Cafe Snowbelle: Anime ATM 67 Dive!!

I've been in university for over a month now. It's kind of surreal thinking about how the first night I sobbed my eyes out and how it felt like I was the only one lost and alone. I'm still a little bit lonely and I'm still a little bit lost. But I have this feeling that it'll all work out. I think you just have to put all the effort you can into things and they'll reward you in some sort of way. Is that cheesy? Of course it is, but I think we all need some reassurance at times that it'll be alright, if not now then someday down the road.

On another note ~

My friend really hyped this anime up so I was expecting some Free/Haikyuu level sports anime camaraderie and pure boys ok? But maybe it's because my tastes in anime is changing, maybe it's because only sports team anime really gets me hyped, or maybe it's something else I can't entirely express yet.

{Spoilers?}

It starts off promising with Tomoki discovering diving through his hero, also love interest let's be honest here, Yoichi. They've got a nice analogy going on with the diving structure as a concrete dragon to be conquered. And then they've got the whole improvement through necessity to save MDC and to better themselves. It's pretty good, pretty standard. And then at the end when they've made it to the Olympics or are going off their separate ways it gives a nice transition to the second season. To be honest I doubt there'll be a second season. The water sport with cute guys niche has been filled and there wasn't a whole lot of hype around this.

You've got your standard characters. There's the cool boy prodigy Yoichi who's pretty cutthroat when it comes to being number one. But he's got this stupid side of him that's a result of him only ever focusing on diving. We get to see that for the one filler episode. And then you've got your wild angry boy Okitsu with Kagami from KnB's eyebrows kinda. He reminds me of Kagami too with his insistent, bullish nature and his body shape I think. His back injury was a minor plot twist; maybe it's because I wasn't super invested that I just thought it was kind of sad, but it wasn't that compelling. And then you've got the happy-go-lucky small boy Tomoki. He's the underdog among the three junior high boys, but he's special. Which predictably makes his friends Ryo and Reiji undergo some changes with the changing power/superiority dynamic among them. I'm happy Ryo found basketball and Reiji became more determined in his quiet way. And then you've got the new coach who brings a breath of fresh air to the club Coach Asaki who really rallies the troops.

As you can see it's pretty predictable. There's some funny moments. It just didn't do anything for me maybe because of the underlying competition between all of them because diving is a solitary sport. Maybe it was the added factor of not knowing much about swimming and having all of these numbers and such being thrown at me left and right without knowing any of what was happening made it hard to enjoy. It just fell flat for me.

Overall, if you like guys in speedos that are all scary ripped I think you'd like this. If you like predictable, cliche storylines (no shame, I enjoy a good show like that every once in a while) this is also for you. There's some good little bits and pieces, it just wasn't the best thing I've ever seen. LOL sorry if this Anime ATM was a bit flat, it's just this show wasn't bomb. I remember the days where I used to love every single show, now those days are fewer and far in between. *dramatic spotlight*