of them teleport in a CGI aside to a completely different area to finish at the same time. Perhaps a little less effort should've been spent on boys huffing and puffing and a little more on scene composition. I was pretty much taken out of it at that point already by how literally the entire school turned up to watch a couple literally random jackasses run around. Reality and sense has long been abandoned at that point.
As for the comedy… meh. The words may change, but the tune remains that same. It's not nearly as absurd or wacky as it thinks it's being. It started off pretty blithely and atrociously too, with multiple overwrought directly-at-the-audience character introductions followed immediately by one going "my introduction was too long!" That was followed by an explosion of flowers behind Token Girl and the announcement that she was cute. Things did get less painful from that point onward, and the 'funny' side got about as much budget as the 'runny' side, so it's not hurting in the visuals aside from a few moments when the animation went… wonky. It's nowhere near as wacky or absurd as it thinks it is though, and while not as shouty as a lot of wannabe comedies lately, it's not bringing anything new at all to the table. The closest may be that Sullen Spice is a social imbecile instead of having the burning spirit of rivalry with Playful Spice. That's about as close as it comes to an original though in its body.
It's harmless, I guess. Neither side of the episode was great though, and no real effort was made to mesh together the soaring spirit of youth athletics with cliche wacky fun times. Music sounded like it came out of a video game. Take that for good or bad as you will. I don't particularly want to watch more of it, mostly because the leads are about as interesting as dish soap while still falling firmly into the sports cliche of flawless at one thing and completely incompetent/uncoordinated at literally everything else, and the comedy didn't make me laugh at all, but I'd probably put it above plenty of other sports shows… that I've only watched one episode of.
Next Episode:
Running!
Posted in Prince of Stride | 3 Comments »
When I got to your phrase, “…and the ‘funny’ side got about as much budget as the ‘runny’ side…” my mind started to drift off to runny eggs, runny noses, etc…
It’s probably the best time to “run out” on this series. I have no doubt that the boys will be running without their shirts sooner than anyone wants…
(My basic rule-of-thumb for every anime season is that the worst shows will always air first.)