3-gatsu no Lion (March comes in like a lion)

SPOILER FREE REVIEW SEASON 1

Studios: Shaft
Genres: Drama, Game, Seinen, Slice of Life
This has been among the most brilliant shows I’ve watched in a long long time, the only other I remember is Your Lie in April although they share many differences the ONE prominent thing that they do share is a relatively simple plot, executed exceptionally well with very good characters.

Story/Plot:
Let’s get the weakest link (relatively) out of the way first. The story starts with Rei our main protag, a highschool student who is a professional shogi (Jap chess) player, living alone and struggling with both school and his shogi career. With both his mental and physical degrading, that is until he meets 3 sisters.
I had heard the show focused on shogi a lot and having absolutely no clue what is was before starting it I had my doubts as to how that would interfere with my enjoyment but fortunately it didn’t have any sort of negative effects. Rather it turned into another point hooking me to the show. The way the story and characters revolved around shogi was well handled, basically using shogi as a front to show what the characters were like.
The pacing of the entire show was consistent and simply as I said above executed exceptionally well, each episode felt like a complete experience and it felt longer than it was. Considering the entire calm quiet atmosphere of the show I never once got bored or seemed like the progress was slow or rushed. Guess, I have to thank the Studio Shaft for pulling that off just really really well.
Ratings: 8/10

Characters:
And onto the best thing about the show, the characters. Being a character driven story I loved almost every character they introduced along with the main and support characters. Each brought a unique value to the show and in Rei’s development about which I’ve seen people argue that the show didn’t have any sort of development for Rei to which I say you probably watched the wrong show because considering how introverted and cut off from others Rei was in first episode to how his personality became opposite (almost) was great and a very subtle development. Well to me honestly this entire season felt some sort of prologue with the juicy bit yet to come.
Among other characters I really liked his teacher Hayashida who went to great lengths just so Rei could have a chance of experiencing a normal highschool life and obviously, Akari the big sister/mother figure in the show. It was a delight to see each and every one of his interaction with her as she along with her sisters shed some light on Rei’s gloomy world. Also, Nikaiduo and Shimada ended up as his motivators to pursue shogi even more determined. But on a personal level I’ve gotta say Shimada’s personality was just caring and polite, the kind of superior you’d want. Nikaidou was kinda too noisy for me.
Now there was one character that I’m kinda confused about and that’s Kyouko. At first it was pretty simple, I was like yup hate her but as we got to know more and more about her I did see what she did was brought forth from the conditions that developed around her though still she wasn’t a positive sort but I can’t really hate her or like her for that matter.
Ratings: 8.5/10

Animation/Art style:
I usually take Art and Music as a single sort of thing to talk about but have split it up for this particular show. The Art style and characters were a little odd but only at first and quickly grew on me. As for the animation, man, EVERY. SINGLE. SCREENSHOT I took was instant wallpaper quality. The scenery, backgrounds, transitions between scenes were all just pure joy for the eyes. Even the show starts off with some really interesting visuals pulling you in.
Ratings: 10/10

Music:
Ehh… not my strong suit but I’ll try discussing it. The show had some really emotional BGMs adding to each scene and even though for the most it was a quiet relaxing show the sounds of nature and basically everyday life were nice. Especially no BGMs during rain scenes was a real nice touch but for the most part they never stopped sending chills down my spine (in a good way).
Ok this part is surprising for me, I don’t even remember the last show I did this on but I never ONCE skipped the OPs or EDs, and I usually listen to them once or twice and then skip for the rest of the episodes. For me OP2>OP1 and ED2>ED1 but overall ED2 was my favourite.
Ratings: 10/10
Again, thank you Studio Shaft for the great visuals and sounds.

My Personal Thoughts:
At first glance I couldn’t find anything bad about it and gave me some reminiscence of Your Lie in April. Plus a show that has a character driven plot with a calm soothing atmosphere? Well, that’s right up my alley. I really did enjoy this a lot more than I was expecting even with all the positive reviews naturally making me have high expectations for it, I can now say it deserves the praises it gets. Each episode made me want to watch more but at the same time the completed episode always had a sense of closure and completion that I wanted to watch this slowly and not just binge through if that makes any sense. Oh, and giving those cats dialogues was a fun little thing. Well I guess that wraps everything up.
Ratings: 10/10

Overall Rating:
8.95/10
PS, Momo is just cute af.