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EP. REVIEW: Welcome to the Ballroom

Mojave wrote:

I don't think you've understood correctly. Sports anime usually don't make up completely fake rules for the sport they're depicting, and especially don't feature those fake rules as central plot points. The writers are banking on their audience not knowing anything about the sport to get away with something so egregious. As far as the JDSF promotion, they're hoping that having a mainstream anime about ballroom be popular in Japan will increase participation in their sport, especially among young adults and teenagers. So, they're staying quiet about how off the show's depiction of ballroom is. Your wholly inappropriate personal attack on me means nothing, because the show did make up a completely fake rule and make it a central plot point. That's not an "alleged professional on an internet forum bashing it," it's an inarguable fact.

Sorry if I offended you, but you have to admit saying the JDSF secretly hates the series and is only tolerating it out of self-interest is purely projection

As far as making things up, it happens quite often in sports series. It's usually done for dramatic effect. Haikyu, Kuroko, Yuri on Ice, Yu-Gi-Oh.. heck, I've seen people flip out when something like a Pokemon battle does things not allowed in the games, like reflect projectiles back to the attacker. For me, A series is more than welcome to take some creative liberties in order to make things more interesting or dramatic.

-Stuart Smith

That's the wonder of opinions, everyone has a different one. I can watch and enjoy not-feminist shows, but this one has such systematic lowkey hatred and minimization of women it gets intolerable. Consider what I explained above, how the girls are always taking all the blame for the conflicts, even though in both cases it was the guy who was most to blame. Or how about all those body-shaming jokes? We've now had three different characters ridiculed for the size of their boobs. I don't explicitly need the show to be super feminist or extremely realistic, but I can't stand that it bent the rules all over so badly just to diminish the girls' role in the sport.

Sorry if I offended you, but you have to admit saying the JDSF secretly hates the series and is only tolerating it out of self-interest is purely projection

As far as making things up, it happens quite often in sports series. It's usually done for dramatic effect. Haikyu, Kuroko, Yuri on Ice, Yu-Gi-Oh.. heck, I've seen people flip out when something like a Pokemon battle does things not allowed in the games, like reflect projectiles back to the attacker. For me, A series is more than welcome to take some creative liberties in order to make things more interesting or dramatic.

-Stuart Smith

Wait isn't Tatara the one blamed all the time for not knowing what the hell he is doing? Or am I watching a different show? Like, I don't remember Mako being blamed and Chinatsu gets some shit but that is because she isn't that good at following but even then that is blamed on Tatara for not knowing how to lead properly, or at least that is what I got from it

As far as making things up, it happens quite often in sports series. It's usually done for dramatic effect. Haikyu, Kuroko, Yuri on Ice,

Speaking of Tatara, although he is partially blamed for his struggles with Chinatsu (again though, the narrative paints Chinatsu as the most problematic of the two, since she needs to be "tamed")

^Although I agree, I think the show takes Tatara's inexperience for granted, or treats it as something that can be easily overcome, minimizing its impact on their partnership -as someone else mentioned, part of Chinatsu's attitude is also coming from the fact that she doesn't feel she can trust Tatara as a dancer-. Although it's harped again and again that he's a sucky dancer, it never really seems to have any consequences beyond him feeling inadequate. It seems a bit contradictory considering that according to the show's invented rules, they shouldn't ever make it through the first rounds since Tatara is such a bad leader and "that's the only thing being judged". It's also infuriating because rather than focusing on working through Chinatsu's holdups or encouraging Tatara to become a reliable partner for her, they only accentuate the narrative that Chinatsu is "a beast that needs to be broken/tamed", so it feels like she is being excessively punished and that the writing itself isn't even addressing her problems in a way that is remotely helpful

Everything works within the established rules of basketball.

Some viewers might still exhibit your mindset and say "Sure, the writers took some creative liberties, but I don't care, because I thought it made things more dramatic and interesting, and got me pumped." They wouldn't have much of a leg to stand on, though, when defending the show, because of how egregious the creative liberty the writers took was, and how negatively it changed the team dynamics of basketball.

Just say upfront that you didn't watch any of those shows instead of embarrassing yourself bro. Haikyuu and Yuri on Ice are very faithful depictions of the sports they portray, and have been praised as such. Many professional skaters have expressed their amazement at how YOI has captured the real essence of figure skating. The only inaccuracies come from two or three cases where the scores were lower or higher than they should have been, but that's completely different from making up a completely arbitrary rule that severely affects the portrayal of the sport.

Both Haikyuu and YOI feature movements and plays that would put professionals to shame, but I suppose you could dismiss that as 'supernatural exaggerations'. If you specifically only want to focus on rule violations and scoring, then fine, but inaccuracies are inaccuracies and it comes off quite goal-post movey.

You already mentioned scoring fails, but there's also one of the last scenes in YOI, which goes against the ISU's 'man and woman only' pairs rule.

Although I admit I find it a bit odd a judge's scoring is more immersion breaking than soccer balls summoning demons or tennis ball serves creating waves of flames. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

I also don't think that she refused to let Chinatsu take the female role to sabotage her future, but more to keep something that she is more skilled in than Chinatsu, so that she will want to stay with her, though that has harmed her ability to follow.