Child figure skating prodigy Kensei Maeshima abruptly quits the sport after his one-sided rival, Reo Shinozaki, refuses to acknowledge his skill. Now, as a student at Inodai High School, Kensei uses his athletic skills to assist the other sports teams, but he never officially joins one. One day, Reo announces his switch from singles figure skating into team-based skate-leading and joins St. Clavis Gakuin High School—last year's Grand Prix champions. Hayato Sasugai, a classmate with a mysterious connection to Reo, convinces Kensei to switch to skate-leading in order to finally defeat his rival in a competition.
Kensei's sudden entry into the Inodai Skate-Leading Club is met with backlash from the current members. Although he is a very strong singles skater, Kensei lacks the teamwork skills required to perform well in skate-leading. Factoring in his hot-headed, impatient attitude, inconsistent skating performances, and a complicated history with some of the members, Kensei's teammates do not believe he is a good fit to be their "Lead." The team must work together to resolve these issues, however, if they wish to qualify for the Grand Prix Finals and even stand a chance at defeating St. Clavis Gakuin.
[Written by MAL Rewrite]
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Comentários
Sakoori
After watching the rest of the series, I still stand by my original review. I don't even know what the point of this show is. As someone who shamelessly loves watching terrible sports anime for the sake of pretty boys/fujo bait, this show somehow managed to offer me none of that. The main issues with Skate Leading Stars stem from the fact that the "sport" it's centered around isn't real. Skate Leading doesn't exist in real life. The writers tried to create some hybrid form of team figure skating with elements from single Men's Free Skate/Short Program, but you quickly find out that the writers didn'tbother to expand on it afterwards. You get some sad excuse of an explanation at the very beginning of the series and then you never see/hear about it ever again. I'm not saying that the "sport" in a sports anime needs to be realistic, but if you're going to add that as an element, at least give it more attention than what you gave it in this show. The anime itself doesn't even show much of the sport in general. If you've seen other sports anime (Prince of Tennis, Slam Dunk, Kuroko's Backetball, Ace of Diamonds, Haikyuu, etc.), you know that one of the major points of animation is the actual sport itself. You can see that the animators show the movements and the game actually play out in those series. You don't get that with Skate Leading Stars. You get a shot of the five-man team spin around for 3 seconds at a time and random frame cuts to stills or scenes where there's minimal movement.
It's almost as if the point of the show isn't about the sport, but the relationship building that happens between the characters. That's also not what happens in this show either. The show does a terrible job of building any of the characters and their motivations for trying to win the Grand Prix. The main character, Maeshima Kensei, gives up solo figure skating because his rival, Shinozaki Reo, doesn't acknowledge him or his skill because Maeshima could never beat him in a competition. Somehow, between quitting his solo career and being in high school, he gets convinced by a classmate, Sasugai Hayato, that he should take up skate leading in order to beat Shinozaki, who also just happened to quit his solo career and join skate leading at a rival school. There's no rhyme or reason for any of these events to happen and you don't understand why any of this happens, other than for convenience. You get introduced to a bunch of "rivals" that have 0 background and are very 1-dimensional and boring. The relationships shown between Maeshima and his other teammates are also poorly developed. No one on his team liked him, but somehow, the very next episode shows that they're fine with him being on the team with no context/development in between. There's one episode where one of Maeshima's teammates transfers schools and they try to convince him to come back, but then the very next episode, all of the characters forget he even exists. The continuity is all over the place with random time skips. I'm honestly not even sure what the time is currently in the story because it jumped all over the place and skipped seasons in the universe.
I can't fault the art. The art is fine. It's inoffensive. It's competent. The character designs are quite boring. They also all have no personalities, so it's hard for you to become attached to any of them. Even as fujo bait, there's nothing that really draws you to any of them, since none of them have any attractive/interesting features. Looks are one thing, but if there's no personality, you're not going to be attracting the same people who like other sports anime for the sake of pretty boys with some personality.
