Kids on the Slope

Hello again, it’s been a while since I reviewed anything, although I’ve been watching lots of anime none have been review worthy in my eyes, things like MHA are so well known everything I could have said is already done and I enjoyed them to a point where my thoughts on it were easy for me to comprehend. When I write a review it’s half because I need a place to put my own thoughts down to better comprehend them myself, the other half is for the joy of writing. So without further ado, here is my likely very long review of Kids on the Slope.

I want to preface this by saying I watched this anime on a whim. I’d just finished Parasite, one I was going to review but didn’t ( hey maybe soon ) which I didn’t enjoy much outside of the Romance and I was thinking either to jump straight into an action anime or maybe delve deeper into romance for the first time. When faced with this conundrum I was chatting to a friend who laid out some slice of life, romance, music animes as they are his favourite. Your lie in April he had recommended before and it was on my list but I wasn’t sure if I was feeling like that was the thing to watch. He then mentioned Kids on the Slope just saying it was good and had jazz. Now I’ve never cared for jazz but Ik it can be quite a smooth and enjoyable music genre, and out of sheer luck that night I decided to just have a peek on cruncyroll and then I found out it was only twelve episode which I thought that can’t hurt and put on episode one.

I also want to add, while I spend a lot of time on the negatives, this does not at all mean the show is bad, it is a masterpiece with a few flaws that are very minor and do not affect the story so badly that you hate it. I still adore this show, but as I get my feelings down I focus more on the negative to help explain it to myself while I am very understanding of why I loved the show.

Now into the actual anime itself, I’m not gonna recap too much I hope but apologies in advance if I do.

Episode 1-7 caught me off guard and I fell deeper and deeper in love with the show, the first episode was amazing at the time I was still neutral I knew it was enjoyable and looked forward to the next episode, but as I got further in and we heard more jazz and got to see more romance and friendships I fell in love every episode was just beautiful. The show centres so amazingly on friendships which is a big part of my mentality I love my friends so this was beautiful to me. The characters were all lovable, each one had their quirks and all of them were amazing, at least the main three. Yurika I liked to begin with as it was Sentaro’s love interest but the whole Juninchi and Yurika plot line was just a bit weird to me and was one of the lacking parts of the show.

Anyways, while it was actually very fast, I’m going to refer to it as a slow burning romance. Richie falls in love with Riko pretty much instantly and it’s nice that he is pretty forward within a few episodes. It was sad to see him get heartbroken but that just led to an amazing episode where it shows friendship is more important as it is forever. Hell, I was even ready to accept Sentaro and Rikos relationship. But I’ll get into that more later.

Episode 7 would have been my perfect ending. After the tense feud between Richie and Sentaro, they finally make up in a spectacular jazz piece, that flows from song to song amazingly and shows how strong their friendship truly is by performing at such a spur if the moment time while also sharing love to Riko through her favourite song as almost like Richie’s final, I love you but it’s ok. The ending shot of the two boys running down the slope to the sun was just perfect and had it ended there the shiw would have been 10/10 without a shadow of a doubt. I never expected to love this kind of show so much that it would rank next to goddamn AOT but here I am, I’ve honestly been so amazed that it’s caught me off guard.

Richie and Sentaros friendship was just great, from the first meeting to the festival they are polar opposite’s and yet the perfect match through jazz, and that’s what friendships are all about no matter the differences you get along and love things together which in turn makes spending time together amazing. The repeating f theme of Richie unveiling Sentaro from under a blanket is also great and I love a good callback.

So what happened to change that. Well first of all, I hated Rikos shift. Until this point I had found the conflicts enjoyable, they didn’t feel too forced or cliche that I hated them, hell the characters spoke their minds quite a bit. But to break someone’s heart and then start falling for them is such a awful thing to do, you broke that person down and are now giving them a hope which they want to grab with all their heart, but after being wrong once, they’ve given up and won’t accept hope. This is what Riko does and even at one point calls him out for not being confident, and that just pissed me off cause of course he won’t have confidence or hope as he was destroyed after you said no and has accepted the fate of Riko loving Sentaro. The worst part is it makes sense, it makes complete sense that Riko after years and years of loving Sentaro but having 0 return on that would suddenly realise that actually she’s getting nowhere and should focus on the person who does love her. It makes sense but I don’t like how sudden the change is and it’s almost made to look like she does it because he’s getting popular, all of this sucks cause I loved Riko as a character, like Richie I accepted her choice and was honestly happy to see her with Sentaro but of course right as he tries to sort that out she changed her mind completely, which felt very silly and a bit too coincidental.

