I had a vague interest in Narenare -Cheer for you!- before the season began. It’s a CGDCT anime. It has P.A. Works’ name attached. Of course I’d be curious about this show. I wouldn’t say this premiere blew me away but it has me a little curious at least.
Narenare opens up with a high school cheerleading team participating in a competition. During the routine, one of the team’s aces Kanata Misora (Rika Nakagawa) gets into an accident where she crashes into a teammate. Some time later, Kanata has seemingly gone on a hiatus from cheerleading. Kanata frequently visits her best friend, Megumi (Miko Itō). The two of them were previously part of a middle school cheerleading team that went on win the nationals. Megumi has been diagnosed with an unspecified illness and she is currently undergoing physical therapy to recover from it. Aside from Kanata, Megumi is assisted by another friend of her, Shion Tanizaki (Moe Kahara). On her way to high school one day, Kanata comes across Suzuha Obunai (Yuki Nakashima), a parkourist and a classmate of Megumi’s, as well as Anna Aveiro Nakamura dos Santos Moreira (Larissa Tago Takeda), an amateur content creator who hopes to feature Suzuha on her social media account. Anna is accompanied by her best friend Nodoka Ōtani (Manaka Iwami), who reluctantly agrees to help Anna out with the channel.
Obviously, the goal right now is have all six main characters band together and form their own cheerleading team, maybe even compete in nationals. There are some hints as to how each character would get into the sport. Kanata and Megumi are the no-brainers; they already have experience as cheerleaders. Suzuha is into parkour and it’s also mentioned that Shion used to be a gymnast (and a very promising one at that) so while they’ve never done cheerleading, they already have skills that would translate well into the activity.
That said, this episode surprisingly doesn’t mention cheerleading apart from establishing backstory for Kanata and Megumi. Right now, the setup for the group banding together is Anna wanting talent friends to appear in her videos so that she can get that content creator money. I can see Anna eventually deciding to make her content cheerleading themed but you’d think if that’s the case, it’d be established in the first episode of the show. The closest hint towards a spark is at the end, where Kanata has to make a huge leap while chasing after Suzuha. As she falls down, she is seemingly reminded of the accident that happened the year before. Perhaps this moment reminds her of how exhilarating cheerleading can get but it is a little funny how the catalyst is not cheerleading but rather a near-death experience.
Frankly, there are a number of things the episode is vague on. For starters, it’s not explicitly explained how Megumi and Shion know each other. While their friendship is believable enough, it does feel rather random. There also appears to be some history between Shion and Suzuha though to what extent is unclear. All the episode says is that it’s enough to make Kanata concerned. The big one is that we know Kanata is on a hiatus because of the accident but due an abrupt cut, the exact details are unclear. Was her screwup really that humiliating?
Really though, the most alarming element of this premiere is the animation. P.A. Works is a very capable studio and for the most part, this episode looks quite good. What concerns me is the use of CGI in the cheerleading scene. I imagine that animating cheerleading would be tough so I get the necessity of the CGI. That said, it looks very average and by P.A. Works’ standards, that’s considered to be pretty bad. It also doesn’t help that a lot of the CGI shots are static so it’s very easy to notice the use of CGI as well as the quality.
As I said at the beginning, this episode hardly blows me away. I wasn’t expecting the show to play all of its cards from the get go but it nevertheless feels like the episode is refraining a bit too much. Hell, it barely touches on its featured sport. That said, all these threads do make me curious so technically, this episode has done its job in getting me to watch more.
Watch Narenare -Cheer for you!- on Crunchyroll
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