I see this anime get compared to Yuri on Ice a lot and most people who are disappointed in it are the same people who thought it would be like Yuri on Ice. Skate Leading Stars is not supposed to be another Yuri on Ice. It's a sad excuse of combining Prince of Tennis/Kuroko's Basketball elements with a fake team figure skating sport. Do not watch this anime if your main intention is to fill a Yuri on Ice void because it's nothing like it. If anything, compare this anime with other team-based sports anime and you'll quickly see that it fails on so many different levels.
Overall, this anime is just poorly done, story-wise. It fails as a sports anime because the sport isn't real, the writers made the sport irrelevant to the story and there's next to no animation related to the sport itself. It fails as a fujo bait anime because the characters have the most boring, inoffensive designs with 0 personality. It wouldn't even matter if this anime came out during a different season because it's still bad. The 12 episodes it's getting is not enough to tell a decent story with sports as the main focus. If you tried to condense any other sports manga/anime into a 12 episode standalone series, it would be just as bad as Skate Leading Stars. If this show spanned 2 seasons, there's a chance that it would have a better story than what it currently has. As it stands, this is an anime you should skip if you like the sports genre or pretty boys. There's so many better shows out there for either category.
NexTheUndertaker
While watching this anime , I checked many reviews and many of them were from people that only watched 4 episodes , which i find dumb because you only watched 33% of the anime.. Anyways , this anime is overall good , its the basic story of a childhood "war" between the main character and a support/main character, the art is good and the characters were differentiated , the sound was fair tho it was many times repeated the same song, mostly on the first few episodes. The anime had everything to be better if it wasn't rushed and didnt end the way it did , andof course if it had more episodes.
I feel like this winter it came out alot of good animes with alot of potential , tho I liked this anime , I don't think there's that big of a fandom willing to watch the next season.
KANLen09
Well well, what a disappointment of a show indeed to no one's surprise. I have rephrased this many times in my reviews over the last few years, and it is that: Even if you have high-profile people working on shows, it's not indicative of any results unless we the viewers can see whether the talent or inspiration has been carried over from past shows with their name carved as a household name. And yet still, even with legendary director Gorou Taniguchi on board, Skate-Leading☆Stars still feels like a ham-fisted show with an unique setting already grounded by the likes of Yuri on Ice!! (creating the malederivative to the females' CGDCT of "Handsome Bishounens Doing Handsome Troupes"), but the script and storywriting itself is written by someone who's had the idea of creating a story that's just being the equivalent to the usual "child's play" of a stupid and nonsensical "revenge game" plot. Bear in mind that at the time of this review, Gorou Taniguchi is also helming directorial duties for another show this season: Back Arrow (the mech series that fit most of his work ethos). That's why the production team had to get another director to oversee this show, and it had to be Major's director Toshinori Fukushima since he has a lot of background on sports anime, and hoped that his director position would salvage the best parts of the show (which he did, but often is limited due to the simple storytelling).
The story and plot of this show is just the simple, typical childhood "war" of the main trio of brotherly characters: Kensei Maeshima, Hayato Sasugai and Reo Shinozaki. The former a dropout from figure skating; the latter being someone who used to compete on the grounds, but due to a serious injury he is relegated to being a team strategist; and the last is the arrogant champion-type person who only aspires to go beyond than where he is now, all else are stepping stones to his main goal. Together with the enrollment of their respective regional schools, and "un"intenionally sucking teammates into their rivalry, the "road to stardom" ensues to trump over challenges and be the top gun that reigns supreme. Now tell me how rather dull, boring and predictable all of this sounds.
The characters aren't anything to write home about (much less remember their names), despite being designed by another legend: Yana Toboso of Black Butler. It just feels like overtime you're trying to understand where the characters come from, but seemingly most of their actions either halt or impede further warranted actions of proof, despite trying their absolute best to deliver the best they could. At best, they aren't as annoying, but at worst, they can get obnoxious and grinding on your ears, especially the "red-haired bull dog" Maeshima with his complete temperament of a character indeed being a yapping dog that just couldn't shut up and always have to prove by words instead of his actions (and I thank God that Hayato is always the one to stop him, he's a caretaker too that plays the game differently). The best character IMO is Izumi Himekawa, being the figure skater that somehow couldn't mesh together with the Ionodai High School team, he transferred over to another school's team to broaden his horizons, and that was what I wanted to see: at least SOME character development done decently, even if the majority of the cast are of cliques in the same regard.
