This review contains spoilers.
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Kids on the slope is a beautiful take on how friendship is for life and about the joy of playing music. It is a show filled with incredible jazz music, fluid animation when the characters are playing their instruments, likable and complex characters, gorgeous soundtrack, and it portrays a friendship so strong and heartwarming that I was a sobbing mess at the end. This is probably one of the best music anime out there. It has comedy, it has romance, and the drama in the show never feels too heavy. The ending reaches a satisfying conclusion and it was a joy to watch from beginning to end.
When the show begins, we get introduced to our main character, Kaoru. He has been changing schools ever since he was little, so he is always misunderstood and just thought of as a rich brat by all of his classmates. (The show does really well in building the tension he feels in the classroom by using darker tones and using the music in their favor while playing Kaoru's voice.) He meets a classmate named Sentaro and the two of them, along with Ritsuko, start being closer friends as the story goes along. The main trio works together and the three of them are well-written but I have to hand it to Kaoru. He is a fantastic protagonist. He begins as this shy kid who wants to throw up whenever problems arise, and little by little, with the help of his friends and also he himself, starts getting out of his shell. So much that he grows bold enough to confess to the girl he likes. The friendship between him and Sentaro is one of the strongest points in this show.
Two people who understand one another even without saying anything, and who in the end bring out the best in one another. Their bond is worked really well and once you reach the ending you can't help but feel immense happiness at their reunion. While the main characters are all fairly likable, some of the supporting cast is not. Their motivations have no deep meaning and they add nothing too important to the plot in the end.
The show explores many types of love, and those relationships it presents us are nicely laid out in the beginning, but not worked as much as they need to make an impact. I was very wary of the show having a love triangle (which ended up being a love square by the way, but that ended up not being a huge deal.) Kaoru and Ritsuko are a cute couple, but the chemistry between them is just not good enough for me to feel any type of way about them ending up together or not. Many times they never talked about their problems with one another, and their relationship is incredibly boring at times. Kaoru fell in love with her smile and the way her presence makes him feel, and he says it, we know it. Ritsuko however, never tells him or the audience why she likes him, which makes me feel like their bond is not important enough and diminishes their relationship. Ritsuko and Kaoru didn't spend much time together in the show's whole run so while I am happy that both of them ended up together, I wouldn't necessarily have cared if they didn't.
Another strength of this show is the music and the animation of the characters interacting with their instruments. Some CGI sticks out particularly in the beginning scenes when Kaoru is playing the piano, but other than that, the movements look fluid and it is pleasant to watch their performances. The ones we get always leave an impact and tend to happen at important parts of the show, so nothing feels out of place. The tracks are all beautiful and it was overall very enjoyable to watch the characters having fun while playing music.
One of the faults of the show, however, is the drama. It is not incredibly painful to watch, but some of the arcs drag way too long and don't reach their full potential, resulting in them not affecting the plot in a way that matters. Some of the drama also comes from characters refusing to notice or address problems. Many times the characters choose to not speak and it is as if they want the other party to just magically know their intentions. No, not everything has to be talked about, but many of the things that happened, especially when Ritsuko gifted Kaoru a pair of gloves, feel like pointless melodrama. At this point in the story, she liked him enough to knit something for him, yet when he asked why she gifted those to him and not Sentaro she just ran away. The show has situations like this in almost every episode and it was very tedious to watch them.
Overall, Kids on the Slope is a coming-of-age story that manages to forge a strong and beautiful friendship between the two main leads, and show us that even if years pass, their bond is still there and will probably always be. Watching this was a breath of fresh air and while it was not perfect by any means I would still highly recommend it to anyone that likes music and also to those who like stories that pull at the heartstrings.
