English Dub Review: Skate-Leading Stars “Champions”

Overview:

Sasugai is back to acting like his normal self. Maeshima might be practicing too much. Fortunately, he happens to bring out the best in everyone else. Shinozaki has issues with the entertainment aspect of skate-leading. This competition will definitely be neck and neck.

Our Take:

I think that Shinozaki having an issue with the entertainment aspect of skate-leading sums up this show really well. The last four episodes must be extremely skate-leading heavy. Even this episode only had it a bit, and most of that was like an 80’s movie montage. Everything in this show is just… disjointed like they just had to put something out.

Maeshima is one of the worst characters I have ever experienced, and the weird thing is it isn’t his fault. The writing for him in particular is terrible. Either that or they just expect the audience to be dumb and forget what happens in the first four episodes, I don’t know which is worse. Your main character should be the major focus and usually most people’s favorite. If Maeshima is your favorite character I don’t know what that means because his development is just so bad.

Sasugai is back to acting cool at least but even then I don’t think he should outshine our main character. Even though he’s my personal favorite. He has some pretty cool lines in this episode but even one of those leads back to my problem with Maeshima. One of the other skaters says they will support Maeshima and Sasugai says “Don’t back Maeshima, rise up to meet him.” Awesome line right? Except it’s being spoken about one of the most annoying characters I’ve seen.

Maybe I would think Maeshima and Shinozaki are these amazing prodigies if I understood what made them so great. Getting the best out of your teammates is an amazing ability for any athlete to have. Being able to elevate others is awesome! Just, in this case, Maeshima seems to elevate others simply by pissing them off.

Then when they show the little bit of skate-leading they have it makes no sense why they are so much better than anyone else. I recently reviewed Kuroko’s Basketball which is a sports anime done right. They show you exactly why characters like Kagami and Aomine are so much better than everyone else. No one else can do what they do but here Maeshima or Shinozaki could be switched out for anyone and nothing would change. Especially Shinozaki, he’s this big rival and prodigy but why? Other than the fact he and Maeshima competed a lot there’s no substance there.

This episode gets an extra point just cause Sasugai is solo carrying this show. Seriously, that snarky bastard is one of the only positive things I can say about this show. It has such amazing voice actors who are wasted on this show. Well… see you next episode.