It's J.C.Staff back at it for the animation and visuals, and literally it just looked...OK at best. Even though there was nothing that blew me away, at least the presentation for the figure-skating scenes were a touch above average. Once again, you can't compare this to the infinitely superior Production I.G.'s Yuri on Ice!!, so at least there is a distinction between the two shows. And also, sad to say that even though the sound directing legend Jin Aketagawa is helping out (as is with many anime in this day and age), I'd say he'd be better off not being hired to be part of this variety-lacking of a show. Same goes with the OST, while it's catchy on the Bishounen level, there isn't as much appeal of Seiyuus helming OPs and/or EDs if their fanbase in Japan isn't as big as the others (say Daisuke Ono for example).
All in all, you could have better if you have watched Yuri on Ice!! instead of this shallow-minded thought process of a mediocre show that should not have been worth the time for legendary people to have worked on, and get decreasing popularity overtime. To the minority that enjoyed this (even if this was targeted to the Shoujo audience), I'm sorry but this isn't really worth your time either due to how BS the story plot and characters are by themselves, and having plot holes to fill from the viewers' behalf. Just pass this one up, and follow the feels-satisfyingly-good figure-skating, skate-leading path to greatness with...you've guessed it: Yuri on Ice!!.
devildice
No. This is not Yuri!!! On Ice. I have seen so many comparisons and expectations online about SLS contrasting it with YOI. Believe me, it has its own merits that it managed to present its own identity as ice skating sports anime. From the premise, it's a group sports, thus, it heightens more spirit and soul as sports genre. There is an immense difference in the plot narrative, however, you can sense the quick phasing of the competition to the extent that it needed to compromise most of the skating performances. For a 12-episode anime, it lacked so much in sports action. Hence, in compensation,it focused on another domain which is characterization.
Since it is group sports, the names and faces to be remembered doubled. Nonetheless, most of the characters are written good. You can at least distinguish which is which. The characterization is far from perfect also, there is no really astounding with these boys. Nothing remarkable. They seemed like normal high school teens flared with their courage to win, and they have different cores clashing, and whoever wins will be the best. That's it, nothing more.
But things get better until the end, I was a bit sleeping from the early episodes but when the Grand Prix Final ticked, you just can't leave the screen. The last episodes finally manifested what a sports genre should be-- the thrill, excitement, and nerve-wracking moments. The questions of, "Will they gonna make it?" "Can they actually beat them as underdogs?". As I questioned myself about this, it finally hit me that it is actually getting good for a sports genre. Maybe a bit late, but at least, it managed to embody the expectations that I have.
I have to admit, it is mediocre but you will remember the characters for sure. It is best to watch when you thirst for good-looking hot boys, I'm not kidding because they really put much budget to them (lol)
LilMonsterx
i love everything about this anime except for the fact that it was rushed. i wish it is a 24 episodes anime so they can show more like the routine, the practice, character development and a friendly match with other schools just like they did in haikyuu. it's a sport anime after all. if only this anime has 24 episodes, it wouldn't get that much bad reviews and then season 2 wouldn't get cancelled. it's sad because i enjoy this anime so much. i want to watch and know more about them. i love the art style. the only reason i started watching this anime becausea skate leading stars video show up on my tiktok fyp. when i saw maeshima, i knew i had to watch it. i don't have regret. even though the anime was rushed, it is very enjoyable.
