Prince of Stride: Alternative

Prince of Stride may be the most appealing anime this 2016 and I actually fell bait for it. Initially I didn't want to watch it but I was kind of forced to and actually enjoyed the first episode but as I was going along with it, then, well, the every hole starts to pop out. Story (6): Fair enough the story of Stride is pretty decent. It's your typical friendship through sports sort of show. Unfortunately, it's trying to show some sort of fanservice, with beautiful men and amazing legs. I dunno. The saving grace of the story would have to be its random bursts ofcomedy and recurring gags. The friendships were cute too but it didn't make me burst to tears or wipe away any snot from my nose. Sports anime should be riveting through its story. This didn't make it happen. Art (8): The art is definitely the reason why this show makes quite the impact. It's beautiful, colorful with hints of cool tones and how can you not like beautiful bishie boys. The stride animations, the running and the tricks were pretty solid and I think that they pushed to make it at least work in order for it to be appealing to sports fans. Sound (6): If we're talking voice actors, this show is peppered with all of my favorite seiyuus... Well, I LOOOOVE ALL OF THEM! But it was the only thing that was memorable. I don't remember the background music. SFX didn't seem to be a huge deal and I'd skip the OP and ED, though the OP is kind of nice. Character (7): The characters of this show are weird. Dedicated to their sport though and bloody entertaining, Ayumu and Kohinata. You know what? The reason I even finished this show was because of these two adorable cuties. If it weren't for them, I wouldn't have survived it. It's either I'll drop it or give it a really low score. But yeah. Like I said, there's so many seiyuus in this and so there are tooooons of characters because teams. you know. but they don't necessarily leave a mark. I'd be screaming when I hear a character speak because their seiyuus are my fave but other than that, I'd be disappointed by how little they actually got to do. They couldn't leave a proper impact. Enjoyment (6): There were moments were I would enjoy the show and then skip to certain parts. It's such a waste of time to be honest, so just skip some of the parts. I only enjoyed the running parts and the Ayumu x Kohinata duo but more than that, I'd say, it's a pretty shallow show. Overall (6): I think I've rated this pretty fairly. It was okay. Maybe you'd still like it. Personally, I didn't like it as a whole but there are bits and pieces that worked for me so I survived.

Stride. A trail created by relaying trust and connecting emotions. Or, more specifically, a relay race involving five people, combined with parkour and obsactles through various enviroments. Story;3 Strides story is a simple one, three people meet on the first day of high school. Two, with the intention of joining the renowned Honan High Stride club, and one who was forced into joining. These three are our stories main characters, and throughout the 12 episodes of this series, we see them grow as athletes, as people, and as friends. EXTRA emphasis on the friend bit. Advancing this group's friendship is a massive part of the story.as they work to their goal of winning the renown "End Of Summer" tournament. On their journey the race many times, getting just a little bit better every run. now if I made it sound better than I rated it, here's why. Strides story is ONLY what I said, there's not much to it. Race, get rivals, get better, repeat. And every god damn episode they spend half the time talking either about Yagami's (the character who was forced into it) brother who is the king of high school stride, friendship, or running. While all of these plot points are what drive the characters, it gets a bit too repetitive. Art:7 it looks decent usually, which is 75% of the show. But, when stride kicks in the art gets quite good, not amazing stuff but it took time and effort to make all of those complicated race courses, tracking shots, and a seemingly 3D environment. You can tell that plenty of time was spent animating this show, and none of it spared by CG characters. The character design is, well its good but its very cliche. however, it does fit the character types they set out, and everything looks pretty good so no real complaints here. Sound:4 The opening was... well it was pretty good and got the tone set for the show well, but the use of English was. Interesting to say the least, and i found it kinda broke the mood of what's actually a pretty good op. Background tracks, none of them really stood out to me, I didn't actually notice them there to be honest, which is a good thing! They blend in well and didn't break immersion. Actions scene tracks, there was one particular one that when listened to actually brings back the emotions of the show with it. which I consider to be a success in a musical sense. The ending track, it had a good groovy feel to it and showcased everyone's favorite rivals, Saisei High. The track had stylish animation to boot, and I would listen to it again. Characters:3 Like I said previously the characters a VERY cliche. You've got your upbeat comedy relief duo who are more emotional than they show of nerd in glasses and a girly boy. A manly captain who cares more for his team than he lets on. Your long haired mysterious cool guy alumni that talks about the wind constantly. Your overly cheerful girl who always says Ganbare! And tries her best to "keep up." Then your have your two main characters, the competitive rivals that get better because of each other. All very cliche and not much in the unique department is shown here. Enjoyment:6 Now while I wasn't a fan of most of the stuff this series did, and admittedly, I texted through half of it. But when everyone was running at their best, I'll admit I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. While the concept is unique, everything that was stride was just blah. But if you're into shows that showcase nice animation and rivalries, I actually think its worth a try. Overall:5 I kinda already did an overall in my enjoyment sections. But I think that I liked this show, even though I hate super cliche shows like this it wasn't THAT bad. give it a shot, but be warned, the show gives off some pretty god damn gay vibes. be careful. With that i end my review, i hope i helped in some way on whether or not you decide to watch Stride. Thanks for reading if you got down this far and sorry for it being so long!

