First impressions matter, and the one given off by Pride of Orange isn't the most charitable one. Let-downs for sports anime, particularly ones centered on girls, are disappointingly common these days (anyone remember Tamayomi: The Baseball Girls?), and it seemed the hypothetical hockey-based heights of this show might be another victim of that after its first episode. An all-too-brief game showcase giving way to an inexplicable tacked-on idol performance, before segueing into an absurdly leisurely amount of time spent with these prospective hockey girls barely beginning to check out the sport is not a great introduction to a series like this. And it's hardly improved in the second episode, with that same languid pacing that almost seems to position this less as a sports show and more like a hobby show with barely any focus on the supposed hobby. But then the folks behind PuraOre seemingly remembered that the 'three episode test' was a thing, and in that third episode the series picks up, starts trying to present a compelling, emotional narrative tied to its focal sport, and actually gives a go at making that crucial early impression.

It's an odd shift to suddenly stumble into three episodes deep in the series, but it ends up codifying PuraOre's particular structure, feeling less like the show 'figuring itself out in real time' so much as simply deliberately taking its time to get where it wants to be. In a way, that three-episode opening comes off like a prologue to a series that wholly feels like a prologue itself by the time it's finished. Ice Hockey is a famously fast sport, but for as surprisingly long an in-story time period as PuraOre covers (over a year) in its single-cour run , it can often feel like it takes quite a while for not much to happen. But it also means there's a feeling of a crystallization of intent when it does reach those key moments. In other words, the series lacks that formative "This sport is awesome!" awakening for the characters in episode one, but that's because the road to get them to the emotional place for that realization has to run until that third episode. Similarly, the story seems to eschew the more typical structure of characters being pressured to join in on a sport at first, because that plot actually ends up playing out with the character of Yu once we get to the fourth episode.

That engaging turnaround in the third episode, followed by Yu's introduction in the fourth, works to transform PuraOre into the sports show I think most people hopefully anticipated it would be. Components like the embroidery club are quietly dropped, and the 'victory dance' idol performance is only briefly alluded to as a running gag for several episodes (though put a pin in that one). Instead, the show takes time to focus on things that seem more relevant to its subject matter, like a character's struggle with her own athleticism, or the surprisingly subdued, almost natural way Yu comes to understand what she needed to learn about teamwork in her sport. The writing pushing her back in plays off of her competitive spirit, and even provides an effective mirror late in the series in the form of one of her former teammates.

The theming of that conflict does end up betraying the show's overall pacing issues before the end. It definitely feels like there was supposed to be more of a "Talent vs Teamwork" theme that never really gets the chance to come through. Part of that's down to just how long the road the story takes ends up being; we only see the characters play two actual, non-practice games in the last episodes of the series (with one game between their first and the championship even being completely skipped over). But the other issue is that, for all the writing's lip-service to how much this story wants to promote the excitement of ice hockey, the sport's place in the story feels more incidental than anything else. Don't get me wrong: the hockey-playing are easily the nicest-looking parts of the show (the parts with characters hanging around chatting often look rather rough and stiff by comparison), and it helps that hockey as a sport is just inherently entertaining to watch regardless of how much you grasp about its technicalities. But compared to the likes of a sports anime like Haikyu!!, which can impart the intricacies of its focal game in a way that draws viewers in for more intense entertainment, PuraOre's depiction feels very surface-level. Instead there's the cynical impression that it's trying to sell the sport by dressing it up in elements it thinks will appeal to the anime-watching audience, like high-school girl hangout shenanigans, or idol concerts. And on that note…

For all the hubbub made about the impromptu musical number in the first episode, it's worth noting that the series only features three such performances throughout its run. To their credit, they're nicely-produced pieces, at least, but along with the aforementioned cynicism surrounding their inclusion (even being touted in-story as a way to draw in fans who might not otherwise care about hockey), they really do stretch the credulity of the plot. In a series that pointedly dedicates more time to showing the girls practicing hockey than actually playing it, we're supposed to also believe they had enough time to learn choreographed song-and-dance numbers (on ice no less!) that go basically unremarked on immediately afterwards? That said, the lesser deployment of the idol-performance element means it's not as much of a baffling issue as it initially seemed, but instead simply comes off as an odd distraction that takes even more time away from an already oddly-paced series.

In the tenth episode, the character Mami utters the line, "I think anything would've been fun if we did it together, hockey or not," which really confirms just how incidental the game feels to a show supposedly all about selling its appeal. It's apparent in other places too, like the way a beach volleyball game in the seventh episode seems to get almost as much animation love as the hockey parts, indicating how any other sport could have just as easily slotted into the show's framework. The basic sports-show structure here does mostly work, with those aforementioned components of Yu's story arc or the development of other characters through the game. Some specific hockey strategies do finally materialize in the last game played in-show, but like the broader idea of the higher-ranked championships the team is shooting for, that feels like mere teasing at ideas that could be followed up in another season (or more pointedly, the forthcoming mobile-game the series directly tells you to go play for a continuation at the end). Alongside the attractive anime and idol wrapping paper for the sport, that adds one more layer of cynicism to the viewing of PuraOre: That it's ultimately an advertisement— for the game, for the base institution of hockey, and for the tourism of the area of Nikko (which, to its credit, the detailed backgrounds do an attractive job of selling).

Pride of Orange does turn out to be a better sports anime with more going on than the first impression of its premiere episode indicated. It can take long enough getting there, with enough caveats to the presentation and purpose of that content that it still can't be called a fully-quantified success. But if it's messy, it's an interesting kind of messy, one I found myself continuously engaged with through its ups and downs. It definitely still isn't the hockey anime a lot of people were hoping for, but it is more of a hockey anime than those initial visions of girls breaking out into dance numbers indicated, and ends up decidedly working better as a sports show than a lot of the other let-downs out there.