General Impression: Dive!

Synopsis

This is the story of Tomoki Sakai and his journey as a diver of the Mizuki Diving Club (MDC). But trouble is on the rise as rumors of the club shutting down begin to rise with not only the chairman of the company behind the club passing away but also the decrease in diving coaches. One day however, hope is on the rise once more as a female coach makes an appearance and she makes the challenge to the team to reach for the Tokyo Olympics?!

The Good

The animation in the diving, water movement and overall muscle movement is something to commend for with the series. Most often with sports series the focus goes to the climactic part of the sports action and other points are rushed or look like blurs or freeze shots. Here you can see almost every movement put into the dives, from the starting point right up to the splash and even bubbles made in doing so.

The plot while not overly exciting is easy enough to follow and the schematics of the sport is explained easily enough that a viewer would be able to understand it. The protagonist is somewhat different from the usual and there is actual drama relating to the “normal” side and the sports side that is not often seen in other series. There are even little thoughtful moments that slip in here and there.

In terms of characters the top one so far would be Kyouko Asaki, the new female coach of the team. Most often than not, there are three to four types of girls that are found in sports anime are the tomboyish friends, the sweet/shy one, the fangirls and the one who ends us either a manager/coach but ends up being either the silent/serious type or the overly aggressive type. For Asaki she is none of those, rather she is a beautiful woman with a strong personality but not so much that it is heavy handed.

Another rather interesting point is that each of the characters have their own special theme and it’s either a good listen or otherwise amusing.

The Bad

For any sports anime fan who would watch this, the amount of cliches that have done multiple times in other anime is rather glaring from just a few scenes. But unlike in previous anime that turned cliches in their favour, from the first episode shows it to simply take the cliche and amp up the drama from it.

In addition to the generic and cliched tropes of the plot, there is the fan bait. Being an anime featuring half-naked males it is to be expected that there will be a female fanbase. But it is also obvious from the blushing moments of the protagonist, the off nature with his “girlfriend” and the meeting style of the star character and the protagonist that the series is trying to vye the larger fanbase of females who are appealed by the trope of malexmale.

Speaking of the characters, who are also rather generic, especially on the case of the “top” characters, with their stoic expressions and determination to win. With the protagonist, he seems to come off as rather flip flop in terms of portrayal, one side passive, the other happy  loving sport head. The side characters also come off as buffers and rather obvious in personality types.

The art is also rather off with the strange proportions, the over the top muscular work that isn’t appropriate for the stated ages of the characters and eve the eerily similar style of the main character to one other water loving character. There is also the amount of brightness and strange reflection off the characters and the water that makes little sense.

Conclusion

There are many cliche and generic moments to be pointed out with the series but it is not without its somewhat good points. Still for any viewer the amount of cliches, heaviness in drama and  generic qualities of the characters would be a rather turn off from the rest of the series. What it does have going for it is its diving animation, water animation, and Asaki as a rare strong independent female character without any excess like many others.

RATING: 5/10