Tatara Fujioka was just your average boring, shy middle schooler with no direction in life or plan for the future. As if that wasn’t enough, he was also dealing with the long term trauma of his parents’ divorce, as his mother abandoned them with nary a second glance. But one day, when a pretty girl from his grade becomes his metaphorical white rabbit, he stumbles upon the world of competitive dance, and he finally sees an opportunity to be seen and appreciated by people... By learning how to perform ballroom style dancing, and entering competitions for the sake of pride and glory! Unfortunately for him, this new venture presents challenges of both the physical and social variety, both of which will prove to be grueling in their own ways. If Tatara wants to realize his dream, he’ll have to condition his body and mind, learn how to interact with girls, and transform himself into a true man in order to become the best leader he can be.

Welcome to the Ballroom was produced by Production IG, one of the most prestigious and consistently high-performing production studios in the anime medium, which is usually a really good sign when it comes to the visual quality of an anime, and true to form, there’s a lot to like about the aesthetic of this series. The animation is outstanding, which is kind of required for an anime about dancing, but it’s still just as impressive outside of the main subject. Production IG obviously gave this title a generous budget, and while director Yoshimi Itazu does use a lot of cost cutting techniques, they’re employed well enough to not be too distracting from the story. I’ve made it clear in the past that I am partial to productions that were directed cleverly enough to manage a less than perfect pool of resources, so Itazu gets my approval here.

While the animation outside of the dancing scenes is more than competent, it is the dancing animation that people came for, and I’m not gonna lie, this part of the production is kind of a mixed bag. Shots that involve actual physical character animation are brilliant in how graceful they are, and for the most part, they are extra articular from an anatomical perspective, from the simplest hip shake in a latin dance to the exhausted breathing in a character’s upper body when the dance ends. There are, however, a few points to this that might prove kind of divisive... The first is that, in between these little bursts of animation, there are a lot of still shots and key frames, which is another one of those budget saving techniques. Personally, I don’t mind these for the most part, because most of the time they’re either your basic shonen action shots(still frame with action lines going by to convey motion in an unmoving picture) which are pretty easy to ignore, or they’re close-ups of faces, which I actually enjoy because the facial expressions in this show are fucking on point. These characters are insanely expressive.

The part that I personally don’t like is the constant anatomical exaggerations, and before I explain why, I should mention that I’m probably in the minority on this one... I’ve heard quite a few people claim that these exaggerated visuals serve very well to heighten the emotion and energy on the dances in question, and I definitely do see where they’re coming from, but I’m sorry, those giraffe necks and rubber spines look uncanny as hell to me. One part that DOES work for me, however, is the artistic design of characters' inner monologues. There’s a lot of Yugioh/Death Note in these dancing scenes, where a character will have lengthy bouts of inner monologue to describe their feelings in the moment to the audiences, and this might have become boring if it wasn’t for the visual effects going on in their headspaces, cleverly turning what could have been way too much ‘telling’ into a tasteful amount of ‘showing and telling,’ and more often than not, these effects are highly creative and downright stunning. And speaking of stunning, I also really dig the costume design, as I’m more than secure enough to admit that I love the aesthetic of pretty ballroom dresses, and this show features some unforgettable ones.

I normally don’t talk about music anymore in my reviews, mainly because I suck at it, but this is an anime about dancing, so I guess I’m kind of obligated to say that while the music in this series isn’t bad, very little of it sounds like actual ballroom dancing music. Most of it sounds like elevator music, or stock tunes that were composed specifically to make money off of laptop commercials. I’m assuming this choice was made to highlight the visual spectacle of the dances, rather than to prioritize the immersion of the ballroom dancing experience, and I understand, but it’s not the choice I would have made. In any case, they do play the instrumental version of that one song from The Mask a couple of times, so that’s better than nothing.

So, why am I reviewing Welcome to the Ballroom? Why would anybody even watch this series in 2024, when it was already a huge flop way back in 2017? Well, back when it was first airing, a couple of anime reviewing personalities I follow were discussing it and saying some pretty interesting things about it. For one thing, its producers had started some kind of mini feud with Yuri on Ice? I don’t know the details personally, I haven’t tracked down the original quote, but it was apparently something homophobic, and they were calling their shot at how their show would be more successful? If anybody has the original quote, I’d appreciate it if you’d enlighten me on this. Anyway, their comment aged poorly for two reasons, beyond the obvious: One, there IS a gay character in this show. He has five seconds of screen time, and he somehow squeezes two sexual assaults into it, so at least he’s an efficient homophobic stereotype.

