OP: “Stare In Wonder” by BE:FIRST

Sometimes it’s easy to sum up your first impressions of a show. This is not one of those times. There’s so much buzzing around in my head that organizing my reactions into words is (perhaps fittingly) not easy. And so much of it is contradictory, too. There are poles with Wandance, the glorious and the ignominious, and those sorts of series are always harder to sum up than ones which are straight mediocre across the board. A hell of a lot more interesting too, of course. And this show certainly is that.

I guess I can start at the topline and let it filter down from there. Most of this premiere I loved. Best of the season, and probably not that close. The parts I hated, I hated. And they all come down to the same thing. Considering how little I care about dancing (I never do it and I have no real interest in watching it) it’s amazing how invested I felt about Wandance. That phenomenon is not unusual with anime of course, and in fact that have even been a couple of dance shows specifically that I got really wrapped up in.

Of course I’m talking about the CGI here. No sugarcoating it, the dance scenes look like ass. And that stands out all the more because the rest of this episode is frequently beautiful – both visually and narratively. Maybe Wandance is a test of just how important visuals are, because they’re really bad and the rest is great. If a show about the debate club or a quirky romcom has crappy visuals, you can kind of get past it. Even 100% bad CGI can be tolerable in that sort of show, as witness J.C. Staff’s Shinigami Botchan to Kuro Meido.

But this isn’t that. Wandance does seemingly have romance and certainly a compelling human story, but it’s a dance series. Competitive dancing is integral to the plot. It’s hard to totally blow past that. Criticism of anime CGI can feel like a broken record at this point, but the hard truth is this: if anime didn’t still crank out terrible CGI, you wouldn’t hear it. Why are we still talking about this in 2025 – if Orange can be acceptable, why can’t Cyclone Graphics (or most others)? And perhaps an even more pertinent question: who was the one who looked at the early results here and said “this is fine”?

It’s tough because so much else about this is stellar. The dance sequences being grisly just stands out so much more than it would in an otherwise middling effort. But Wandance nails the premiere in every other respect, giving the sense of an extremely well-written series. In the first place, we don’t often see animanga take on the issue of stuttering seriously. Protagonist Kotani Kaboku (Uchiyama Kouki) is a stutterer. I’m not (and neither is Uchiyama as far as I know) but I do know a little about it. Enough to know that it’s incredibly complicated and can be a hard burden for a young person to bear.

As indeed it is for Kaboku. Even his friends don’t really get it – when a couple of girls giggle “You must be jumbling the words up in your head!” one of them agrees. Listening to Kaboku struggle through this is gut-wrenching, which I think is a credit to Uchiyama’s work here. His overall MO is to lay low and avoid attention — even to the point of being a passer more than aa scorer in basketball (he’s a strapping lad) so eyes won’t be on him. He does love to dance but a harrowing experience with a junior high school class video has traumatized him about being seen doing it by other people.

The other major player is Hikari Wanda (Yomiya Hina). Yomiya – Anna from BokuYaba and Osanai from Shoushimin Series – is a non-cookie cutter seiyuu and I appreciate that about her. Wanda loves dancing too, and has real moves, but has never danced with a group. She’s also not particularly good with words and doesn’t judge Kabo for his stutter (or laugh at his dance moves). The main conflict driver of the first episode comes when one of Kabo’s buddies, Takumi, secretly films Wanda dancing as she watches her reflection – getting a panty shot in the process.

Obviously Kabo’s own experience makes him empathetic to what Takumi has done to Wanda here. I’m not going to go and call Takumi a scumbag – this is dumb and inconsiderate, but I can allow that a first-year high school boy might not realize how wrong this is. Kabu certainly does, especially when Takumi shares the video with the basketballers group chat. We may or may not have heard the last of that incident – I don’t know. But it’s only in telling off Takumi for what he did that Kabu is able to speak smoothly and emphatically.

Wanda and Kabu immediately have real chemistry. They share something meaningful is a very believable adolescent way. I also love the fact that Kabu turns to “Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)” by Scatman John for solace. John Paul Larkin was a stutterer who turned to scat singing and used his bully pulpit to reach out to others who struggled with the same problem. The video for that song was produced in 1994 and looks like it could have been made last week, and featured a cast of others who shared the same speech disorder. The song was a worldwide hit and the video has over 265 million views (I confess I’d totally forgotten about both it and Scatman John).

All in all I see enormous potential in Wandance, albeit limited by the fact that’s reportedly only one cour. That CGI, though – it’s a serious problem, and I can’t pretend otherwise. I wish it wasn’t. I wish it wasn’t a big steaming dog turd on an otherwise pristine field of fresh snow. My hope is that it becomes less of an issue for me as I get used to it. Well, that and that the writing really is as good as it was this week. This series has the makings of something pretty special, and that alone would set it apart from the vast majority of new series every season.

ED: “Wondrous” by ELSEE