#I have heard a Lot about episode 3. As a lezzie it makes me nervous so We'll See

[millennialdemon]

I’ve seen a few episodes of Anima Yell now, and there are times that I wonder if it isn’t meant to be a parody of the moe club anime that it is. There are moments so cliched, so rushed, and so frequently undermined or played up to the max level of unnecessary melodrama in these first few episodes that I almost find it a little clever.

In episode one we have a stoic girl named Arima who has sworn off cheerleading due to Sports Trauma TM. When our pestering protagonist Kohane asks her to join cheer club, she turns away from her dramatically and says: “Cheer is in my past.” Then we get a comedy scene right after this where she is shown to be completely oblivious to how obvious it is in everything she does that she still loves cheerleading. Kohane herself is the bubbly, perpetually altruistic moe protagonist of moe protagonists who declares that her purpose in life is to help others, even to the point of hurting herself. She is to moe club anime what Asta from Black Clover is to mainstream shounen, which is to say all of the tropes dialed up to 100. By the end of episode one she has convinced Arima to resume cheerleading… by endangering herself and jumping out of a tree to prove how serious she is about conquering her fear of heights and pursuing cheer with her. The scene is completely ridiculous and flips again and again between taking itself way too seriously and being a dumb moe comedy.

It strikes a curious balance of being completely generic in its wholesomeness and leaning so far into the tropes that it seems to be making fun of itself at times. The admittance that I clock most of it as a joke, though, is also an admittance that it is impossible to take seriously thus far. And sure, it’s as light-hearted as anime comes, that isn’t really a flaw -- I’m just saying that if Anima Yell tries to tug on my heart strings later, it will probably be hard won. If it was trying to in earnest with everything going on with Arima in episode 1, it completely failed.

And I say club anime because as much as I would like for Anima Yell to be a sports anime, I just don’t believe it will get there. This isn’t to say cheerleading isn’t a sport, it definitely is, just that this anime is not what I would call a sports anime, because no one is aiming to go into any sort of competition and I am fairly certain the entire show is going to be about getting club members and learning the absolute basics. It functions much more like your average CGDCT club anime so far, like Asteroid in Love or Hinako Note. If they cheerlead more than once at an actual sporting event this season, I will be happy to be wrong.

(Another unfortunate thing about Anima Yell is that while watching it, all I can think about is how much I would rather be watching an actual cheerleading anime where we follow a cheerleading squad that enters competitive tournaments a la Bring It On. But I digress. I know that this is not that type of anime. But Cheerleading!Hanebado would be so good!)

I would say that overall I am enjoying Anima Yell for what it is, though. In the two episodes I have watched, it did make me laugh with its bluntness at times, and I do think it is quite cute. I like the long-suffering Uki and the awkwardly straight forward Arima. I like that the comedy is usually punchy and well-timed, I like that gags aren’t repeated too often. I like hobby anime that actually go into the hobbies more than not at all (Hinako Note, I will literally never forgive you) and I hope we don’t lose out on seeing the girls train and learn for the sake of too much CGDCT antics.

5/10 so far for being a mostly banal moe club anime with way too young looking designs, but I think it could shape up into something fun.