Two, this show did not outsell Yuri on Ice. It was a flop. Not even that, it would have been a flop at twelve episodes, but it was a financial disaster at twenty four. I’m not going to do a victory lap on that, because someone died working on this show. But yeah, it tanked, and apparently a part of that was due to its weird conservative gender politics turning people off... Like, to the point that even the people on a few certain anime discussion platforms who hate bringing politics into media were starting to distance themselves from it. When your anime is so deeply misogynist that even the anti-woke crowd go scorched earth on it, that’s a fucking accomplishment.

These factors lead to the series kinda lurking in the back of my head for the last several years, until about a month ago, when I decided I needed to pick a couple of themed reviews for pride month. I’ve already reviewed a bunch of both yuri and yaoi anime, so I wanted to do something different, and a quirky little idea started rattling around in my brain. What if, for pride month, I were to subvert peoples’ expectations, and instead of an actual LGBT anime, wouldn’t it be funny to review a series that makes heterosexuality look like a fucking train wreck? I knew right from the get go that Welcome to the Ballroom was going to get this honor, and I already had the review tagline chosen, so all I needed was for Ballroom to be just as awful as advertised... Which it both kinda was, and kinda wasn't.

Having said that, the problems with this show go way deeper than just some casual sexism, so I’m going to do something a little different with this review. Instead of just my general thoughts as a whole, I’m going to go over each of the 3 main story arcs on its own, in regards to what works and doesn’t work in each one, and we are of course starting with the first one, Tatara’s introduction to dancing. We’re introduced to Tatara in his middle school counselor’s office(or the Japanese adjacent version of one) where he admits to not having a career path chosen yet. He sees a pretty girl from his grade having the same issue. He sees her again on the street, but she ducks into the basement of a nearby building. Tatara goes over to the stairs, where he’s accosted by three extremely lazy bully archetypes. An adult suddenly shows up on a motorbike, and despite just arriving on the scene less than a second ago, he knows exactly what’s going on, and calls out the bullies. He then grabs Tatara by the shoulders and practically forces him down the stairs and into a dance studio.

Once inside the studio, Tatara is subjected to both physical abuse from the teacher Sengoku and verbal abuse from the girl he followed, Shizuku, before escaping. He initially has no interest in pursuing this any further, but they slip a DVD of Sengoku’s last competition into his bag, and he finally falls in love with dancing while watching it, although it’s not clear why at first. Based on what we’re shown I would assume it’s trying to convey that he lacks confidence and yearns to command the attention of an adoring audience like a dancer who’s in the zone, but we don’t know anything about him prior to this, so it’s never really established why this matters to him until in the final episode, and even then the explanation is kind of a stretch, which leaves his sudden passion for ballroom dancing feeling weirdly arbitrary. Under these exact same circumstances, he could stumble onto the career path of a chess player, or a pro wrestler, with very little rewrites required. But either way, from that moment on, he dedicates his life to ballroom dancing.

Beyond this, there’s nothing particularly memorable about the first story arc, other than everyone being generally unpleasant to each other, and Sengoku being the absolute fucking worst... Bullying Tatara, refusing to take accountability for his own bad decisions(even blaming other people for things he made them do), being grossly sexist in general, and at one point forcibly pulling off the top of 15 year old Shizuku’s dress while she angrily covers her chest. Yeah, Sengoku is basically irredeemable, I’m pretty sure he’s supposed to be the ‘experienced sage who acts like an asshole for the right reasons’ thing that Dr. Cox did in Scrubs, but without those positive qualities, all you’re left with is a bowl of “Oops, all asshole.” It’s not just him, though, the vast majority of character interactions in this show are just some flavor of cruel. There are also quite a few examples of haphazard writing where point A and C are defined in a sequence of events, but the narrative struggles to construct a point B that actually makes sense. Also, despite being prominently featured in the story, Shizuku is bafflingly underdeveloped as a character. The same could be said for Tatara, who develops more as a dancer, but never really as a character.

