©なれなれプロジェクト/菜なれ花なれ製作委員会
I was feeling pretty cautious about the direction the show was going after last week's episode because I wasn't sure how much I liked the change in perspective and how abruptly it got rid of all the bad feelings Nodoka had after the first three episodes. However, I wanted to be optimistic because I liked what the first few episodes brought and not judge until this new plot was over. Now that it's here, I can safely say that it was disappointing and has me really worried about what's going to happen in the rest of the show.
After getting a briefing on Anna's situation from Nodoka, Kanata and the others come up with a cheering routine to support the record store. This in itself feels a little uncomfortable. While I understand that these girls want to support their friends, since this largely involves the business of someone they don't know, it seems like they're overstepping their bounds a bit here. It certainly doesn't help that they end up doing most of this without Anna knowing, and considering they even go as far as signing up for a local festival to do it, it seems like that's something they should have drawn her in from the start. Anna only finds herself angrier about the whole situation since the friends she made at the store weren't able to support her much, so it's understandable that she doesn't react well to the girls proposing their solution. Similar to Kanata's situation, all it took was a few words of encouragement from the others. Anna decided to go along with their plan, despite knowing that it wouldn't do much good.
However, that pales in comparison to the actual resolution. When the day of the festival arrives and the girls start dancing, Anna’s friends from overseas also show up to support. While that might be a little too cheesy for my taste, it would be easy enough to wave if it were just that. What’s much harder is that her friends are also famous music artists and their presence brings a lot of traffic to YJ’s store. It’s that level of convenience that turns the scene from touching to ridiculous and more or less undermines this entire plot. Putting aside how obviously silly the idea is, it also makes everyone involved seem pretty stupid since a few social media posts from the people promoting this store could have probably resolved this entire conflict. The only saving grace here is that the girls' cheering routine doesn't magically save the store, but given how things turned out, it seems like the more reliable option.
What’s really interesting here is that while YJ still plans to close the store, he keeps it open purely for Anna’s sake. His solution to attract more customers is to… open a cafe on the first floor, which, you know, isn’t necessarily a bad business decision, but it also feels like something he should have thought of before things got this bad.
I don't like to be too hard on the plot because I don't think a story needs to have perfect logic to be effective, but this is such a completely bizarre solution that it's hard not to. It feels too simple for how messy a problem the show is struggling with, and while I'm willing to give some benefit of the doubt when Kanata gets over his yips in an equally convenient way, now seeing this overly neat solution has me worried that it might be a feature rather than a bug. Since all of this ends without knowing the details of what happened to Anna's dad, I want to maintain some hope that the show might do something more about that later, but even if it does, I'm not confident that it will succeed. There's still plenty of time for this show to turn things around, so I'm not ready to write it off just yet. But if this ending is a sign of things to come, I'm not sure how much I want to continue cheering for this cheerleading show.
Rating:
Narenare-Cheer for you!-is now streaming on Crunchyroll.
