Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - What's Missing From Welcome to the Ballroom's Characters?
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Scalfin
Posts: 249 |
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At least according to an ex who was really in to ice skating, pretty much all pair skaters are either married to or siblings of their partners.
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Animechic420
 Posts: 1731 Location: A Cave Filled With Riches |
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That's sounds familiar. 
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Samiamiam
Posts: 227 |
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The way women are treated in this show really bother me. Also the faces are a bit creepy. I like generic shounen sports anime too though, so I'll keep watching to see if it does something unique/interesting later. For all its (sometimes unfair) comparisions to other sports anime, the one that I think is most accurate is Days from last summer actually. Lots of stills and pretty generic sports archetypes.
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Angel M Cazares
 Posts: 5495 Location: Iscandar |
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To me the people most disappointed by Welcome to the Ballroom is those who expected it to be the next Yuri on Ice. I am more or less content with Ballroom, and the worst things I can say about this show is that it is inconsistent.
And this new format of This Week in Anime works better for me. I hope you talk about Princess Principal and its bad-ass moe girls before the season ends. |
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FireChick
 Subscriber Posts: 2468 Location: United States |
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Wow. Glad I saw that screenshot, and I wasn't even interested in the show to begin with! God, if a character like that is gonna be on the show, count me out. I can tell he's basically Minko from Hanasaku Iroha only 1000 times worse. I mean, tearing a woman's dress to the point of exposing her boobs, calling her a skank, and claiming she's just having a fit over something that's perfectly valid? No.
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darkchibi07
 Posts: 5504 |
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Considering the baffling lack of female leads in sports anime nowadays, one could hypothetically watch Welcome to the Ballroom in order to fulfill that desire even if she's just a co-lead with the male protagonist. Heck, the very premise of using ballroom dancing suggest omnipandering fanservice for both male and female audiences. But unfortunately it seems like according to this, the female partners so far are essentially trophies for the males compounded with all the other problems. It's rather aggravating how this series squandered a really good opportunity here.
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Grimvice
Posts: 89 |
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Geez, there's a lot of hate for the show all of a sudden...
There's only been like six or seven episodes and the series only just started. For criticisms about the show's portrayal of characters, the series explores it better later on, plus new characters to come are more important than some of the ones here. The kind of "sexism" that's seen appears to go hand-in-hand with the notion that the male must lead and the woman must follow, that isn't sexist it's just the dynamic of ballroom dancing, the series does explore this more later on, it's quite interesting actually. As far as criticisms about Sengoku, he's the best of the best in his sport, so chances are he feels jaded and heavily influenced by the environment of dancing, the show's not done yet so there's still more to explore, plus the manga's still ongoing. In Hyodo's case, I'm pretty sure they're trying to portray the strange case that ballroom dancing is. As an athlete, Hyodo works extremely hard and practices alone (keyword alone), but ballroom dancing is about the chemistry between two people, so Hyodo struggles with wanting to be the best but having to stick with someone else who may or may not weigh him down. Since chemistry is so important to the sport, it can definitely seem like there is some kind of relationship drama, but I think it's more that it's important to how well they do, it just happens that a very intimate sport has the stigma of romance and drama. As far as the sexual jokes go and all that, remember when teachers were talking and saying that ballroom dancing was perverted? I don't think it's so much that characters like Sengoku are perverted, but being more used to being in close but platonic proximity to the opposite sex. For Tatara, who's very new to the sport, feels the way an outsider would feel, being in a world of sports that doesn't operate the same as society does (taking into account the kind of society Japan is, and how they'd mostly feel about ballroom dancing). |
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someidiot
Posts: 9 |
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Grimvice you hit the nail on the head.
Anime viewers don't know that the main heroine hasn't even been introduced yet. All these issues stated will be addressed later on in the series. This is what I hate most about anime reviews, we forget that the source material(manga) can take time to hit it's stride. Naturally the anime will follow suit. I can't really defend sengoku, but I can confidently say that the main theme of this series is the dogma surrounding male leading and female following. Give it time, and you will be blown away. |
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CaRoss
 Posts: 457 |
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As a fan of the manga, I'm shocked by how much hatred has flooded discussions of this series since the start of the season - it was one of the more hyped series - and how some of it is subtly, and not so subtly, attributed to it not being the next Yuri on Ice.
While I don't disagree at all that characters like Hyodo and Sengoku (I hate this guy something fierce, and he is the series' biggest problem) are problematic - and part of why I don't as widely recommend the manga as I do many others so far - there is just as much quality shonen sports content here that I adore, so it's definitely disheartening to see it torn apart like this. That said, I do understand the desire for stronger female perspectives in this story. As a series that is so heavily reliant on partnerships between the dancers, and unlike Yuri on Ice Male/Female partnerships, the desire for the women to be given the spotlight and story focus makes perfect sense - and is a criticism that I have started to develop for the series too (from where I am in the manga). Overall though, I really enjoy Welcome to the Ballroom, and these columns, so I loved just seeing it being discussed in any format. |
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Z-Raid
 Posts: 132 |
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I read the manga for this series and, yeah, the anime just isn't clicking with me. I'm not a hardcore fan of the manga or anything, but I do like it well enough and consider it a fairly well done (if not rote) shounen sports manga.
But with the anime I'm finding I have pretty much the same gripes with it as the reviewers do. I know who these characters are and the development they receive later on, but I'm still not finding myself liking these characters in the anime. I don't really know why. And I didn't hate these characters initially, either, so it's not like the source material is the problem. I don't think the anime is terrible, but like the reviewers said, I don't think it is as good as it can be. I'll keep watching the anime and future episodes will change my mind. I'm hoping the anime is willing to be more than just a straight adaptation of the manga and give us some more insight on the characters' lives outside of dancing. |
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ArnisEnthusiast
Posts: 74 |
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Tbh the beginning of the series is bad, even in the manga. It gets better though. The anime should get to that soon.
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Lord Oink
Posts: 876 |
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Which is absurd given it came out way before YoI. |
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someidiot
Posts: 9 |
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May I ask around what chapter have you reached in the manga? I'm caught up and If you are too, then I am baffled about how you would think there is a lack of spotlight and story focus on female dancers. |
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chito895
 Posts: 512 Location: Lima, Peru |
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This was me for a while. Then I totally ditched that idea and started enjoying the dance more. I really liked Hyodo's performance in Ep. 4. But it would be cool if I could enjoy the show only for the sakuga, but I can't, because everything outside of the great animation is just plain dull and kind of annoying. I wish Shizuku had more personality to just send to hell every man who treats her like an object. I wish Sengoku could just shut up and stop blaming everyone for his own faults and stop being an asshole. And I wish Tatara wasn't so dumb. So I don't know how it will be in the next episodes, but I'm done with this anime. I haven't been disappointed by a show in a long time, and I'm sad this one turned out to be like this. |
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BlueBeast33
Posts: 152 |
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Is this really the case? Most of the negative stuff I've read has just been on ANN or from a few select people on twitter. Everywhere else I've been the reactions to the show seem to be fairly positive. Heck, the main complaint I saw were people complaining about still shots during some of the dance scenes. Admittedly, I've seen people mention their dislike of Sengoku or at least some of his actions(which I understand), but that's about as far as that's gone. I don't know, it honestly just seems like one big overreaction to me if it's really as bad as some people are saying it is, but like I said, I haven't really seen that in most of the sites/forums that I frequent. |
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