In watching Dance Dance Danseur this week, I was put in mind of Hoshiai no Sora (after flashing to Hourou Musuko last time – fine company again).  Akane Kazuki (like his contemporary Iso Mitsuo) is a creator for whom children are his muse.  He’s also one who writes about them with great authenticity, and Hoshiai no Sora is one of the best anime at capturing the nature of boys this age you’ll ever see.  In it one of the teachers refers to them as “grasshoppers” – the meaning is self-evident – and that really applies to Junpei.  But that teacher (as the boys’ coach pointed out) was wrong when she assumed there was no thought accompanying the movement.

Middle schoolers are not high schoolers, nor are they elementary schoolers.  It sounds obvious but it’s something manga and (especially) anime tends to get wrong most of the time.  Junpei is a force of nature, a whirlwind of emotion and movement.  He’s between everything – the eternal pinball at the mercy of life’s flippers.  It’s hard for any adult to marshal him because he doesn’t know how to marshal himself.  The world is equal parts exhilaration and frustration because no possibility seems too great, but what he wants is the instant gratification of achievement.  This is the challenge facing Chizuru-san, and she’s going to need all the strength and patience she can muster.

What a difference an actor makes in a show that reaches as high as this one, and thank goodness DDD didn’t take the obvious route, instead casting the outstanding Yamashita Daiki here.  He manages to convey both the boy with the “danseur noble” potential inside him, and the one for whom it’s a million miles away.  In many respects this story is at its core a battle of wills between Junpei and Chizuru, although their ultimate goal is the same.  With his inner danseur unleashed Junpei’s dream generator is running overtime, filling his eyes with sparkles as every new possibility occurs to him.

I love the way this expressed itself when Chizuru-san told him how it would be impossible for him to ever dance as a lead in Russia.  Surely the notion never occurred to him before she mentioned it, but as soon as she did he latched onto it and wouldn’t let go.  That it was impossible was the reason he wanted it.  And when she admitted she had the same dream for him, it made me wonder if she didn’t tell him that hoping to get the exact response she did.  He may have all the natural ability in the world, but she’s the one who’s stuck trying to unlock it.  And he’s ten years in the hole, besides – impossibly old to ever start pursuing something like ballet as a vocation.

Chizuru-san falls back on the only thing she can – drilling the basics, over and over.  Junpei, naturally, being thoroughly insane for ballet and very 14 besides, wants to jump (pun intended) straight to the choreography.  The problem for her is that he won’t be stopped – he’ll drive himself constantly whether she’s there to drill him or not, only sleeping four hours a night because she insists on it.  He’t trying to make up for that lost decade any way he can, but it’s her job to try and get him to channel all that grasshopper energy into real progress rather than just reinforcing bad habits.  Junpei’s Mom isn’t wrong to worry about Chizuru.

There are two fantastic studio scenes closing the episode, the first when Chizuru-san finally allows Junpei to dance the pas de deux from Swan Lake with Miyako.  He knows the choreography, of course.  But he also knows the emotion, instinctively – he is the prince, all innocence and primal longing, and Miyako is quite unprepared for it.  Even Chizuru praises him for his acting – though she orders him to concentrate on his form instead, as that’s how he’ll be compared to Luou.  Where Junpei was embarrassed the first go-around, this time his raw magnetism and directness is too much for Miyako – she’s not ready for this, plain and simple.

Finally, the long-awaited encounter between Junpei and Luou, which the latter has been avoiding.  Junpei has to basically stake out the studio while pretending to have gone home (lights turned off, key in the mailbox) to get Luou on the dance floor with him.  Part of this is the simple desire to dance with Luou – they do so in Swan Lake after all.  But has also needs to express his admiration for Luou’s transformative dance in the auditorium at school.  It’s not an apology – I think he wanted to but just didn’t know how to say it, and this was as close as he could muster.  For Junpei this awkward confession of respect – and the challenge that accompanies it – is the only way he knows to try and break down the wall that Luou has constructed between them.