Steblob
Its bad that the reason why I watched this was because its about ice skating and I loved Yuri!!! On Ice, but my expectations REALLY LOW Even when I binged episodes 1-3, I was already intrigued with the story. I was willing to know the characters. In fact, I got attached to them too. I already get excited every time a new episode comes out which made me realize how much I enjoy this underrated anime. My only complaint is the fact that it's only 12 episodes long. Like any 12 episode anime, some of the plots were rushed and the character development. I honestly want more ofthis anime, if there's a season 2 I'll probably blow up ;-;
chloegc
I consider myself to be pretty knowledgeable about sports anime; I have seen a good number of them. And I can say with good conscience that Skate Leading Stars has to be one of the worst, if not the worst, sports anime out there. This was such a horrid ice sports anime it left me with more appreciation for Yuri!!! on Ice. This show was absolutely terrible. Everything about it was horrible and screamed lazy. Something that honestly left me dumbfounded was the fact that, a majority of the time, the skating scenes were not even animated. Yes, an anime which focuses on the premiseof a stunning team skating competition did not even take the time to animate skating scenes. The characters would go out on the ice, the music would start, the screen would fade to black, and then the show picks back up after they have finished their performance. Seriously, that is just the worst possible production choice I could ever imagine, who allowed that? The sole good aspect about this is the fact that I did not have to see horrendous CGI skating. I respect them for choosing the lesser evil, and not showing anything at all.
Basically the only episodes with any actual skating in them are the first and the last episodes. What happened the rest of the time? Well, I couldn’t tell you. Not a single scene has any significance to the overarching plot or character development. Nearly half the dialogue felt like it was rambling on about their training and practices, which we never even get to see. Skate Leading Stars legitimately has some of the worst script writing I have ever seen, anime or otherwise. This show had a pretty strong lineup of voice actors, but completely ignored that and had the characters talk about absolutely nothing for twelve episodes.
The script may have been horrible, but even if it had been exceptional that cannot change the fact that there was a very evident lack of character development, or even character personalities whatsoever. These characters offer absolutely nothing. They have no backstory, no motivations, and no personality outside of watered down classic anime tropes. The character aspects the creators did choose to focus on had no relevance to the core plot. There was time spent discussing side characters and teams, but not in a quality manner such as in Haikyuu!!, but in a way in which screen time was wasted on characters that obviously would not even matter in the final competition.
I keep referring back to some sort of main or core plot, but even I have trouble labeling anything as a “core plot”, as nothing in this show mattered. You know in elementary school when teachers would draw a mountain to represent the tension rising and falling in a story? Now imagine a straight line. That’s Skate Leading Stars. Writing this review, I cannot stress enough how little happened during this show. I invested time into watching twelve episodes that I could have better spent staring at a wall. In my reviews, I try to at least say one thing that I appreciated or enjoyed about the show, but in this case, I cannot. As a sports anime fan, Skate Leading Stars is locked in the deepest, darkest portion of my mind in an attempt to forget about this atrocity.
schwakai
A friend and I decided to start watching this anime the other night, hoping it would be a little bit similar to Yuri on Ice (but not too similar, you know?). We had pretty high hopes because the art looked alright and the synopsis seemed interesting enough, but we were swiftly disappointed. Every single character is uninteresting and one-dimensional, nobody is really motivated by anything other than "to win" (which we don't even really see for most characters), and even the main character's end goal is unoriginal and boring. His 'rival' doesn't even acknowledge him as such when they were kids, but this main characterdecided to latch onto that dream... then quit skating. THEN get back into it? It doesn't make any sense.
On top of that, the pacing is horrendous. It seems like the whole show was a lead up to the Grand Prix... that we, the audience, don't even get to watch. This was a skating anime where almost no skating happens, and nothing feels like it matters. When the show does show skating, it doesn't even look like the characters are moving. None of the performances look nice, and characters are drawn stiffly and with no movement, which is what you want in a skating anime.
Overall, this is one of the worst anime I've watched in a long time. Very much do not recommend.
jaskayn
A figure skating sports anime, with the premise of “skate-leading.” It’s basically what artistic swimming is to competitive swimming (juuust slightly, ik that example is a bit wonky). The animation for this anime was actually very good, I found no real issues. Many scenes did give me chills, mainly Shinozaki revealing his more competitive side and the music for the final performances. Those were my pros. As for the cons, there is a bit to cover. One of the most frustrating issues about this anime is none other than our main character, Maeshima, who is your typical cut-out angry red-head who fails to understand any formof logic and resorts to screaming his lungs out if anyone were to ever argue against his weird reasoning for literally any decision he makes while he’s on the ice (he basically says it’s cooler, and that’s what matters most). Trust me when I say, he makes you want to scream and punch his face.
