English Dub Season Review: Skate-Leading Stars

Overview:

Child figure skating prodigy Maeshima abruptly quits the sport after his one-sided rival, Shinozaki, refuses to acknowledge his skill. Now, as a student at Inodai High School, Kensei uses his athletic skills to assist the other sports teams, but he never officially joins one. One day, Shinozaki announces his switch from singles figure skating into team-based skate-leading and joins St. Clavis Gakuin High School—last year’s Grand Prix champions. Sasugai, a classmate with a mysterious connection to Shinozaki, convinces Maeshima to switch to skate-leading in order to finally defeat his rival in a competition.

Our Take:

I was initially excited to review this one. I had heard all about Yuri on Ice, and while I didn’t think this would be as lauded as that I thought it might give me an idea. Spoiler alert… I was wrong, way wrong. This show has an identity problem and it never truly solves it but at least the last few episodes make it up a little bit.

I thought from the previews this would be a yaoi, sports, fanservice driven show. It’s not any of those things, there’s a tiny bit of fanservice here and there but not enough. Any yaoi bait is only left to the imagination at best. There is nothing the show gives you. So that leaves sports and while there is the most of that I wouldn’t comfortably call it a sports anime either.

The titular skate-leading is hardly shown until the final few episodes. Skate-leading is a made-up sport, to begin with, so we need to be given more than we are to be invested in it. I thought maybe that with as little as we were seeing of it that maybe there was some huge spectacle or a big reveal involving it. There wasn’t, essentially it is synchronized skating with five people. Some of the performances by the other teams were really interesting but the main team never had an interesting one to me.

The characters could have been interesting but with how the show gave us information it fell flat. Almost all character development was off-screen which to me is a big problem. I am all for time skips to advance the plot when you don’t have much time but not when development is just waved away under it. Shinozaki who is the main rival of our main character Maeshima never feels like a rival or anything at all. It’s all one-sided seemingly until a late-season reveal shows why Shinozaki feels the way he does about Maeshima.

The best character is Sasugai and I feel like he was supposed to be a character we didn’t like but begrudgingly accepted. When he stands out the most as a likable character I think that’s a problem. He was snarky and his reasons for wanting to back Maeshima were basic and easy to relate to.

The animation was good with some decent character designs. Everyone is drawn really colorful and everything really pops. When there is actually skating going on it is animated really well and I have no complaints there. Voice acting was fine, not too many standouts which I think is another detriment cause there was some serious talent here. I mean J. Michael Tatum and Ian Sinclair? But they were relegated to support characters, though Sinclair got more time to shine and did well. Stephen Fu voiced Maeshima and I hated Maeshima. I don’t think that was Fu’s fault though. I have heard him voice other characters and loved his performance I think it was the writing for the character or something that was at fault here.

There is some sequel bait at the end of the season but I highly doubt it will happen. I would honestly be upset if it does get one because there are so many anime that deserves a second season that hasn’t got one. This one doesn’t deserve it in my opinion. Having said that… IF a second season was greenlit I would be more interested in it than this season. Simply because where everything left off was actually interesting. It felt like this whole season was set up for something else. Maybe they should have focused more on this season. You can skip this one because you probably won’t get out of it what you think you would.