-This review will contain spoilers.
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When I began watching this show, I thought it had the potential to be one of the hidden gems of the season. The trailer for the anime had piqued my interest, and in its premiere, we were presented with a lot of cool ideas and motives that if properly worked on, could have made this anime a fantastic watch. It didn't happen. The show never went the full mile to make use of the countless motives and themes that it had, nor did it care enough about making most of the main and supporting cast feel like real people and not caricatures. There were a ton of characters, yet the majority of them had personalities akin to a paper doll. There are no real team rivalries or spirit, no good soundtrack, and the show spends a lot of time trying to make us feel sorry for the main character, despite him deserving no sympathy from anyone. It is upsetting how they had many ingredients to put together a good show, yet ended up with something that is average at best. Skate-leading Stars could have been noteworthy, but it is sadly just going to be, for me anyway, just another pretty boy show. I will say though, the animation for the skating sequences is way better than I thought it would be. No, it is not as fluid as the ones in Yuri on Ice at its best, but if I had to say, it was way more consistent. One of the best assets this show had, was Maeshima, the protagonist. The show could have spent its entire run focusing on him, Hayato (the younger brother of his rival), and Reo(his "rival") and it would have been way better than the disaster we were given. Seriously, when the "antagonist" of your show is more intriguing than your protagonist, you have a problem.

For a sports anime, Maeshima was very close to one of my favorite main character tropes: really proud characters who learn to be humble and then improve at their craft. He used to be a great child skater who had a lot of promise, and who then ended up giving up skating until he decided he liked the sport too much to give it up, and then took it upon himself to return to the spotlight. He and the brother of his nemesis end up becoming partners in crime in order to hopefully beat him. This is a good premise, at least on paper, but once you watch this, it is impossible to not be aware of why it didn't work. For the audience to care about the main character besting someone else, it is important that we are given a clear motive. In this case, there is one but it is so shallow that I don't even want to count it. It seems Maeshima and Hayato's reason for wanting to beat Reo is just because they think he is stuck-up. Talented people exist and there will always be someone better than you. This is not enough for me to cheer for Maeshima. At the start of the show, Maeshima makes a one-sided bet to Reo. He tells him that if he loses, then he will quit skating. I know he was a child at that point, but that is the stupidest bet he could have made. Obviously, Reo doesn't care and just tells him he will never be able to beat him. Maeshima cared too much about Reo acknowledging him as a rival, and even after many years that didn't change. Even in episode twelve, Reo tells him this, he says "What you need to surpass is not me, but yourself." The show could have worked on this and make him slowly realize he didn't really need someone else's approval to continue pursuing his passion for skating, but it missed a huge opportunity. It seems like because of this incident, which let's be honest, was just Maeshima's fault for being a fucking idiot, now we are supposed to feel sorry for him and cheer for him so that he can beat Reo. If the only reason he wants to beat him is that he told him a harsh truth that one time, and because he was better than him, there is no way I am going to support him or care. Reo was right, Maeshima would never have beaten him with that low self-esteem of his. That is also why Reo acknowledging him as a rival, in the end, doesn't make me feel anything. Maeshima didn't earn this.

Maeshima was great for a protagonist, but his overconfidence and his low-self esteem (yes, both can exist at the same time.) weren't properly addressed besides some characters mildly scolding him. Many times he got his team into problems because he was not able to keep his attitude in check, or simply because he felt he was too good so he could do whatever he wanted. For someone that claims he is better than Reo, he is on the same level at least in what refers to being pompous. The anime misses just the same in what refers to Hayato and Reo's rivalry. We are not shown why or how their relationship became strained, and it just seems like Hayato is envious of his brother's success since he can no longer skate. This whole thing reminds me of shows like Piano no Mori, Yuri on Ice, and most recently, The Gymnastics Samurai. The three of these shows had a very talented rival and a character that felt like he was in the shadows. The only difference is, those shows have way deeper motives as to why they want to win so badly. In the case of Piano no Mori, Shuuhei is a kid that wants to become a world-renowned pianist but feels he cannot play as best as his friend Kai, who is a prodigy. His rivalry and feelings of being inferior are impacting his career and we can sympathize with him even if we dislike him. In Yuri on Ice, we as an audience can support and see why Yuri wants to win against Yurio. It is not just because he got insulted by him back in episode one, but because the coach he wants in order to continue his professional career is at stake. In the Gymnastics Samurai, Jotaro is an athlete that has never won a gold medal, suffered an injury, and doesn't want to retire yet, but feels he cannot win against a younger and more popular gymnast. In all of these cases, the motives are way deeper than "oh he is better than me and conceited so I want to beat him." That is what is needed to make the audience care and root for Maeshima and Hayato to beat Reo, but we never see anything similar. Maeshima's team wins in the end and I can't even be happy about them because I truly don't think they deserved to win.

Another thing that makes the main rivalry in the show suffer, is the fact that Reo is never really given a real personality. Rivals need to make an impression. Reo makes none. He is just there. He is cold, conceited, a bit of a klutz, and that is about it. Besides giving Maeshima a bit of lip I really can't see why we would ever see him as the big bad of the show. There were many chances to work on Reo but the show just didn't. In episode eleven, it was shown how he joined his skate-leading team, and they even showed him lowering his head to two of his teammates while saying he wanted to learn more about entertainment and that was why he was here. This event, even if very late into the game, is enough to make me like him way more than Maeshima. The show could have explored why Reo doesn't seem to be enjoying skating singles, and him finding joy in skating with others and competing, not just to win, but it focused more on advancing a competition where there was pretty much nothing at risk, except Maeshima's hurt ego, and showing us a bunch of plot lines while never fully developing any of them. Why spend almost an entire episode on the main team's coach, if you were never going to tell us anything else about it? the best we got was him returning to competitive skating in the end. Missed potential everywhere. None, or most, of the supporting cast is ever properly developed. You won't remember anyone's names, and they don't add too much to the story. The only reason they exist is that Skate-leading is a team sport. You could argue that the show has only twelve episodes, so it is impossible to have a good supporting cast, but I disagree since there are plenty of shows that are able to achieve this just fine.

Overall, Skate-leading stars was a show with a lot of promise and it just failed to use its assets to its advantage. Maeshima, Hayato, and Reo could have been a great rivalry but because the motives of this show are so trivial, it all ended up feeling like the equivalent of watching a toddler fight about a toy. The supporting cast is not that fun and the dynamics within the main team don't even make it feel like they are a team in the first place. The soundtrack was mediocre, the artwork was decent, the animation consistent, so I really can't say it was a tragedy but I wish they had done a bit more because they had good things going for them. Oddly enough, the first and last episode were the best in the series.