#taisou zamurai leo

[ydotome]

A million words aren’t enough to describe this beauty. I think that every time I see his dancing. - Taisou Zamurai - Episode 7

[piratehunted]

[pinktrouble]

“As expected of the only gymnast you admire.”

[mina-ahavi]

[hairunowa]

Leonardo | レオナルド

[httpanime]

i’m watching a new anime! it is called taiso samurai and it’s still releasing. it only has two episodes for now but i recommend it for those who like sports anime with a hint of comedy. let me just tell you that the moment my eyes laid on this man. i fell in love. it was love at first sight, i guess? hahaha anyway, y’all should watch it because this man is so pure and innocent. i want to protect him from this harsh world.

[shysheeperz]

[ella390-the-potato]

I'm a sucker for sports anime, so I drove straight into this without really knowing what to expect.

The characters are interesting, and there was plenty of silly laughs. I honestly didn't expect it to be that heavy on the comedy. I'm willing to give it a chance, so we'll see how this progresses.

But I do question that bird.

[holymadroxdupe]

ballet ninja spin-off manifestation post

[jenatwork]

Seriously, how is there no fic for Taisou Zamurai/Gymnastics Samurai? The show ends with Leo in costume for Mathew Bourne’s all-male Swan Lake, after Jotaro’s family race to the airport to convince Leo that Jotaro needs him in the audience for his competition. How is that not romantic?

[aceyugiohdreamer]

I really really really like Taisou Zamurai, but the opening especially is just lots of fun, I can never skip it

And Leo is the best I love him so goddamn much 😭

[ydotome]

Leonardo (レオナルド) - Taisou Zamurai - Episode 4

[skyhopedango]

2020 fall season part 2

And here are the ones that I stuck with pretty much because there was nothing else going on those days. 

Magatsu Wahrheit Zuerst: Well, this was certainly... an anime. I guess. I really liked the first few episodes, but then it kind of went downhill really fast with some plot & character choices, and not enough focus on either Inu or Leo. It ended up being one of those shows that are not bad, per se, but they’re just bland. Bland characters, bland acting, bland visuals, bland story... yeah. Not much to care about. I think this is going to be one of those shows where I just completely lose interest in watching the last episode.

Also, I’m just really, really tired of Tsuda Kenjirou’s bad guy drawl shtick. It used to be impressive when he was still putting some effort into it, then it turned into “eh, at least it’s amusing”, listening to him chewing the scenery... but by now it’s gotten stale, one-note and irritating. Bleh.

Taisou zamurai: Riiiight, so... WTF? I really don’t understand this show, and why some people seem to find it so impressive. 

Getting the animation aspect out of the way first - I’m not impressed. I mean, wow, they rotoscoped/traced real people doing gymnastics. Yay. But thing is, when athletes do impressive sports stuff it’s impressive to me because it’s real people doing stuff that’s exaggerated and unreal by normal person standards. It’s kind of like dance: movements you would never do IRL, you can see the effort going into the motions, and yet the athlete still moves fluidly and gracefully (if they do it right, anyway). That’s why it’s impressive. But animation is not “real”, and anime in particular is already an exaggerated version of reality, what with the character designs, the exaggerated reactions, emotional expressions, stories, etc. So translating physically impressive stuff like gymnastics into animation by just slavishly copying reality is missing the entire point if you ask me - it just ends up missing the “wow” factor you get when you see the same thing in reality. It’s missing the dynamism, the energy, the effort - which could be achieved simply by applying the exaggerations that animation allows for. So yeah, the gymnastics part of the show - I’m not impressed whatsoever.

And the rest is kind of like “let’s do Yuuri on Ice but with gymnastics and less homoeroticism” and it’s just not working (and again, I say this as someone who didn’t even like Yuuri on Ice). There’s so many things about this show that don’t work (for me, anyway) that I’ll just make a list.

