Wandance

As a critic, I try to take the entirety of a show into account when I'm watching it. Most anime have good and bad elements, and I can appreciate the bright spots in a show I overall dislike as well as complain about the flaws in something I mostly adore. But sometimes, one single element is so unusual, interesting, jarring, or otherwise attention-grabbing, that it comes to define my entire opinion of a show. It doesn't matter what other qualities it might have; that one aspect of it just makes too much of an impression for anything else to register, for better or worse. Such is the case with Wandance, an anime about modern dance with such a bizarre approach to its dancing animation that it becomes the sole factor in determining its quality. Sure, the characters, plot, themes and so on exist, technically, but they don't really matter. The strange, baffling experience of this show's animation drowns out everything else about it, leaving me with only one question: how, exactly, did things end up like this?

But okay, let's at least give the story a cursory glance or two. Our protagonist, Kabo, lives with a stutter that puts him out of step with his classmates and peers. It's not that his disability is a source of misery- by the time we meet him, he's clearly gotten comfortable living with it- but between a speech impediment and the usual social pressures of high school, he feels incapable of expressing himself the way he wants to. That is, until he stumbles across his Hikari Wanda, a wunderkind dance prodigy who's basically the textbook definition of a free spirit. She doesn't have an ounce of shame in her body: she lives exactly how she wants, heart on her sleeve, and expresses herself with full sincerity in words and dance alike. In her, Kabo sees everything he wants to be, so he throws away his fear of being cringe and joins her in the school's dance club- only the second boy to do so. Thus begins his journey to overcome shame, social expectations, and everything else that holds him back from expressing his true feelings, one fumbled two-step at a time.

It's a damn good setup for a character-driven sports anime, and it's kind of infuriating how many parts of this could be good. Kabo's character is grounded so well in his awkward adolescence, and it's clear the author put a lot of thought into how he navigates the world with his stutter and the various challenges it poses. The show overall has a lot to say about what it's like to exist outside of society's invisible "normal," how isolating it can be in ways most of us take for granted. And using dance as a medium of expression for Kabo and the rest of the cast to take back ownership of their voices and self-expression, on their own terms, gives the story a lot more weight than the usual sports anime goals of winning competitions for their own sake. Plus, while Wanda herself is more than a little Manic Pixie-ish, her autistic stimming IS pretty freaking adorable, and the rapport she builds with Kabo makes them both more likable characters. I could absolutely see myself loving Wandance for all these qualities... if I could actually focus on them.

But unfortunately, none of those aspects have any staying power in my brain. Not when they're being overwhelmed by the sheer weirdness of this show's dancing animation.

Now, I'm not an animation expert of any sort. I can't describe exactly what techniques Wandance's animators used or what they should've done instead, so don't expect an extensive technical breakdown here. The obvious culprit to point to would be the CG models used for all the dancing sequences, and yes, they are janky as fuck. The characters' hair and clothes are so loose and flowing that they're constantly clipping into their bodies, and the models themselves are almost comically under-detailed; nothing has any texture to speak of, so the overall effect is like watching a plastic mannequin bounce and gyrate around. Worse still is how inexpressive their faces are; at times, they almost look painted out with how little their eyes and mouths move. And to be fair, I understand why going CG would be easier for the production team. As we learned with Yuri on Ice, 2D-animating a full cours of intricate, expressive body movements is a nightmare scenario best avoided by all but the bravest teams. But CG modeling in anime has come such a long way in recent years; just look at how damn expressive and lively the latest Love Live entries are. There's no excuse for Wandance's models being this half-baked.

If I'm honest, though, the CG itself isn't the biggest issue here. The real problem is the complete lack of cohesion between the show's 2D and CG elements. Yes, the visual difference itself is painful, but on top of that, the show's editing feels like it's going out of its way to make that disconnect as jarring possible. There are multiple moments where it'll switch to 2D in the middle of a dance for a particularly slick move before switching back to the CG models, and there's literally no continuity of movement between the shots at all. Just look at Kabo and Wanda's big moment in episode 6 (or was it 7?) to see what I mean. We've got the CG dancers doing their thing, then it cuts to 2D for Kabo and Wanda's move, we get this big shot of Kabo being pulled to his feet... and then it cuts right back to their CG models dancing uninterrupted as if they'd been going on in the background the whole time their 2D selves were on screen. Where's the follow-up? The connective tissue? The motion that takes us from 2D Kabo standing up to CG Kabo dancing in rhythm again? It feels like they straight-up forgot to put the shot in there.

And that's indicative of just how poorly integrated Wandance's two halves are all throughout its run. Continuity errors like that episode 6 moment are a frequent occurrence. The hand-drawn stuff is so stiff and barely animated that the constant camera motion and 60FPS movement of the dancing sequences feels all the more jarring. Hell, sometimes the two sides straight-up disagree; there's a character named Usen who's portrayed as big and stocky like a football player, but for some reason his dancing model is super lanky with almost none of the muscle he's normally portrayed with. There is absolutely no effort to make the show's 2D and CG elements feel like part of the same universe; they might as well be separate planes of existence. Which only gets worse on the rare occasion we see both elements on screen at the same time, at which point it starts to feel like a Smiling Friends gag where the complete disconnect of animation styles is part of the joke.

Now, to be balanced, there are moments where the CG does work. Especially toward the end of the series, we start getting long sequences just watching the characters dance, and the intricacies of their various styles really start to pop in a way only this kind of mocap-assisted animation could capture. I also kinda dig all the kooky expressionist flare the sequences get: trails of light follow their flailing limbs, colored glows transform the dance space itself into a liminal void of feeling. If the show had leaned more into that kind of abstraction, I think it would be easier to accept the animation's awkwardness as part of this hyper-charged emotional state dancing puts its characters in. But as is, it's too close to reality for its flaws to register as anything but immersion-breaking. I can't get invested in Kabo's journey through dance when he spends so much of that journey as a lifeless model who doesn't even register as the same person. I want to see my protagonist sweating bullets under the stage lights, what's this overly smooth Ken doll doing in his place?

In the end, Wandance is a perfect example of how "bad animation" is more than just an aesthetic complaint. Animation is the primary tool this medium uses to convey meaning, and if that tool is busted, its ability to tell its story is equally fractured. This show's bizarre approach to its visual storytelling robs all its good points of their staying power, to the point you can barely remember anything it tries to communicate. So if you're at all interested in what Wandance has to offer, go straight to the manga and forget this adaptation exists. Whatever greatness may exist in this story, you've got no chance of appreciating it here.