Another point was the sick day, ignoring the hate for the mind shift, while Richie is sick him and Riko finally get their feelings out and almost kiss before a cliche collapse occurs, but the. The show tells me months go by until SUMMER and neither one has done anything? How can you almost kiss and then not see each other the next time and kiss or talk about ur feelings again, you both know but aren’t doing anything, it just felt so stupid.

Moving on from Riko, I’ll get into Junichi and Yurika a bit, first of all the age gap is weird. Not much else needed there but it is. Secondly bro did Sentaro dirty but not only that, Yurika kept stringing him along and she KNEW he liked her, if she can read Junichi so we’ll she definitely Knew Sentaro loved her, let alone trying to hide the relationship from him was another sign. But yeah, she kept stringing him along and Junichi and Sentaro never really made up, Junichi should have been the bigger man as he was in the wrong for many reasons but ye.

The only other major issue I had was the ending. Now I’m not totally in love with time skips, it makes me get too sentimental because considering long time periods without your friends is painful to me and the way Richie left things with Riko was awful, and to think that was the last interaction for 8 years is a horrible thing, I wish more time had been spent resolving that, it’s like the one time no one is open with each other and if they had been it could have been so much more beautiful. But I can live with a time skip, it didn’t ruin the show for me. Hell actually the entire island scene was an amazing scene taht I actually loved as much as the rest of the show, had it been a last scene in epsidoe 7 it would have been a perfect ending. The entire church scene is so great, and the callback with the blanket from episode one to then is just great.

The show ends with the final reuniting, which is beautiful but I wanted it to be that big longer, just a nice group hug or something. At first I wanted Riko and Richie to kiss or something, but that would be unnatural, but to see a final group hug to show after all those years, the friendship is still there would be perfect and follow the exact message the show is telling us, that friendship is forever, no matter for love affairs and all.

I have since read the extra manga part and am happy to know it ends in a happy couple,

Some other less key points I want to bring up. The jazz music was just lovable throughout. Riko singing whole the guys played was another perfect scene, and really finally got her involved and made the trio feel complete and the fact we didn’t get a proper festival scene for that was sad. I haven’t covered him much but Sentaro was an amazing character, his love for his family is strong and actually it felt a bit unnatural for him to just up and leave, I understand he felt his place had been taken but he loved those kids through and through and I feel it’s unbelievable he could just leave them for. 8 years with no contact at all, especially after poor Sachiko was injured, it felt a bit off character.

Richie was a good MC albeit a bit cliche, but I liked his dynamics with the other two.
While actually the show was quite fast paced it felt as if it flowed well and I enjoyed it immensely.

Well, that was a hell of a review ay, it looks like my longest yet. I just had a lot of thoughts to get out on this one, mostly because I’m so passionate about it. For an anime I watched in a whim and a genre I didn’t know if I would like it almost instantly became one of my all time favourites and I just had to write about it, don’t worry as well I have thanked my friend about this one A LOT. Knowing me I’ve missed a key point but I left the review a few days later than intended so it’s not all fresh.

I’ve been struggling a lot with what to score this, as I said the first. 7 episodes were ten out of ten no doubt, the following episodes were probably between 7/8 out of. 10 with some sprinkled in 10/10 moments. I hope people enjoyed this review somewhat, follow me if u want I have lots of animes to watch and I always update my anilist plus comment on my updates just as side notes. Sorry I put so much more into the negative side of this, please don’t misunderstand, it’s just that I’m very comfortable with my feelings on the perfect stuff in the show, it’s the bad stuff I need to explain to myself.

Thanks a bunch yall and keep jazzing