1. Just the whole premise of “veteran athlete decides not to retire, wins championship, because YOU CAN DO IT IF YOU BELIEVE IN YOURSELF”... okay, look. Look. Aside of the fact that there’s a very good reason why IRL athletes, especially gymnasts, tend to retire after a while, that has nothing to do with believing in yourself and everything to do with the perfectly natural limitations of the human body... even this aside, the story is just so, so trite. You know what could have been an interesting story? Former athlete tries to find a new purpose in his life after retirement. Veteran athlete realizes that his time is up, decides to gracefully bow out and give way to the new generation. Veteran athlete realizes that he’d been neglecting his daughter all these years and tries to mend their relationship. And so on. There could have been so many ways to turn this premise into an interesting story, but no, they just had to go with the weakest, blandest idea.

2. The characters. What are even these characters. There’s the bland, uninteresting protagonist. Then there’s the Manic Pixie Dream Anime Dude who is just every Manic Pixie Dream Anime Character stereotype without any interesting aspects or dimensions to him. (Because “he’s actually a genius dancer who can’t handle the pressure” and then leaving it at that is just not interesting to me whatsoever.) Then you have the side cast made of one-note characters with bafflingly outdated quirks/stereotypes, like the “manly-looking onee who tries to be feminine but keeps slipping into dude mode” (isn’t that kind of offensive in the year of our lord 2020?) or the ganguro girl and the hip-hop guy who are technically “historically correct” but they’re so OTT it’s just cringy. The least said of Kaji Yuuki’s character the better - or no, actually, I’ll just say that even his story could have had potential, but then they just decided not to do anything with it, to the point where I don’t even understand why he’s in the story, so little effect he has on everything going on. The only vaguely interesting character was Rei, but then she just ended up being the Spunky Little Girl Who Orders Adults Around.

3. It’s painfully unfunny and uncute. Most jarringly: Leo’s ninja shtick is supposed to be endearing, but all I see and hear is a completely infantile guy being disconcertingly childish, while Ono Kenshou is spouting insipid lines in a completely false-ringing, cutesy voice. There is a way that Leo could have worked as an endearing character - but they took his quirkiness so far, and added so little grounding to him, that he just doesn’t work as a character. He’s a concept on legs. I guess Big Bird encapsulates this aspect of the show perfectly: he’s meant to be a cute and funny mascot, but he’s not cute, he’s not funny, and he keeps ruining scenes.

4. Plot and character development - or rather, the lack thereof. Instead of organically developing characters and having them drive the plot, we’re just expected to accept stuff happening because we’re told so. Jou ends up trusting his daughter with an infantile, ninja-LARPing stranger they picked up at a theme park because... that’s what the writers wrote. Kaji Yuuki’s character is a total dick and nobody ever asks him “dude, what’s your problem exactly?” so we could get a glimpse into what he’s thinking - we should just accept that he had all that inner turmoil going on all this time, from that one line in the last episode. All throughout the last episode Rei & Co. are scrambling to retrieve Leo because they realized he was an important motivation for Joutarou, and all the while I’m wondering “really? since when?” because they barely even interacted, and when they did it was so bland that I never bought them having an emotional bond thing going on (even though it was obviously what the writers wanted us to think, what with the whole “PLEASE SHIP THEM” pandering - it didn’t work). And so on.

Anyway, I stuck with this show mostly out of a morbid curiosity - and I’m not going to miss it. There could have been so much they could have done with the premise and the characters... and they did exactly none of it.

Continued (eventually) in part 3 with the one show that I expected the least out of, and ended up loving...

[pinktrouble]

Me explaining to my friends the plot of Attack on Titan:

My friends:

[mina-ahavi]

[fluffyblue-multifandommess]

i’m enjoying Taisou Zamurai, but. not a big fan of the “this tournament is more important than letting your injury heal properly, if you Want it hard enough you won’t have any permanent damage! :D” attitude. i hope the narrative will refute that notion but at this point im not sure how they could still manage it. i felt like the narrative itself was promoting that bullshit idea - though I could be wrong, and i really really hope i am. i expect better from this anime.

also i love leo forever and i want him to only experience good things.