Travioli Prime’s Review of San-Gatsu no Lion (First Season)

San-gatsu no Lion currently seems to be one of the darlings of the anime community, with its second season reaching top 5 on AniList’s highest rated shows as of October 2019. This show seemed like one I could totally enjoy, so I decided to give it a shot. I’ll give my overall thoughts on the show towards the end, but I wanted to first emphasize some of my favorite and least favorite parts of the first season.

Shit I Liked

The Kawamoto Family- This family is one of my favorite anime families of all time. They are cute as hell and help lighten up the tone of the show in spots that it really needs it. They serve as a nice method to keep this show out of the clouds and help us to escape some of Kiriyama’s depressing and fairly uninteresting rants. They aren’t complex at all, but that is perfectly okay. The role of Momo, Hina and Akari is to fill the family void that Kiriyama lacked and bring some joy to his and our lives, and they pass with flying colors.

The Art- Anyone who has seen this show knows how gorgeous it is. The city landscapes and the natural backgrounds, especially the river that Kiriyama lives on, are immersive and really make scenes feel alive. The character designs match the level of detail that the background and scenery have and really show you the differences in personalities between the different cast of characters that we meet along the way. The art style changes when we delve into the thoughts of Kiriyama are effective and sometimes breathtaking. The only small change I would have made is to make the mouths look more normal. Why does every character’s resting face look like they’re pouting or like they can’t control the sides of their mouths from drooping down? Despite that, the art was fire, plain and simple.

Shit I Didn’t Like

Kiriyama (in the first half of S1)- The start of this show is REALLY slow, and the culprit is none other than our shogi-hating protagonist Kiriyama. The astounding lack of effective development made the first ten episodes of this show feel like an absolute drag to the point where I considered dropping it after getting terrible Your Lie in April vibes from our main character. Luckily, unlike that train-wreck of a show, San-Gatsu no Lion figured out how to make its main character interesting. The writers of the show took way too long establishing that Kiriyama doesn’t like shogi and that he has this traumatic backstory but give the viewers no reason to care until deep into the season.

Kyouko Kouda- Why is Kiriyama’s sister such a big part of this show? She is the worst part of this anime, hands down. Every bit of her character arc is uninteresting. She’s unlikeable and gives the viewer no reason to be sympathetic towards her but also is sometimes framed like we should care about her. We constantly see flashes of an image with Kiriyama getting beaten up by Gotou with Kyouko watching and of Kiriyama and Kyouko in a bed together looking mildly provocative, but nothing comes from these storylines that involves Kyouko AT ALL! I fell asleep twice during this show and both were scenes with between Kyouko and Kiriyama. Unsubscribe.

What I Wanna See Next

The second half of the show really got more interesting for me and presents a good roadmap for the second season. The art quality needs to stay the same for me to enjoy it, as do the side characters. While I would prefer that we never see Kyouko again, she could be interesting if the writers decide to make her interesting or deep in any compelling way. I also want more shogi. Even though this is not a show about shogi, it still revolves around the game, yet I did not have any desire to play the game after watching. If a show like Saki, which is much worse than this, can make me want to play mahjong, why can this show not make me interested in the slightest at shogi?

Final Thoughts

It’s good. This is a good, entertaining show with the potential to be great. Worth it, but don’t expect perfection.