In the second story arc, Shizuku’s regular partner has to step away for spoiler reasons, so a pair of siblings enter the story. Having previously danced together for years, the boy wants to split and dance with Shizuku, who agrees. He’s sick of dancing with his sister, because their height difference makes them incompatible. He partners up with Shizuku, but Tatara objects, challenging him to a bet... He’ll enter the next competition with the sister, Mako, and if they win, Gaju(brother) has to split with Shizuku and return to Mako, and already, I have so many issues with this. First off, he wasn’t forcing Shizuku to dance with him. He asked, she consented. He did not steal your girl, Dopinder, she is a grown woman who chose someone else, now WHY THE FUCK aren’t Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead rescuing the innocent man trapped in your trunk? Oops, I’m sorry, I mean why the fuck isn’t Shizuku standing up for herself and telling Tatara to fuck off for trying to make her decisions for her? Hell, she doesn’t say a single word in her defense until someone bring up the idea of Mako dancing better than her.

Yeah, I am weirdly on Gaju’s side here. Tatara is butting in on a dancing pair that formed via mutual agreement, and he has the balls to repeatedly call Gaju selfish? Not to mention, I don’t think the writing is self-aware enough to bring this up, but it’s gotta be tiresome and a little creepy dancing exclusively with your sister for so long, Gaju has every right to seek a new(and more compatible) partner. And yet, despite all of this, this is easily my favorite story arc, because even with all of that baggage, Tatara and Mako have really good chemistry, both as dancers and characters. Mako is the only genuinely likeable and sympathetic character in the entire first half, and seeing her dance with Tatara actually led to the only episode I genuinely loved... Episode 9, which used an admittedly questionable ‘frame and flower’ metaphor to illustrate Tatara helping Mako to bloom in front of the audience, taking all of the cruel insults her brother had given her and just being the most radiant person in the room. I was kinda hoping she would take Shizuku’s place as the main female protagonist, but alas, she basically disappears altogether to make way for the next story arc.

The third story arc begins with Shizuku making Tatara promise to find a new partner and challenge her at a future event, and I found myself saying, Why? Why are we still doing this? Why not just ask her out? It doesn’t have to be a date, just ask her to hang out in some other setting so both you, and the audience, can get to know her better. Take her to some brand-safe McDonalds knockoff or something. And at that moment, I noticed another one of this show’s biggest problems... It has no subplots. We almost never see any of these characters doing anything that’s not in some way related to ballroom dance, so we have no idea who they are, or how they would interact, in any other setting, and that’s the main reason why nobody feels fleshed out... We almost never see any of them in any other context. Again, I love Beck, but would Beck have been half as good without those Swimming and Bullying story arcs that Yuki went through? For example, in episode 1, Tatara’s big conflict is that he doesn’t know what he wants to do for a career, which is hurting his chances of getting into a good high school. The next time we see anything to do with his school life, however, he’s in high school, with no explanation of how that previous conflict was resolved.

Then again, since the writer was just using the first day of high school to introduce Tatara’s new dance partner, I’d bet you anything she just forgot that conflict was ever a thing. Anyway, the third story arc introduces Tatara’s new partner, who is a tsundere, and... Yup. Things take a turn here, as this new arc takes a couple of problems that have been persisting throughout, and amplifies them to the point that they could almost be mistaken for brand new problems. First off, I’m not going to go as far as to say that every interaction in this series is a negative one, but there is far too much animosity and cruelty between characters for comfort. There are some nice moments here and there, but people constantly being at each other's' throats feels like the default, and having Tatara’s third dance partner be portrayed as a rude snob just so they can make each other miserable at least 90% in a storyline that features way too many “Taming of the shrew” elements maybe wasn’t a great idea.

