 |
Dance*Drill (Dandori),
starring Kato Rosa and Eikura Nana as plucky high school juniors discovering the exciting world of competition cheer dancing. The two are best friends just starting their junior year when Nana sees an exciting cheer dance routine and is immediately smitten. She decides on the spot to start their own school cheer dance team. Rosa goes along as usual, they ARE best friends after all. Soon after, 3 other girls join up: a quiet, studious “good girl”, a lonely, too mature for her age “bad girl”, and a karate black belt “tough girl”. As the girls practice their cheer dance routines, they become close friends. The girls face many trials and hurdles as they work towards their goal of competing in a national cheer dance competition.
This series was apparently based on an actual high school cheer dance team – see the “Making of..” episode on the third disk.
The English captioning was tolerable. As this was a “Coming of age” theme based on mostly physical action, close understanding of the dialog was not necessary to follow most of the story. Also, since the high school students’ dialog was mostly common conversational Japanese, the non-native Japanese speakers SHOULD be able to follow along. Probably.
All in all, this was an enjoyable 10 episodes. The “Making of” episode was DEFINITELY worth watching.
Rating:  [5 of 5 Stars!] |
|
|
