English Dub Review: Skate-Leading Stars “Bonds”

Overview:

The Grand Prix is coming up and the opponent has been decided. Much to Maeshima’s dismay it is not Shinozaki’s team. Maeshima is a starter (for some reason) and Kubota challenges him for his spot.

Our Take:

I really have no idea who this show is for. It can’t be for skating fans cause there’s hardly any, there’s next to no fanservice, and if you like yaoi there are way better options out there. It doesn’t excel in anything and even worse than that it doesn’t seem like it’s even trying. It feels like they thought attaching director Gorou Taniguchi, the creator of Code Geass, and thought that was enough.

If you’re already that far behind you really have to nail the characters which again is not done well here. Maeshima is insufferable and acts like a spoiled child every second. Normally, I don’t like the “bully upperclassman” trope but in this, I am on his side. When Kiriyama said “Every time I see his face I wanna…” referring to Maeshima I couldn’t agree more. We are five episodes in there should be more development from THE main character.

Another major writing rule this show broke is the “show don’t tell” rule. Suddenly at the end of the episode, everyone is impressed with all the strides Maeshima has taken since his match with Kubota. I don’t want to call it lazy writing cause honestly it feels like they had to do that because the pacing for this show has been terrible.

I will say I like Ian Sinclair’s performance as Terauchi. It’s a more subdued, quiet performance from him. If you read my review of the Fruits Basket premier you would see me gush about him quite a bit. Khoi Dao did pretty well in this episode because his character Kubota finally got a bigger role in this episode. I’ve always liked Khoi and have been pretty disappointed with how underutilized he has been so far.

Maeshima beat Kubota to retain his starting spot. Since he only copied him to beat him though it doesn’t feel like much of a victory. The story and character actions just don’t make sense. One minute they are talking about how they can’t stand Maeshima and how he isn’t a good team player but yet they still choose him to perform with them. How does that make any sense?

This show has seven episodes left. I am not expecting much from this series at this point. The characters are bland and haven’t shown much growth. Maybe this show will be super back loaded and all the good stuff is in the latter half but maybe put just a bit of that in the front. If this show can come back to get a good ranking in the end it might be the best comeback in anime history.