But more importantly is probably the most pervasive and insidious problem this anime has, and it’s the way it uses ballroom dancing as a metaphor for some bafflingly regressive gender politics in relationships. Now, things like this did happen earlier, what with Shizuku’s lack of agency or development outside of existing as Tatara’s goal in some way or another, and another highly questionable moment between Tatara and Mako. While they’re dancing, Tatara accidentally runs into someone because he’s going the wrong direction, and Sengoku has to point this out, despite the fact that Mako is definitely experienced enough to know what he’s doing wrong. But no, she does nothing, she’s not allowed to help him, that’s another man’s job. And when he apologizes to her, Sengoku tells him to apologize to the dancefloor instead. Just ignore your follower, she’s a prop at best, it’s your job to learn what to do to lead her.

And if you think I’m reaching with that analogy, consider this... I don’t personally know very much about Ballroom dancing myself, but I have heard from people involved with it that this series straight up lies about several things, including that girls who have more experience as leaders won’t know how to be good followers and are like wild beasts that need to be tamed(which is apparently untrue because experience leading actually benefits you as a follower, and also the taming metaphor is really fucking gross) and that couples in a competitive setting are judged primarily by the leader’s skill level and abilities(unlike reality, where the skills of both partners are judged, along with the chemistry and communication between them) and it’s pretty clear that both of these lies were added to the series to further pressure Tatara and Chinatsu to better follow the traditional gender roles assigned to them, with Tatara needing to become more manly and take charge, while Chinatsu needs to be more feminine and better attuned to his control.

This all leads to a bizarre analogy where the two of them don’t truly mesh together as a couple until they stop trying to understand each other, and their dancing is just better when they lean into this and refuse to communicate at all. There’s even some foreshadowing leading up to this, where every time Chinatsu and Tatara attempt to build trust with each other or express their honest feelings, the results are a trainwreck and most often a fight. Every time they split up to talk to members of their own sex about what to do, or just work things out by forcing their wills on one another on the dance floor through manipulation or mind games, things go just fine. It’s bad enough to use an athletic partnership as a metaphor for relationship dynamics that are outdated even by Japanese standards, but this show takes it a step further by betraying the realities of the sport in question. Again, this information is second-hand, but you can’t succeed in ballroom dancing if you’re just improvising everything on the floor, instead of practicing and perfecting your routines beforehand. You have to trust each other and find reliable ways to communicate with each other, your entire performance can’t be a power struggle. But hey, I guess that wouldn’t fit the melodramatic tone and boomer-grade messaging of the story.

Now even after all that, I can’t say this series was the complete train wreck I was expecting. There are things about it that I really like. Obviously, there’s the production values, which are outstanding. Even the weird anatomical stuff I didn’t like is beloved by enough people that I can’t entirely discard it. I really like the title. I don’t know if it’s just me, but any title that begins with “Welcome to” just sounds automatically cool to me. Welcome to the Jungle, Welcome to the Black Parade, Welcome to the NHK, Welcome to Dying, Welcome to the Ballroom. I like that this story doesn’t sugarcoat how painful it can be to get into this kind of sport. It’s made abundantly clear that Tatara needs to improve his stamina and go through physical conditioning, and I could practically feel his pain when I saw the blisters on the bottom of his feet. They don’t go quite as in depth with this as Love Live did, but what we got was appreciated. And while there is an uncomfortable amount of negativity in this show... Characters bickering, fighting, just constantly at each others’ throats, when they’re not flat out hating themselves... All that ungrounded angst and persistent melodrama DOES make the happy moments feel more special.

Welcome to the Ballroom is not available stateside on physical format, but it can be streamed on Amazon Prime. The original manga by Tomo Takeuchi is available from Kodansha comics.

I definitely wouldn’t call Welcome to the Ballroom a GOOD anime, but it also didn’t wind up quite as bad as I expected, and there wound up being a lot to like about it. Unfortunately, the bad does just barely outweigh the good. This is a show about undeveloped, underwritten characters making each other miserable in the pursuit of some goals that I was never given any significant reason to feel invested in, some goals I found petty, and some I was actively rooting against. There’s no actual romance plot, which some people might actually prefer because of how inescapable those have become in the medium, but the gender politics and relationship metaphors that are explored through the sport of ballroom dancing are uncomfortable at best, and offensive to the point of near parody at worst. Don’t get me wrong, if a sports anime can make you feel something when the main character wins, then it’s doing something right, but in this case, it’s just not enough.

I give Welcome to the Ballroom a 5/10