Okay. Here we go. Story - 3 So to start with the story. If you're a sports anime fan, you're probably used to all the cliches and have seen them a million times in all sorts of different sports anime, well let me tell you, Prince of Stride: Alternative was no different. It uses almost every cliche in the book. Not in an oh-this-is-kinda-refreshing way but in a haven't-I-see-this-a-million-times-? sort of way. Honestly. However, the title doesn't lie when it says 'alternative'. Prince of Stride is an anime centered around a COMPLETELY FICTIONAL and MADE UP sport, throwing any chance of being compared with an anime aboutthe same sport out of the window. Now that's novelty. I personally had high hopes in - only - this aspect of the anime; after all, how often do you get an anime that invents a sport completely for itself? The execution of the races themselves were actually acceptable (I'll go into detail in the enjoyment section) but I think the producers missed a teeny-tiny detail: If you're going to invent a sport, how the hell do you expect the viewers to know what it is?! I just binged all 12 episodes of the anime and I quite frankly still don't know the rules or point system of the sport. Heck, I didn't even know if there was a point system (A character mentioned 'extra points' but I didn't even know there was a point system in the first place! and it was never even mentioned again. Unless they meant it metaphorically but reeeaaallly now). Okay, like I said before, the idea of a completely new sport was what made me watch Stride and I believe that with more time to elaborate (I would suggest between doubling the number of episodes or even doing that and making another season on top of it by splitting the content in the first season up), it could have been a masterpiece and could maybe even have made it all the way up to Kuroko no Basuke and Haikyuu. But unfortunately, that's what they lacked: elaboration. One more new-ish feature in the anime is that it dives straight in to the thick of the plot and you can tell they didn't mean to do it when the timeline was planned out. It starts with the typical fallen club looking for members - the show decided to give less than an episode's worth of screen time to this but that was okay. What I mean is that there's practically no training. Well at least at the start, it plunges straight into the plot because what the hell's practice anyway and instead, puts it's practice into the second half of the plot, instantly killing the albeit forced momentum gathered by the dive at the start. I felt like the halfway point actually killed my excitement for the show. But that's enough of my ranting about the story. Art - 4 So the art. Nothing special. Looked like a cheap reverse harem anime (sorry!), to be perfectly honest. The style was bland and the characters lacked the realism that sometimes carries appeal (refer to any sports anime where everyone doesn't have idol-group hair). The background art was as plain as can be, especially when they should've had a lot of freedom in developing the settings because of the nature of the sport used in the show. In quite a few ways, the style for the characters reminded me painfully of an extremely washed out version of Free (refer to characters section). To be perfectly honest, I can only say that it didn't stand out as anything special like Doukyuusei, it didn't have amazingly drawn and choreographed action scenes like Haikyuu and it wasn't plain but enjoyable like Kuroko no Basuke. In short: It's bland. Probably like what it feels like to eat a tissue (don't question it). The best part of Stride's art is its action scenes, and even those sometimes don't really hit the spot. Sound - 4 The voice actors were actually decent although they didn't really strike me as anything special. The soundtrack, like the background art, is just kinda bland. The opening was actually catchy and I quite liked it and the song, along with some of the other soundtracks, fulfilled their purpose of getting the viewer pumped up (I guess). The sound was not at all memorable (I can't remember any of the songs, including the opening) and they don't leave an impression, and there are even parts where I felt that a good OST would have boosted the scene by miles but it just wasn't really like... I don't know... Just kinda mediocre I guess? As a sports anime fan, I love soundtracks that really get your blood pumping as you watch your team score that point; or kick that goal; or shoot that hoop. But this just... I don't know... I was pumped sometimes but I don't give credit to the soundtrack or voices for that. Characters - 2 Okay. I feel mean but at the same time I just couldn't being myself to rate this section any higher. I, however, don't blame it on the character designs (although I didn't like those too much) but on the lack of time instead. There just simply isn't enough time in the space of 12 measly episodes to make viewers become attached to characters. Of course, this anime just used the usual cliches: the forced crossdresser, the reluctant one, the emotionless genius and the emotionally unstable in the character you'd "least expect" but I was sooo annoyed at some of the characters plainly because I felt like they could've been better. I didn't understand the logic more than half the time and sometimes I even caught myself thinking: "What could possibly possess a person to (insert whatever this rant is about)?!" A bunch of family members do pretty confusing things and