The entire plot is a rivalry between our MC and the #1 figure skater, Shinozaki, who looks like atsushi from BSD and khun from TOG combined. I don’t mind rivalry animes, but this one really did not hit the spot where I wanted it to. We get NO development at all from our rival. Even though Shinozaki is the target Maeshima wants to beat, you’d expect that we’d get more development on his side of the story, but no, he’s just some prodigy skater who has been undefeated for his entire childhood. You can argue the ending showed a different side of Shinozaki, but man, after wanting to question this direction story of this story, with how messy the rivalry was really shown (I mean it felt one sided the entire time, so I felt like I was watching a man scream at a wall in every episode), this different side of him was super generic and almost expected, given how he never had more than 2 expressions throughout the show. His looks are nice and all, but he is as black and white as it gets.
As for other characters, i didn’t mind then, but they were never really relevant to the plot. For a show to be centered around team figure skating, I expected there to be more build up between Maeshima and his other teammates, but many of them have no development whatsoever and remain the same throughout the entirety of the show. Even if the useless coach (sorry bro) said something about their flaws, they manage to correct it effortlessly without any struggles, unlike our MC. It’s very obvious who the anime cared enough to put some thought into the stories of certain characters and which characters to just slide in for the sake of the show to keep up its team figure skating plot.
I honestly thought this anime would have been better had it been single skating instead, especially since you could throw out any other side character in the show and still make it make sense on the larger spectrum of things (Maeshima vs Shinozaki). The idea of Shinozaki’s younger brother, Sasugai being the coach for Maeshima in order to beat Shinozaki would have been a good enough plot as it is, minus the team stuff.
Overall, this anime is decent, but nothing special. There were many moments that I loved the performances, but there were also a handful where I skipped scenes because they held no relevancy to the main plot and were overall bland.
animeshitha
Honestly, I expected more. Shinozaki was honestly the most boring character ever, and honestly, I'm doubting if he even HAD a personality. The rivalry felt so damn forced. I mean, I get it, most sports anime start with rivalries that seem petty to us but we understand that it's important for the characters and we root for them. It was near impossible for me to do that here. There's a fine line between hyping up the rival team to be good competition, and hyping them so much that they are they are seen as OBJECTIVELY better than the protagonists. Honestly, the show's rivalry set up wasso all over the place that I seriously thought that Ionodai won due to plot armor only.
Honestly, the best character was Sasugai. He was funny, cunning and at least the feelings he had towards Shinozaki felt REAL to me.
I came here for the sport, but it was more drama. We never even got a full routine from ANY school! Seriously??? That ticked me off more than anything else.
If you like boy drama, give it a go (still pretty weak though). If you like sports anime, save yourself the heartache. There's hardly any sport in here.
minnnieee
As someone who enjoyed Yuri on Ice and figure skating, I was extremely excited by this anime. Though Skate-Leading Stars was able to feed that craving, it wasn't the BEST. It's a nice show to burn some time, and the story and plot is very simple and cliché, nothing too different or extraordinary (except for the fact Skate-Leading isn't even a real sport but that's fine it was a nicely made up). Personally, I was still very entertained with the characters and it really highlights the big performance moments when it needs to. Overall, I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend it, butif you enjoy these types of sports anime that don't really have a revolutionary plot, its a nice one to watch.
Frogfrog_
I really enjoyed watching it, the animation didn't get worse at any point despite not showing the skating scenes in their entirety, but it wasn't a bad thing, since it didn't just leave the skating animation raw (like in Yuri!!! On Ice, which is just the presentations, and that ended up making the animation kind of bad... But even so the anime is good). All the presentation scenes made me nervous, I was never sure when it was going to be a bad or good grade... There were a lot of sensations. Original - Gostei bastante de assistir, a animação não piorou em nenhum momento apesar denão mostrar as cenas da patinação por completo, mas não foi algo ruim, já que não deixava só a animação crua da patinação (tipo em Yuri!!! On Ice, que são só as apresentações, e isso acabou deixando meio ruim a animação..... Mas mesmo assim o anime é bom). Todas as cenas de apresentação me deixaram nervosa, eu nunca tinha certeza de quando ia ser uma nota ruim ou boa....... Foram muitas sensações.
