Just an hour ago at this time of writing, in the early morning 3:30 am, I finished watching Ginban Kaleidoscope and well, I love it very much. It’s been a long time since I watched something that touched me so much that I swear I would not be able to shake it off my mind for the next few days. The story’s about Sakurano Tazusa, a figure skater that’s aiming to skate in the Olympics being held at Torino (Turin, Italy), and her unfortunate (yet fortunate) incident of being possessed by a Canadian ghost called Peter Pumps, a stunt plane pilot whose plane malfunctioned and crashed. Well, story sounds unique enough, I guess that was probably why it got me to watch it just by reading the synopsis. Anyway, that aside, here’s my review of the anime in different parts of story, animation, music, character and overall.
Story: 10/10
Well normally one would think, “How can an anime about figure skating be any good? It’s just figure skating after all. What could have made this anime so great to make it worth the time watching?” Well, here’s the answer to that: The story. Ginban Kaleidoscope has a really attracting story that gets you hooked on for pretty much hardly any reason at all. I for one am not a fan of figure skating in anyway. Heck, I don’t even care (Or know much) about figure skating at all, but Ginban’s storyline was so well written, I got hooked on after the first three episodes. It’s hard to explain it, but I’m pretty sure everyone gets this “This show is awesome” kind of gut feeling in you when you watch something good.
Anyway, Ginban’s story is also very balanced between slice of life like everyday challenges, the sports competitiveness and rivalries between skaters, as well as the romance going on with Tazusa and Peter as the anime progresses. Another one positive thing about the story is that it’s neither too long hence draggy or boring, nor too short and sudden. As a person who loves slice of life and romance genre, the anime is a nice and sweet 12 episode series that got my eyes to water even though I’m not a very easily moved person. The ending was just so well delivered I couldn’t help it. It was diabetes-inducing kind of sweet, yet heartbreakingly painful at the same time. Even though I knew from the start it would be impossible for Tazusa and Peter to reach an end where everyone is with each other and happy, I could not help but feel that it was kind of cruel to have to split them. Seriously, I couldn’t find a flaw in the story when I watched it, and hence I gave this section a perfect score.
Animation: 8/10
Well the animation of the show doesn’t have much flaws in it that I could pick out, it certainly could be slightly better. For example, when Peter starts to recall his performances on the stunt plane before his death, I wished they had several different stunts played randomly instead of the same ones you see every time Peter recalls his past. However, that aside, the animation was pretty well done. As this is a figure skating anime, the animation is a rather crucial factor that determines whether this anime is great or just averagely mediocre, and as far as I have seen from the anime, the figure skaters’ poses are greatly animated, especially when they do tricks in mid air like Lutz or Axel jumps, the rotation of the character was perfect. The overall beauteousness of the anime is just above the average: simple and common. However, when it boils down to it, the animation of the skating scenes are the most important areas, and Aniplex did a good job on that. Lastly, the opening video was very well made, and it pretty much is made up of skating frames, which I’ve said are very well done, and hence the overall of this section has been given an 8/10 from me.
Sound: 7.5/10
The opening theme of the anime addictive if you listen to it more than twice. They lyrics weren’t bad, nor was the tune of the song: cheerful, light and energetic. The ending song was pretty nice as well, and it was sung by Marina Inoue, one of my favourite female voice actors in the anime industry, so you could tell a little bit of bias here (But even so the song’s not bad so bias or not it doesn’t really matter). Other than that, there is the background musics. Many of them are classical pieces used during programs in the rink, and if you have listened to the original pieces before, they’re pretty good pieces (Unless of course you don’t have a taste in classical music), like for example, Tazusa’s program for the first half uses the piece Zigeunerweisen written by Pablo de Sarasate. As classical music happen to be one of the genres I like, it’s good to hear some of them in the anime. As for Tazusa’s second half, she used Ougon Dorobou, composed by Koichiro Kameyama, a free jazz piece. Belonging to the cheerful jazz, simply listening to it lifts your mood and makes you simply want to dance to it. You’ve probably guessed it as well, jazz happened to be another type of music genre I like, so when I first heard this song I was pretty overjoyed. Even though most of the time the background music is drowned out by dialogues and sound effects, they’re still good to listen to and hence I gave a 7.5/10 for this section.
Character: 7.5/10
Well, character design wise they’re pretty lovely, especially Tazusa when she was in the waitress costume. Tazusa is also voiced by Kawasumi Ayako, who happen to voice Saber from Fate/Stay Night, whose voice fits Tazusa’s personality pretty well personally. For Peter, he has a pretty simple design: a casual clothing design that he wears all the time, and the pilot uniform he wore before his death. He was voiced by Hiroyuki Yoshino (Hibiki in Vandread and Firo in Bacanno! anyone?), which like Tazusa, fits the character image pretty well. Personally I don’t have issues with the other characters, except for Dominique I guess, since I couldn’t help but squirm and chuckle each time she speaks English (Which is all the time she speaks). Well, even so, the variety of skating costumes are pretty cute if you ask me, especially the kimono costume Tazusa wears in the opening video and in episode 4. It didn’t even looked like a skating uniform, but a short-shirt variation kimono instead. With that said, I give a 7.5/10 for this section.
Overall: 8.3/10
Overall, Ginban Kaleidoscope is a very well made anime that I would love to recommend this to people who shares similar taste with me, and even if you don’t, I’ll still recommend it to you and let you decide whether you want to watch it or not. But hey, I didn’t had any interest in Figure Skating, yet this anime attracts me so much, so there’s not much I could say other than watch it yourself to find out about it.
