English Dub Review: Skate-Leading Stars “Inspiration”

Overview:

We find out why Himekawa left the school. He transferred to a new school so that he would only have to rely on himself. Maeshima has to get a badge test in order to compete. While taking his test he meets a new rival of Shinozaki’s in Noa Kuonji.

Our Take:

Maybe I expected too much from this show after one decent episode. All the characters continue to be one-note and their motivations are bare-bones at best. Even my current favorite Sasugai is succumbing to this fault. For a sports anime, there isn’t really much focus on the sport or even seeing it.

I feel I am pretty optimistic and can find something good and enjoyable in just about any anime. This show is severely testing that. As far as I know, this is only a twelve-episode series and we are on episode four. That means we are almost halfway and we haven’t had a competition or anything. We have only seen the titular skate-leading once, this show is just not paced well.

The rivalry between Maeshima and Shinozaki seems about as one-sided as unrequited love. So I don’t think it’s a good idea to go adding other rivals when we have one barely fleshed-out rivalry as it is. We need to get some development from Shinozaki and fast. Right now I think calling him a cardboard cutout is giving the character too much credit.

I think the studio knew exactly what they were doing with last week’s episode. They know all about the three-episode rule and decided to make the third actually good. I am trying to remain hopeful that this show will have SOMETHING or ANYTHING to latch on to with some value.

I don’t want to harp on a show like this but I also have to tell it how it is. This show is floundering weekly, and it shows. When I saw the cast list I was excited because there are some pretty big names on here. Unfortunately, even they can’t seem to salvage this show mainly cause of poor writing. Hope the next episode is better but I’m not counting on it.