syl__via
i like the concept of the anime since i have not watch any anime that have the same team skating theme. however, i feel that the execution of the anime sucks, it wasn't very well-planned and well thought of. the characters background wasn't well explained, so i don't really understand the characters fully. additionally, the theme of the anime was about team skating however their competition skating performance keep getting cut off. like the teams can be skating halfway, then it turn to film people's reaction etc, so you are are not able to watch their full performance therefore unable to get why they areawarded certain points. overall, the anime just feels very slipshod and choppy.
animebaby_00
Oooooo boy...where do I start? Honestly, I was actually very excited about this anime. As a huge Yuri on Ice fan, the trailer of this show immediately had me aching for some more boys on ice. I thought it would quench my thirst after 4 years without any full length content involving Yuri on Ice and I am sad to say that this didn't make the cut. At all. We have the basic beginning where a boy is aching to take down a former rival, quits before he gets the chance to, and starts up again once the flame was reignited. Thing is, this basic storylinecan be aced, but it can also be missed. For me, it was a miss.
Another issue I had with this show was that it was VERY rushed. They tried to fit in so much within 12 episodes and it just didn't work well. We got introduced to Skate Leading, never got a full description of it, met a plethora of characters, had some fall out moments, met new characters, had more fallouts and that was only the first 4 episodes.
Now in continuation of characters, I am one who loves to get to know characters accordingly. I love to memorize names, share connections and even fangirl to my hearts content...but with this anime I couldn't do that. I barely even remember thier names and I'm being honest when I say I tried, but it just didn't click. Especially since the characters weren't exactly that special and did nothing extravagant to make me want to build a shrine in their honor.
Speaking of extravagant...where was the stunning ice skating I was picturing? This is an ICE SKATING anime and yet if we tallied all the minutes of skating within every episode, we probably wouldn't exceed past 30 minutes. Not to mention the performances were constantly interuppted, were not as emotional as they could have been, and just weren't memorable at all.
Now is there any good with this show? Y...yeahhh. I would've marked it lower if there wasn't
There are some funny and cute moments with the characters and the costume designs are nice (even though I kept questioning how they could skate in something so flamboyant), the animation style isn't bad and the theme song is quite catchy...but other than that there isn't much else to say.
Is it the worst sports anime out there? No probably not. Could it have been better? Most definitely. Do I recommend it? If you have absolutely nothing else to watch or do, then give it a shot.
Overall, it's not Yuri On Ice, not even close, and I recommend that one much more than Skate Leading Stars.
GrumpyLevi
The main problem with this anime was that it had the opportunity to be good but turned out as an average and forgettable one. To emphasize good things about this anime: the animation and character design are pretty good and the main theme (skate-leading) has untapped chances to be interesting. It has some exciting characters for the first sight (Shinozaki and Sasugai and from an aspect Maeshima too) BUT as I said for the first sight. We don't get deep or any kind of character development (except Shinozaki in last ep.) and this is devastating because they have an inherent potential to be good andversatile characters.
The plot is pretty average, competing with the eternal rival and the end game is really predictable as well. But it's a team sports so it could be much more complex but no, in this anime by and large every character has one or two personality trait and that's all.
Overall, I'm very disappointed because I've waited this anime so much but now I consider this like a waste of time.
LeachieGekuu
This show was a very mixed bag. There were some enjoyable parts, and I wouldn't say the plot or the animation was bad, it just got a lot of things very very wrong. The story revolves around Maeshima Kensei who is used to skate professionally before his parents died. His rival Shinozaki Reo is a skating prodigy who got bored with singles and is moving to the made-up sport of skate leading. His brother Hayato scouts Maeshima for skate leading to beat Shinozaki. This plot is actually pretty interesting in concept and isn't necessarily implemented poorly either. The main problem lies in the characters. Like90% are assholes for absolutely no reason. They're not even likable assholes they're more like the 'I want them to get humiliated' assholes. I understand making Shinozaki's team unlikable because they're kinda the antagonists of the series. But god damn I wanted them stamped into the pavement so hard. Sometimes you just want these people to get their comeuppance in a story and not have it be all morally gray like it usually is in sports anime. But it was hard to feel any satisfaction when I feel like the protagonists' team was almost as unlikable.
