Prince of Stride: Alternative

Episode 8

This episode of Prince of Stride: Alternative turned out to be a surprise family reunion! But not the good, memory-making kind. More like the depressing, guilt-tinged angsty kind for everyone involved, and the team's regular goofy antics did little to reconcile matters. Between these miserable meetups and half-hearted visual gags, this up and down episode failed to find a middle ground.

Only in anime could the main character's father be a minor celebrity in the main character's subject of interest—and she still has no idea. Nana says her father never spoke about his work, which is only believable in the dating sim world where this story originated, given that Nana was interested in all things Stride from a very young age. It creates a very manufactured but dramatic situation when “King” Joe Sakurai, the father of Stride, is going face to face in a time trial against Honan and his daughter, “Princess” Nana! If this rings a little hollow, it's because we haven't had even an entire episode to process Nana's absentee father or wonder about what he does. He's never been brought up until this point. So when Nana agonizes over how to face her father after all this time, I simply can't care very much.

That's why the two other reunions are more successful. Tomoe Yagami has some deep ties with the members of Honan's Stride team, and plenty of screen time has been spent on that already. Riku, cheerful first-year/Tomoe's little brother with an inferiority complex, is a main character whose awe and envy of Tomoe have tinged every race he's been in. Now getting caught in a reunion by surprise isn't sitting well with him. When Riku wants to storm off, and Takeru grabs his arm to stop him, Riku looks at his dark-haired friend and scowls, “you're just like Tomoe.” Well I guess there's a little something for us to unpack next episode. Tomoe is batting zero today, because he has an equally unfortunate meetup with his ex-teammates, Kyousuke and Heath. This dream team has nothing to say to each other anymore, and concludes that “we never connected” in the first place. I'm not really sure how they can sense this (in their footfalls maybe?), but I do think that they will probably soon be best friends again.

I mean, maybe everyone would be a little more amenable to reconciliation if they hadn't had their butts so conclusively handed to them in the time trial. Don't worry, it's not an official part of the tournament, so the plot can have these guys sink to rock bottom without it affecting their chances of winning. No, only their pride has been stepped on today. But goodness, the Stride race was the single best part of the episode. These competitors brought out all the bells and whistles (and literal circus tricks) to crush Honan, and it was beautiful. It's just hard to be sympathetic to these two-dimensional dating sim personas. At this point, I am ready to root for whoever brings out the best action and animation in the show. The synchronization of this team was satisfying to watch, just like the best parts of previous episodes have shown Honan rocking the top of their game.

Honan wasn't doing so hot today. Remember that painfully melodramatic episode of Free! Eternal Summer that culminated with everyone either yelling or hiding or injured and crying in the shower? It was a low moment for that sports anime, and it's a low moment here, as the characters struggle and fail to find any silver lining around their epic loss. Kohinata and Ayumu's antics are no match for the wave of melodrama, lending to a dark (but not deep) episode that isn't giving me the peppy athletic action I signed up for.

Rating: B-

Prince of Stride: Alternative is currently streaming on Funimation.

Lauren writes about anime and journalism at Otaku Journalist.