It’s funny. Medalist ended up being about as good as I expected, but took an unexpected route to get there. Tsumaraikada’s manga is extremely well-reviewed on aggregator sites. It’s won and been nominated for a lot of awards. And it’s a sports manga to boot (albeit for a sport that doesn’t interest me all that much in RL). All that is why it was in my “Highest Expectations” and “Will Definitely Blog” categories in the preview despite my not having read any of it.

The qualifer here is ENGI, the studio behind this adaptation. Their track record is… not august, let’s just put it that way. With some shows that wouldn’t be as big a concern, but figure skating – that figured (no pun intended) to be a tough transition to the screen. Many (including me) had nightmare visions of CGI bears and horses dancing in our heads thinking on what was to come. At the very least the skating sequences were probably the biggest worry going into the series, and the reason why a lot of us had reservations about Medalist as an anime.

Well, as it turns out the skating was fine, really. ENGI did put an experienced and capable staff in charge here, so the big concern was the animation itself. But it was perfectly acceptable – some CGI but nothing egregious. And the choreography (obviously important for a figure skating anime) is quite good. That’s one episode and a show can certainly crater production-wise at any point, but there’s nothing in the premiere to suggest that’s likely. There was some stuff that didn’t click with me that had nothing to do with the production values, however. And given that I don’t have exposure to the source material I have no idea if that’s a manga issue or an adaptation issue.

In essence Medalist is the story of two people. One is Akeruaji Tsukasa (Ohtsuka Takeo), a 26 year-old former competitive ice dancer now scraping by on ice show gigs. He started late – 14, which is incredibly late for a skater, even a boy. And while he made it to nationals, he’s convinced it was due to his partner Takamine Hitomi (Katou Emiri) and that he screwed himself by waiting too long. While visiting Nagoya for an interview for a rink job, he has a run-in with a 5th-grader named Yuitsuka Inori (Haruse Natsumi) who he thinks is sneaking into the rink. Turns out she’s trading worms she digs up to the oji-san at the ticket booth in exchange for letting her skate.

Inori and Tsukasa get off to a rough start, but it becomes clear to him pretty quickly that they’re kindred spirits. She struggles to tell her parents (Mom at least) that she wants to skate. She’s getting long in the tooth to seriously get started. He gives her encouragement and the numbers of some local skating clubs, including one run by Takamine-san. Eventually Takamine offers to get Tsukasa a job as an assistant coach, and Inori and her mother Nozomi (Koshimizu Ami) walk in during the interview. Tsukasa has a habit of going off half-cocked and full-voiced, which drives Hitomi nuts but serves him well here.

Inori is a bit of a sad sack. She’s friendless and unhappy at school, and her mother is determined not to let her skate after her older sister dedicated herself to it from age five (which is about the normal age) but had to quit after an injury. Nozomi (I just boarded a Nozomi a few minutes ago) means well I suppose, but her attitude towards Inori is pretty galling. She demeans her ability and dismisses her intense desire to skate seriously. Tsukasa is not a neutral here by any means, but he legitimately does see talent in the little girl – and he more or less bulldozes his way into becoming her coach. It’s a good start to a sports manga premise.

So wherein lies the rub? I do have some niggles, starting with Haruse’s performance as Inori. It strikes me that this would really have been a nice role to cast a real child in. But even given that, I’m struggling with Haruse here – she sounds like a mom doing an impression of her 11 year-old at a party (the rest of the cast is fine). There’s also a lot of melodrama in the tone – big emotional moments where everyone kind of stops and stares agape as a speech is given or tears are rained down. I certainly get that this is some emotionally intense stuff story and character-wise – that’s surely a big reason why readers (apart from lolicons, who are apparently a sizable part of the fanbase) like this series. But at times it comes off a little forced.

I’m not going to get too stressed yet. Premieres, like endings, are hard. The production itself seems competent and as I said, the staff should be up to the task. Given the pedigree the manga has I’m at least hopeful that the writing finds a groove soon enough. There’s certainly tremendous potential in the setup and a lot to like, including Tsukasa, who has an interesting background. Inori I’m not as sure of yet (it’s hard to separate the character from the performance after only one episode), but she’s spunky and cute at least, and legitimately talented. I’m not sold yet, but I’ll certainly be disappointed if I’m not eventually.