Maeshima is really no fun at all. He's supposed to have that shounen protag energy but he comes off as selfish and disagreeable. I never felt like any of their team were actually friends, much less trusted teammates. We don't actually see them practice very often or do much in terms of team bonding. I wanted them to win, but only because I wanted to see Shinozaki lose and not because I actually felt they could or deserved to win. Their coach, who is a famous singles skater recovering from an injury, is one of the worst characters in the show. It takes him forever to actually teach them anything and he mostly just sits around and gives permission for stuff. What an insufferable person, wasting these kid's time and energy and not even teaching them properly. He's the one who took the job, and now these kids are left without a real coach. There was also a purple-haired boy who left the team near the beginning and his character arc is surprisingly poor. I understand his choice to quit the team, and I think that that was a good way for his character to go, but they almost stop showing him after that. He feels more like an afterthought than an actual character and his development mostly happened in like one flashback exposition scene.
Another major problem with the show is the lack of actual skating in it. I know that skate leading is a fake sport and that doesn't really matter much to me as long as it makes some sense. They never really explained the point system much which I'm sure really bothered some people but I wasn't super interested in that kind of stuff. I really just wanted to see the performances which I was, unfortunately, let down on. There is an embarrassingly small amount of skating in skate leading stars. this is especially sad because what they actually had was pretty good when it wasn't being bogged down by weird cuts and scene changes. I wouldn't have minded if they had used CGI for the skating because I know it's expensive, but they just stuck with showing as little as possible instead.
overall, if you want to look at pretty boys give it a shot, but if you are looking for ice skating/the sports anime experience I suggest just watching Yuri On Ice because it is much much better.
CurryxSake
First impression-wise, this show wasn't so bad but not great either. After finishing however, I take back what I said. This show is a waste of time. The story was generic and emotionally meaningless. It's one thing to be cliché--even clichés can be entertaining, but it's another thing to mess up those clichés and using a bare-bones plot. Whether it be its plot, characters, or its made-up sport, the anime fails to give me any reason to be emotionally invested. Until now, I do not see what makes Skate Leading so special as a sport. Why would figure skaters with already okay careers decide to shiftthere is beyond me. Story was barebones and some of the story beats were either unbearable or ridiculous. Scenes that were meant to be funny turned out annoying and scenes that were meant to be serious or heartwarming turned out hilarious.
The characters were below average of anime character tropes. In fact, I think they were below the bare minimum of character development. Most of them were between irritating to boring. The main character was annoyingly selfish. His rival was uninteresting. The MC's friend and coach-wannabe was incredibly petty. Every other team was unwatchable. I think the show also intended these characters to be handsome, but as far as I'm concerned they just look below average. I was so uninterested that I had to rewatch the final episode just to see who won because it passed my mind.
The production was passible if not terrible. Considering that this is a sports anime, the animation sometimes felt stiff whenever the characters are skating or even stretching. It was clear to be me that the show was avoiding to animate the skating leading performances because the camera would shift to the audience commenting how amazing their technical skills are. Almost every time. This was a problem because not only this fails to let me see how amazing and endearing these skaters were, but these performances covered a significant chunk of the show and I found it annoying that the show decided to just tell how great they are instead of showing how great they are. It's such a shame. While the character designs were fine, I noticed that their faces seem to be design's main priority because the body looked stiff and uninteresting. Maybe it's because I watched Yuri on Ice and Free that I began noticing how far someone go in drawing the face and body in great detail.
The OST was forgettable. The opening wasn't impressive musically and visually.
