Na Nare Hana Nare

Hopes and dreams and friendship of a bunch of cute highschool girls with pompoms can fix anything.

Depression from losing the ability to do your sport? FIXED.
Yips? FIXED.
Some girls favorite shop is closing down? FIXED.

And probably more to come but these are just the problems I remember being “solved” in unrealistic ways in the past 5 episodes.
Fiction doesn’t have to be realistic, but if what you’re trying to achieve is induce some kind of feeling in the viewer (specially stuff like hopelessness and sadness) then there needs to be a certain degree of relatability and realism, but the characters in NareNare seem to go through ... their issues and drama easily as if nothing had really happened, so I find myself not feeling anything, no fear of the issue not getting solved, nor excitement or happiness for the characters when their issues does get solved.

That’s the problem with “Cute Girls Doing Cute Things” shows that try to be more than what they are, and NareNare is exactly that, it’s a moe anime that tries to be a sports drama for some reason, and fails miserably because the “drama” part gets fixed with a bunch of cutesy dance moves.

I don’t know who the target audience is, but something tells me a real cheerleader wouldn’t enjoy this show either, so I guess someone who finds the characters and their personalities attractive would enjoy something like this, but unfortunately for me the characters personalities felt shallow and the character design is just mid.

Also I’m not someone who dislikes anime where nothing happens, I’m a huge fan of CGDCT and enjoy these types of shows, but NareNare just wasn’t entertaining and some of the things that went down in this show were just too ridiculous and none of the characters, who are the most importantly part of these types of shows, really grabbed my attention (I forgot all their names too).

I really wanted to like this show ‘cause the drawings style is so cute, but yeah that was hard. I guess watch it if you have a lot of time to waste like I do.