By The Worm Brush
– Posted on 09 Apr 2022 at 22:14
As with every new season, a new slew of anime are coming. This spring of 2022 is no exception. Dance Dance Danseur has just joined Crunchyroll’s catalog with the release of the first episode. But is the new project of the MAPPA studio really worth the detour?
If you don’t know dance dance dancer, Nothing suprising. The manga has not been published in France, at least for now. In Japan, the work of GEORGE Asakura, known here for On edge published by Delcourt, however has 23 volumes and is still being published. Produced by the studio MAPPA (Jujutsu Kaisen, the final season of attack on titanetc.), the arrival of the anime could well be the long-awaited signal for French publishers to take an interest in the title.
In the same spirit, the editor Noeve Grafx recently started the French publication of Welcome to the Ballroom. Whereas in Welcome to the Ballroomthe main protagonist discovers ballroom dancing somewhat by chance, in dance dance dancer, the main character, Junpei Murao, has always loved ballet since childhood. But before he can actually take lessons, his father dies. Convinced that he must perpetuate his father’s legacy, the young Junpei put aside his passion for ballet and devoted himself to activities considered by society to be “more manly”. But the arrival of a new student in her high school will change everything.
Dance Dance Dancer: A Song of Love to Dreams
Although the pitch may seem childish, dance dance dancer turns out to be very mature. Indeed, the story emphasizes this internal conflict that many of us have probably already felt: choose between what we really want and what is socially acceptable. And the character of Junpei, who is a teenager, is certainly the best ambassador of this feeling, at least in the case of dance and more specifically ballet, a sport that is still considered too much for women.
Indeed, from the first minutes of the first episode, we see Junpei’s internal conflict take life when his friend starts playing the piano and he instinctively accompanies her to the song. At that moment, these male comrades start making fun of him. However, when he dives back into his memories, we discover a young boy full of enthusiasm for ballet, going so far as to train in the middle of the street.
Junpei’s father was a stuntman. When her son told her he wanted to do ballet, he first tried to talk her out of it.
Going back to the internal conflict, it is all the more visible in Junpei’s father. Indeed, the latter does not know how to react to his son’s request to take up ballet and replies ” We’re going to end up taking you for a girl, what. You need something manly. What about jeet kune do, then?“. This precise moment of the first episode is particularly important, since it becomes the bearer of Junpei’s insecurities, without making his father the villain of the story. But it is particularly the death of his father, and the remark of a man present at the funeral, which will finish locking up Junpei’s dream. The young man will then go so far as to convince himself that ” everything that is not manly is necessarily shameful“.
Although Junpei is driven by a passion for ballet, it is not that specifically that will drive him to take up ballet again. But rather the fact that his new classmate, Miyako Godai, offers him to join his mother’s dance studio. A friendship will therefore be created between the two young people, with Junpei self-persuading to please the young woman..
MAPPA surprises us with accuracy and delicacy
In recent years, we used to see the studio MAPPA on large-scale projects containing violence. We think, for example, of Dorohedoro, Jujutsu Kaisen or the final season of attack on titan. Find the studio on a story as delicate as that of dance dance dancer is therefore a real pleasure.
Indeed, on this first episode, each ballet movement comes to life before our eyes with both power and gentleness, in all the grace possible and imaginable. The different planes make it possible to perfectly accompany each of these movementsalmost turning the viewer into an outside character in the story.
Just like in 2016 with Yuri on Ice, MAPPA signs here a delicate, but powerful anime.
In 2016, the studio had already worked on something quite similar with Yuri on Icewhich, at the time, was hugely successful among Japanese anime fans. dance dance dancer should meet the same success as its predecessor, at least that’s what we wish it, because MAPPA offers us with this first episode an amuse-bouche worthy of the best.
In the end, dance dance dancer opens the spring ball brilliantly. It was notably part of our selection of anime not to be missed and it now proves to us that it has everything from the greatest. As a reminder, the manga is not published in France, but according to the success encountered by the adaptation of MAPPAit is not excluded that a publisher announces it soon in its catalog.