Skate-Leading Stars was a waste of time. If you want a modern decent ice skating anime, there's Yuri on Ice.
fakeharmonies
Would I recommend this show? Maybe. But only with the warning that after episode 1, it’s almost painfully boring and completely unenjoyable to watch until about episode 8. It’s a real shame, I was really rooting for it in a lot of ways (the exposition and explanation of the sport was done SUPER well and seamlessly, especially since it’s a fake sport), but they basically dropped the ball at episode 2. The main character, Maeshima, is unbearable for most of the show. He starts off with an “I’m better than everyone” attitude, gets his ass handed to him several times, and doesn’t improve whatsoever, becausethe fact that he gets his ass handed to him doesn’t impact the plot AT ALL. The characters KEEP making deals and bets with him but there’s always some convoluted reasoning as to why it doesn’t matter in the end. He honestly had a ton of potential to be a relatively compelling, fresh protagonist (he’s a lot harsher than your average ‘genki’ sports anime protag, for example), but instead they just made him annoying and pompous and unable to learn from his MANY mistakes.
Most of the other characters are pleasantly boring at best, with the exceptions being Sasugai, the main team’s coach, Shinozaki, and Noa. Sasugai is by far the best and most interesting character in the show, but they also kind of dropped the ball with him, because he stopped being all sneaky and meddlesome and complex at about episode 4 (I do find the gag of Sasugai being wrapped around the manager’s finger to be pretty funny, though). The coach is infuriating since all he does is ignore the kids and then berate them for WANTING HIM TO DO HIS DUTIES AS A COACH but somehow ends up getting a bunch of praise at the end, despite leaving ALL of his workload to Sasugai. Shinozaki is inconsistant and annoying. Noa is just funny honestly, I didn’t mind him too much.
The animation isn’t bad at all, I liked the art style a lot honestly. The colours are bright without causing an eyesore, and the designs are varied without looking like they shouldn’t be in the same show.
The biggest thing that Skate Leading Stars has going for it is the voice acting. Yuuma Uchida did great as always, and Makoto Furukawa can do no wrong in terms of voice acting in my eyes, honestly. Seriously, the way he voiced Sasugai made my skin crawl in all of the ways that a character like Sasugai SHOULD make your skin crawl. The English dub was also great. Jack Reeder, who voiced Sasugai, was seriously awesome, it’s hard to believe that he has barely any other voice acting credits!
My only issue with the voice acting was the Japanese casting of the Ishikawa twins. They cast actual brothers, Hirofumi Nojima and Kenji Nojima… and then made the gag that the twins didn’t talk, they only whispered incoherently. They cast ACTUAL BROTHERS to voice the brothers, and then made it so that they NEVER TALKED (except for one glorious scene in episode 8 or something). That’s the definition of wasted potential and I’m still mad about it.
The fact that the gender of the manager, Yukimitsu, seems to switch between the Japanese and English versions could technically be seen as an issue, but I mostly just find it funny. I cannot deny that I love an ambiguously gendered king/queen.
Overall, the most positive words that I can use to describe this show is “semi-decent.” The pacing is horrid, the vast majority of the characters are boring, the ending makes no sense, and even though it’s not a COMPLETE garbage fire (I still gave it a 6/10), the many bad moments in the show completely outweigh the good moments for me.
If you’re looking for a quick 12-episode anime with pretty animation about a fake sport, please, unless you’re REALLY bored, just watch Prince of Stride. I am not exaggerating when I say that it does EVERYTHING that Skate Leading Stars tried to do, but infinitely better. If you’ve already watched Prince of Stride, watch this, then watch Prince of Stride again, because it’s going to make you want to watch Prince of Stride again.
ReghuKrishnan
When I started watching this show I thought, "Is this the new Haikyu?". Well, it certainly had the potential to be a decent sports anime. It had good characters, a less-than-generic protagonist, an expectedly overwhelming though generic rival and an excellent build-up to start the show. But despite the good start the execution, pacing and literally everything else just nosedive as the series progresses. The sport is barely explored, the pacing is terrible, and the build-up, hype and twist that one usually expects from a sports anime are non-existent. They try to replace it with poor background narrations and a few animation effects which I amsure even a 5-year-old would find unconvincing. This anime is like an inflatable toy trying to pass off as the real deal.
This looks like a result of "This is all the money we have and you need to finish it in two days or don't.". It's disappointing, as given time and a lot more effort, it certainly could have been a good series.
