Cheer Boys!

Cheer boys or Cheer Danshi!! is next on the Funimation list. The main character Haruki teams up with his best friend Kazuma to form an all-male cheer squad. Haruki, coming off a shoulder injury from judo, quits pursuing other interests. As a fellow judo competitor, Kazuma was ready to quick alongside his best friend and introduces the idea of starting the all-male cheer squad. This 12-episode anime shows their introduction into the cheer world.

Start of review:

Cheer Boys took a direction I wasn’t prepared for. With many slice of life and sports genre anime, the audience gets used to characters introduced in high school and joining a club. This show starts off this cheer club with its characters in college. Realistically, this already shows the boys in a not so favorable position. Starting up a club with no experience, with the hope to compete in nationals. From episode 1, I was already cheering for them. Respecting their tenacity and wondering to myself, how possible would this be?

The anime shows a different take with gender in sports. While it’s not unheard of for males to participate in cheerleading, it is definitely a different outlook seeing college-age boys taking on a completely new challenge.

I enjoyed the characters. They all respectively seem like outcasts coming together to accomplish a greater task. Each episode shows growth within each person. Seeing that the show is only 12 episodes, there isn’t as much of a back story as what you would get with a longer anime. I’m fine with that but had the series been longer, I would’ve loved to see more.

For a show that’s the main premise is cheerleading, it isn’t something the audience is shown as much. I found that a bit disappointing. Whatever scenes are shown, which is limited to possibly 2, are basic and slightly flashy. Through watching a lot of action anime, I had higher expectations of these scenes, seeing how the process of getting there was shown as thoroughly. That leads me to believe had the series gained a second season, then maybe we could’ve seen more intense cheerleading scenes or a face-off within another group. I guess my expectations for a scene like that will die while I wait for another season.

There were parts throughout the show that gave me a good laugh and others where they tried to be serious. While I enjoy both in a show, the serious aspect was a bit mundane. The one serious highlight of seriousness was with the character Sho and his past with cheerleading. The character is shown with experience, helping all those that are new to the sport but is afraid to take part. The coach and all the other player’s concern for him show the struggle that Sho has within him. It was an emotional moment when he finally decided to visit Sakura years after the accident. While she did not harbor any feelings against him, it was a great moment to see him overcome this struggle and start cheerleading again.

Overall the show is solid, while it started with an unusual age of most teams coming together within a school club, it ended rather uneventfully. I believe the intention was to have the series continue further and the majority of the episodes would be the perfect set up for the future. The journals used by the coach added some depth to the characters but besides Sho and Haruki, there was nothing to suggest development.

At best the anime had better points than negatives and is a show I would forget rather easily. I would give it a 6/10. Good enough for me to watch to the end, but bad enough that it lumps into any other sports anime.