With Kanata and Anna getting their storylines, it’s finally time for Nodoka to take the spotlight. In theory, this would be a solid episode, as the contrast between her nice girl personality and her actual desire to not engage with other people seems like an interesting or at least somewhat entertaining topic. In practice, it turned out to be the most boring episode of the series yet – and one that may have extinguished the last embers of my enthusiasm for it.

Despite setting up their new cheerleading request service, the girls are unable to find any takers until they receive an offer from a girl named Rara, who goes to the same school as Nodoka. Rara is the captain of her school’s cheerleading team and wants the PomPoms to help her cheer on the baseball team at the next game and compete against their rivals at Kanata’s school. We learn that she was once part of the cheerleading team herself, but never really warmed to the idea that cheering on others would somehow make her better at sports. She didn’t like having to constantly meddle in other people’s business when she would rather be left alone (which, as an introverted person, I can totally relate to), so she decided to continue to keep to herself and her friends.

Given this potential drama, I was expecting to see Nodoka’s desire to stay in her comfort zone, or some fun cheerleading theatrics between the two teams — but somehow we end up seeing neither. Instead, it mostly cuts back and forth between the two teams’ competing cheerleading routines and the actual baseball game — which certainly feels lifelike to anyone who goes to local games, but isn’t really what I’d call exciting. And the constant back-and-forth made it hard to tell what exactly the show was trying to draw my attention to. While the cheerleading routines are well-animated and look fairly realistic, the focus on realism here arguably works against that. There’s just enough extra flair in Kanata’s school’s cheerleading routine to put more emphasis on their actual performance, but the visual direction of both routines is frankly boring – and for a show that’s all about cheerleading, I didn’t feel like it really drew me into their performances. It doesn’t help that the core conflict isn’t really explored in depth here, as we learn before the game even begins that Rara and the captain of Kanata’s school have been friends since childhood. Neither side seems to have it out for the other, so this mostly comes down to disagreements. While there are certainly differences between competitive cheerleading and cheerleading as a form of support, it’s not exactly a topic that garners much interest outside of the world of cheerleading – so I feel like the overall presentation would need to include a bit more if it’s really going to focus on that idea.

I was also a little disappointed in how Nodoka’s role in this ended, as it ultimately boiled down to her simply getting more invested in cheering on her team than she expected and being frustrated when they ended up losing. It’s at least a somewhat bittersweet resolution compared to how neatly and tidily Kanata and Anna’s stories wrapped up. But much like the end of their storylines, the ending feels a bit too simplistic considering how much the show had to work with. In the end, it doesn’t feel like anything really changed about Nodoka other than she grew to appreciate the idea of ​​cheering on others a bit more – and while I’ve accepted that that’s all the show is really interested in, it’s still annoying to see it repeatedly present potentially complex character stories only to resolve them in the simplest way possible.

I’ll be honest though: Aside from my issues with the script, my biggest issue with this episode is that it’s boring. Nothing about it is particularly bad, even compared to the low points of previous episodes, but despite everything it presented, there wasn’t much to really latch onto. That’s the biggest issue I could speak to about the show so far. It feels like we’re a long way from what the first few episodes promised – and given the many stumbles the show has made since then, I’m no longer confident it can turn things around.

Evaluation:

Narenare -cheers to you!- is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.