Been ages that an anime about cycling came up, but hey, we finally got one. The Anime was alright, nothing really great about it, but isn't that bad in a sense that it kind of made up for it in other areas. I honestly just found the execution of the entire thing just very weirdly put together that just made the story and character development awkward in a way. I've seen quite a lot of animes in this genre that tries to introduce many characters, but somehow Rinkai tries to make every character a "favoritable main character", that you start to think this is toomuch screentime and development for what you think is just a supporting main character, I just want to see more of the actual main character that was initially introduced along with their Rival.

It's fine if a series gives the spotlight to a supporting main character once or twice, but you know, trying to showcase and develop other characters so late in the anime, kinda just rubs me in an awkward way. Usually most 13-episode formated sports animes revolves around this very promising lead character and 2 more supporting mains to be the main character's best friend or competitive Rival, and this Anime does it, but also goes beyond the uniform that a 13-episode format series usually does, from "here are the two other supporting main characters" and tries to be instead "yeah lets introduce a character who tried to steal the spotlight from the main character but ended up never seeing again and give 3 more episodes to 3 different characters in the friend group", and among that introduce newer supporting characters that i never heard of just for the sake of character development for one of the group of friends.

I mean first you think, "oh this girl is the main character and she is to get the most of the spotlight and development", but nah, lets showcase the struggles of this other character first for 3 episodes and never make her appear again other than the "I am in the shadows watching you", and then invest 3 other episodes to the remaining 3 friends nearing the ending of the series. I mean like wow, you just invested 3 episodes to a girl that we will never see again, and now you are going to invest 3 more episodes to delve deeper into the remaining characters in the MC's friend group, and on top of that introduce 2 new side characters in one of the episodes, and give them actually quite a lot of screentime just to develop one of the supporting main characters development arc.

Take Haiykuuu for example, so many interesting characters, now imagine trying to introduce those so many characters and developing them within their respective episodes but in a 13 episode style format, just not enough time for anything. The timing of trying to showcase a deeper understanding of these supporting main characters just came out of nowhere nearing the climax of the series. I genuinely felt while watching in the middle of the series, just wanted to see more of the Main character (Itou, Izumi) and her Rival (Hiratsuka, Nana) to have more development because they interested me, because for the first few episodes, the anime makes you interested in the two characters but hey, the series doesn't give them attention any further, completely ignored until the last 2 episodes before the big race, because they invest so many episodes for a girl we won't see again, and 3 other characters in the friend group.

I don't know about this one chief but the execution was just really bad for me, but either way, the animation despite being mixed in with 3DCG for scenes that would require a bigger budget to recreate in 2D, I felt the art was quite attracting and animated well, despite the medicore 3DCG being mixed in, the 2D animation was of great quality, and the soundtrack manages to decently immerse you in tense scenes, the characters even the supporting characters were interesting enough, but it is honestly just how awfully done the execution was that made me not really vibe entirely with the show.

An okay anime nonetheless, and if you aren't so nitpicky and still find the enjoyment in a flawed anime, I do recommend it, just a matter of what your standard is in enjoying animes. No matter the flaw, I enjoy my animes as long as it befits the genre I like, so in this case, I awkwardly enjoyed it. Objectively, I'd give it a 5 or lower, but since my ratings are based on personal enjoyment, it gets a 6-ish I guess.