English Dub Review: Skate-Leading Stars “Pact”

Overview:

Kensei Maeshima quit skating a few years ago, but when his rival moves to the team sport of skate-leading, Kensei returns to the ice. Skate-leading is a fictional sport where there are five skaters all competing as a team to earn points. That is just the technical description because this episode does not show us a match, this episode is entirely build-up and backstory. Skate-Leading Stars is an original anime created by J.C. Staff, so no source material here ladies and gentlemen.

Our Take:

Skate-Leading Stars is not the worst first episode I’ve seen but it definitely falls short. Our main character, Kensei Maeshima (Stephen Yu) isn’t all that likable and seems to be in a one-sided rivalry with Shinozaki (Daman Mills). Maeshima’s parents died in a car wreck a few months prior to the episode’s opening. I jotted this down as a note thinking it would be important but so far, it is not. Maeshima’s reasons for quitting skating seem flimsy at best, especially since it’s clear he still loves it and practices skating regularly in secret.

Maeshima has a bit of a cocky attitude because of his athleticism he is good at most things. He refuses to help out the skate-leading team but it’s clear they don’t want anything to do with him anyway. So how does Maeshima get back into the world of skating? Enter Sasugai, he is Shinozaki’s half-brother, and since he was treated poorly and always in his brother’s shadow wants Maeshima’s help to beat him. I really hate to keep repeating the same thing but again as far as motivations go, there really isn’t anything special here.

Skate-Leading Stars hits all the spots any sports anime needs to. It just doesn’t do it very originally or all that well to be honest. There are some serious BL vibes here as well so if that’s your thing this might be the show for you. If you’re curious BL stands for boy love, so romantic relationships between the guys is at least a possibility. It really feels like this show is trying to be a Yuri on Ice clone, just with more of a team sport than lone figure skaters. After the first episode, it just feels like a jumble of a bunch of things put together, jack of all, master of none type of thing.

I don’t like being negative so I do want to focus on some of the positives. There is at least a glimmer that this could have some moments that are really satisfying. In a bit of a twist, the first episode ends with Maeshima submitting his application to join the skate-leading club only to be denied by the president and that’s where the episode ends. So it’s clear he will have to earn his way onto the team I am hopeful they will find a unique way to play that out. The voice acting was also pretty good, nothing overly impressive but still good. Most of the more well-known names are on the skate-leading team so they didn’t get much time to shine. The opening is also a banger, I mean it really bops. It’s “Chase the Core” by Takao Sakuma. Here’s to hoping the show finds its legs in the coming weeks.