Once again I must comment on my love for the bizarre ideas that come from time to time in the anime industry. It delivered some crazy stuff like Food Wars, some ridiculous shit like Seikon no Qwaser, and many other shows that no other media would ever try its hand on. At the same time, some typical Hollywood stuff seems totally incompatible with the craziness of japanese authors... at least until they try their hand on it.
Ballroom e Youkoso (Welcome to the Ballroom) is a show about dancing. Yes, you've seen a lot of movies in the past about that, there's an entire genre involving dancing and singing and also a lot of movies about people dancing. The japanese approach to that, however, is rather unique. Instead of a dramatic romance about a couple finding their link through dancing here we have a sports show targeting the typical teenage audience. Yeah. This is the Prince of Tennis of ballroom dancing, an animation about bendable people with ridiculous long necks, so yeah, brace yourselves.
It all begins as Fujita Tatara, a boy without any kind of ambition or plans to the future, follows a classmate into a dance studio and ends up taking a few lessons from the renowned dancer Sengoku Kaname. That's all it takes to make the young Fujita fall in love with dancing, a sports where he will meet rivals and perhaps a meaning to his life.
- Yeah, nothing new
Young boy without a much to think about finds a sport, learns he was born with absurd talent for it, and goes on practicing it and climbing ranks and defeating the competition. That's shounen sports most basic formula, here followed rigorously since the beginning. At the end of the day this is a major let down, especially because Fujita himself is a fuck*n generic protagonist that looks exactly like the similarly annoying and boring Deku from My Hero Academia, Shouyou from Haikyuu, and many others. He has no twist to the template at all, a boring weak-willed boy with the chosen-one template capable of smashing the competition because he is the damn protagonist.But... dance!
Well, there are ways to dribble the terrible typical shounen protagonist though. Haikyuu did that by ditching the lead in favor of the rest of the team and Welcome to the Ballroom does so by approaching a wildly different kind of sports. Dancing offers some decent opportunities for a different kind of development than what we are used to in the industry. First, it is about pairs, which means our boring lead must somehow break the girl/shy barrier right at the start in order for everything to move on. Second, it is aesthetically entrancing, offering a rare change of clothing, movement, and focus for the artistic team. Third, its competition format is basically a battleground where many things can happen.So yeah, it can get thrilling
Welcome to the Ballroom embraces the sport much more than your average sports show. The relationship problems between pairs ignite some interesting plot ideas and the thrill of competition is simply superb, offering us some amazing shots and refreshing the visual department with fancy dresses and bizarre poses of people with ridiculous long bodies and necks. There is additional spice to the tale as some other genius dancers are thrown into the fray to compete with your protagonist-with-the-perfect-talent and the show also smartly shift its focus from boy-and-girl typical situations.And the cast is fun
Well, except Fujita. Damn you ridiculous protagonist! Anyway, considering the amount of time given to the support, they get to shine and move away from their initially typical templates. They can be selfish bastards, they get angered, they get frustrated, and everything that happens as competitions go seems to affect them a good deal, which is an important thing to do in a sport that is about two people getting in synch with each other. The first half is basically an introduction to the cast and the starting problems, and it is on the second half that Welcome to the Ballroom gets on a roll with its cast, giving us conflict for the boring protagonist to grow, which sadly doesn't happen to him, but fortunately works wonders to his new selfish partner.It does annoying shounen things though
The second part manages to give us the enticing Chinatsu and also a few new competitors with good depth, but the way these people are presented happens in the most annoying shounen way possible: evoking the past exactly when things are at a climax. Yup! Are you thrilled with this competition? You want to see how our hero will recover from his breakdown? You do? Nice, take these two episodes about Chinatsu's friend and their relationship two years ago. Oh, you want to see the result the dance? Great! But first let me show you how the protagonist's rival suffered in his past.Damn. This is fucking annoying. Whenever things are about to get really exciting the show hammers us with an episode about some random cast member. The episodes themselves are fine and it is good to learn about these people, but goddman, right in the middle of the most important parts? That's One Piece-filler level, the most annoying kind there are.
Not exactly about music though
Although this certainly has dancing, music seems quite forgotten in the show. We get some glimpses of waltz, latin, and foxtrot rhythms, but most of the time some other background theme will take over scenes and by the end we are left with just a regular sound direction. It does a decent job at making thrilling parts enhanced, but it is a pity that a show about ballroom dancing has so little err... ballroom music.Production I.G
Once again Production I.G delivers a quality far above the norm of the genre. They did it with Haikyuu in the past seasons and it is charming to see the same art style and quality brought to Welcome to the Ballroom. The character have expressive and detailed eyes, hairs are complex, and the background is a solid work. This show, however, shines brighter due to its setting, where fantastic dresses and charming make up are the visual stars. The dancing itself varies from some amazing movement animation to a few static shots, but as far as it compares to the reminder of the competition this is still a marvelous job. Well, it is a pity the protagonist and a few other male characters are so damn similar to every other shounen guys around, especially contemporary ones.
Damn. Welcome to the Ballroom is a thrilling sports show that is only truly brought down by a lame and tiresome protagonist and the most annoying skill of destroying the momentum with episodes about the past. Of course, the idea of ballroom dancing itself can be a major turn down, but breaking this prejudice can prove to be quite rewarding. I am sure that a few months ago I would have ditched this show instantly and never ever bothering watching it, but after my amazing experience with Chihayafuru and the alluring craziness of Food Wars' first season, I learned that any bizarre sports show can be in fact a much better and fantastic experience than those of known and established sports.
Anyway, don't freak with the dance thing. The absurdness of how dancing is tackled on is just right to make Welcome to the Ballroom this season's most interesting shounen sports show. Now we can just hope the next seasons do come.