the character's reactions sometimes JUST DON'T MAKE SENSE. There's a lot of forced bonding and friendships that only feel that way because they didn't get sufficient time to develop. None of the characters got a satisfactory backstory so in the end, instead of having one or two likable and developed characters, we end up with about 25 odd bland, shallow, uninteresting and unrelatable characters. Now onto character designs in terms of art: they all had weird hair was my first thought. Second thought: Wait... Didn't I just see this character?? But anyways, to be honest, I felt like they ran out of character design ideas because of all the replicas I seemed to see where ever I looked. Actually... Wait a sec... Maybe everyone was a twin... Dun, dun, dun! Oh wait a sec... There was a pair of ACTUAL TWINS. But anyways, like I said, the art was bland and this didn't exactly affect the characters in a good way. In many ways, the characters were quite obviously made in a feeble attempt to appeal to the female audience, with the cute neko boy, the long haired stoic one, the emo kid, the glasses dude. Just generic. for those that enjoy shipping, there really isn't much inspiration and there are technically ships but they feel forced. But yes: lacking develop and design creativity. Any humour also falls so flat I don't even know. I hardly even smiled throughout the whole duration of the series, the jokes weren't bad they were just kinda like: Oh, that was a joke? Okay..? Enjoyment - 7 Okay, to tell the truth, despite all the technical and story faults in this anime, I did legitimately enjoy it at some point; maybe I wasn't exactly in paradise most of the time, but there were still times when I had liked the show when watching it. This is where I say: I reckon this section of my review would be biased. So basically, I'm in high school and I run in competitive track events - 100 m, 200 m, relay and 3000 m. Do we get it? The thing is, there's a high possibility that my enjoyment of the show stems from having some sports background to connect with the characters. To tell the truth, the reason I enjoyed the show as much as I did were the races. It certainly wasn't a mistake to invent this sport because I was sweating when they were running and I was trembling as well as I heard the 'go' being said. For me, this really reminded me of all the 'ready, set, BAM's I've heard during my own races and I was SO PUMPED UP after watching the races. The show is a majority of tournaments so if that's what you feel like - a show where you don't really pay attention to the characters but it would get your blood pumping like in a real race, then this wouldn't be a bad choice as most sports anime focus on the characters more so that you grow attached to them and because of the characters, it gets you pumping. Other thing with Stride: I didn't have any worries about who would win. I usually always have a team/s but this time, I didn't feel frustrated no matter which team won because I just loved the races themselves (and because I could hardly remember the names of everyone because of the lack of character development). But a warning, the first races will probably be adrenaline full but the novelty of watching a fictional sport soon wears out when they put the training and stuff in the second half. This actually really ruined my enjoyment of the show because the second half was all about fitting in training that they didn't seem to need at the start of the show and character development that couldn't have been more forced, pointless, or fallen more flat. But my enjoyment of the races was still there and I wouldn't say no to re-watching the anime if a friend wants to watch it with me, just so I could feel that rush as I watch the races. Overall - 4 This anime was... Okay? I guess the characters sucked, the art was mediocre, the soundtrack was anything but outstanding and the story was poor. In the end, I gave this show a 'decent' overall score because of the novelty of the sport and because of my enjoyment of the races. Recommendation rate - 3 It really depends on who it is. I would love to recommend it to people who have a track background and like sports anime, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who doesn't have a prior connection to elements in Stride. I wouldn't recommend it to modern sports anime fans where the characters really take the main focus of the viewer's attention. So... If you're wanting to watch something 'alternative' and sporty, I guess it wouldn't kill anyone to watch this if you are desperate for a sports anime, but, take it from me, this is no masterpiece. But I definitely recommend watching some clips of the races beforehand (don't watch spoilers!) so you can get an idea of how much you like them (I had previously dropped this anime after not even finishing episode one, which means I didn't get to see a race, but then I watched an AMV and I thought, this looks really good, so I gave it a second try), if you thought, this is really cool! Then watch the anime. If you watched some of the races and thought: meh, this is fine. Then don't watch it. Because again, the races are really the redeeming feature of this show, the characters and the story aren't gonna boost it but actually drag it down so... Yeah. If you're gonna watch it, have fun! If you decided it's not your thing, well good luck in your pursuit of another good sports anime! Thanks for reading my review ;)

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