Man, I remember when Yuri On Ice was popular. It singlehandedly convinced people to try out ice skating and inspired other creators to make their own stories centered on ice skating. Too bad MAPPA, in all their wisdom, decided to cancel the Yuri On Ice movie. Well, at least we have Medalist now. I actually don't remember how I first discovered the manga for Medalist. It might have been through some random Twitter post praising it. I did check it out after that and found that I enjoyed it, even if the chapters ran rather long. I was super hyped to learn it'd get an anime adaptation, as were other fans...until it was revealed that a company called ENGI would be making it. Now, I haven't seen other shows ENGI worked on, but from what I've heard, they've acquired a bad reputation for botching their adaptations of several shows. Having seen the entirety of Medalist now, while I wouldn't call it a perfect adaptation, as it leaves quite a bit out from the manga, among other things, I think ENGI finally managed to get their act together and did the series justice as best it could.

11-year-old Inori Yuitsuka is having a terrible time. She struggles in school, is bullied by her classmates, and the one joy she has in life, ice skating, is out of her reach because her mother won't let her partake in it, convinced she'll only fail at it. She wants to become a professional ice skater, but kids are expected to have started by 5 years old, and she's one year away from the cut-off date, considered too old to start, preventing her from fulfilling her dream. An incident leads her to meet Tsukasa Akeuraji, a former ice dancer on the edge of giving up competitive skating himself. After hearing her story, he agrees to become her coach and help her fulfill her dreams. Those around Inori soon learn she has immense natural talent for the sport and, together, the two strive toward Inori's ultimate goal of winning an Olympic gold medal.

So when ENGI was announced to be producing the anime for this, many were understandably worried because Medalist is a beloved sports manga known for its detailed artwork and strong character writing. ENGI apparently made a lot of questionable decisions in adapting a lot of properties previously, which made fans of said properties very angry. Not to mention their animation quality was often known to be subpar. Like I mentioned before, I haven't seen any other shows ENGI worked on besides this, so Medalist is my first exposure to them, and for the most part, Medalist's animation is pretty okay. Not the best I've seen, with a lot of limited start-and-stop animation, but it's certainly not bad, and the CGI ice-skating sequences look decent and are well-choreographed. Some of the models did look rather uncanny at times near the end, and it's easy to tell when the CGI ends and 2D animation begins and vice versa, usually in how rubbery the arms look, but they're certainly not the worst 3D CG I've seen. I do personally wish they had animated them in 2D animation, and there is one skating sequence that is animated in 2D, which looks amazing. Unfortunately it's reserved for my least favorite character in the show.

But you obviously can't have a good ice-skating program without good music backing it, now can you? For the most part, the soundtrack is pretty good. I will admit, I wasn't a fan of both the opening and ending songs, if only because both singers' voices grated on my ears, but that's more a me problem than anything. Actually, I have less to say about the actual soundtrack and more about the various insert songs, all of which are sung in extremely good English by singers I've never even heard of. Honestly, I want to hear more of their work after this, because the English insert songs made for this show are fantastic, and are the best part of the entire soundtrack, especially Inori's skating number in the final episode. I hope there are more songs like this in the second season, because I want more of them!

Now, one thing you need to know in terms of the characters is that because the anime cut or rewrote some things from the manga, probably as a way to make things easier to fit into a short TV anime with half hour long episodes. Inori's mother is much nicer here compared to how harsh and stern she was in the manga, and even the bullying Inori experienced early in the manga is downplayed a lot by having her classmates be a lot less overly mean. None of this hurts Inori's motivations for wanting to skate any, but the anime does cut back on Tsukasa's background a bit by introducing certain characters in his life a lot later than they were in the manga. As far as the anime's actual characterization goes, it still manages to retain everything that makes its cast of characters so good, such as Tsukasa's wish to support Inori while respecting her wishes, and Inori's own growth from a scared, insecure girl with zero self-esteem to someone more confident in herself and with actual skills she can put to use. It also makes sure that the kids actually behave like kids and not like caricatures of what people THINK kids act like. I will admit though, I really don't like Rioh. He made a very bad first impression via yelling at Inori and putting her down for literally no reason, and even though he does get called on it and does get better as the series goes on, he never faces any real punishment for it other than Hikaru slapping him in the face, nor does he ever apologize. Since the anime is only 12 episodes long, there's only so much it can cover, and I have yet to read more of the manga, so maybe he'll get better later on. But as it is right now, he's my least favorite character in the series.

Obviously, since Medalist's first season is only 12 episodes long, it can't cover the entirety of the manga, and even within that restriction, it had to cut several events out, the very things I mentioned earlier. One character's introduction didn't translate very well to the silver screen, and his behavior made him come across as being very petty, pathetic, and edgy, which was absolutely not how he was in the manga. The manga only covers up to a certain point, so it can feel like it ends rather abruptly before anything really happens, but the fact that there's a second season confirmed to be in production means there's more to come. Hopefully, ENGI can actually hold themselves together and make sure it doesn't devolve into a trainwreck. It may have succeeded so far, but who knows whether they'll either keep it up or crumble under its weight? For now, I'm happy we got an anime adaptation of Medalist, and you can be sure I'll read more of the manga when I get around to it. If you want to actually watch the anime, it's available on Disney+ and Hulu...unfortunately, Disney+ is infamous for not doing anything to promote any of their acquired anime in any capacity whatsoever. At least their English dubs have gotten a lot better, Medalist's dub included. So yeah, if you like sports anime and strong character writing, give Medalist a shot. I'm not even a fan of sports anime yet I enjoyed this a lot, and yes, I'm definitely gonna watch the second season when that drops.