The Gymnastics Samurai

Episode 3

I believe a requirement for a sports anime to be truly good is an ability to make its chosen activity engaging and exciting even to newcomers who know nothing about it. It's easy to please a dedicated crowd of fans just by showing off techniques that both they and you know are cool already. Inducting the general audience into what's impressive about what they're watching requires efficiently imparting the information necessary to that and keeping some kind of general stakes in play for whatever competition is happening. In other words, good overall storytelling regardless of whether it's sports or anything else. The Gymnastics Samurai has notably been light on showing actual gymnastics for its first couple of episodes, but the time has come in this third episode to finally show off the titular activity in something akin to a competition, and the show thankfully succeeds at drawing us into this game it's staked its existence on.

Newly-apparent rival character Minamino mutters “This is ridiculous” at the end of this one, but in actuality, this is probably the most grounded and serious The Gymnastics Samurai has been so far. It's down to all the focus on planning, practicing, and executing the gymnastics. It's kind of a testament to the entertainment value of the show so far that I hadn't really worried about this aspect until now; just watching Jotaro train generally while dealing with the consequences of his poorly thought-out not-retirement and all the ninja nonsense going on around him worked great at keeping the drama and amusing energy flowing. But introducing how gymnastics actually works this late into the series turns out just fine after all, because the storytelling is so sharp about it. We don't get a ton of point-by-point explanations of the sport, rather a few examples via Coach Amakusa reviewing video footage to impart to us the kinds of things that affect scoring in it.

That kind of efficiency in setting up depictions of the gymnastics routines to be entertaining goes all the way back to the beginning of this series. Jotaro missing his grab in the opening moments of the first episode was a good establishing point for the story of where his comeback was starting from, but it also gives us context necessary to appreciate the tension in watching him perform in this episode's climax. We've already seen the consequences of mistiming or misjudging such an action, so it's easy to get swept up because the scene is plotted and directed around calling attention to that issue repeatedly. It all works as an effective starting point to bring us into the sport, and provides a framework they could build on to make us more aware of other advanced moves and up the excitement factor of other routines even more.

Indeed, the dueling routines between Jotaro and Minamino at the end of this episode work as entertaining demonstrations of the sport that is gymnastics, but also continue the show's strength in efficiently weaving in storytelling. They actually caught me off-guard – I initially assumed the mention of Jotaro's dangerous forbidden gymnastics technique "the Aragaki" was the show setting it up to be deployed by him later on in the series, but instead it's Minamino who drops it on the characters and us in the audience to make a point in his routine. It's great because it fulfills his personality statement asserting his feelings of Jotaro's obsolescence, while Jotaro's delightful inability to understand other people's subtext leads him to interpreting it as a challenge: his next goal to aspire to in his efforts. The flow of the story in this show can move as smoothly as, well, a well-practiced gymnastics routine.

The competition being an effective payoff and an impressive demonstration of how this sports anime is going to handle the actual sports make this episode successful, but I can't quite say it's The Gymnastics Samurai at its best. As I mentioned, the characteristic silliness quotient has been noticeably dialed down for this one. It does make sense in pursuit of the subject it's leading to, but it means that after being taken aback in the first episode that I wasn't just getting a simple gymnastics family drama, effectively having just that in this one means I already miss the previous, more eccentric flavor. Leo's still here, but he gets just one brief scene seemingly setting up a future subplot about Rei being bullied (which will NOT stand!), otherwise he's mostly goofing around in the background of Jotaro's training sequences and rival face-offs.

The training sequences end up being another weak link in this episode. While the episode is effective in explaining what we need to know to be entertained by the gymnastics routines, a whole chunk of time is taken up by a rote training montage of the most obviously budget-conscious, all-still frames and superimposed calendar dates. It's honestly a good thing we have Leo's photobombing continuing in most of this, since it would feel like a waste of the show's dramatic and eccentric ambitions otherwise. On top of all that, despite ostensibly being introduced to us this episode, Minamino at this point feels less like a character than he is an obstacle. As with any well-drawn rival character in a sports show, I'm very curious about what backstory-bug crawled up his butt to make him act the way he does, but there's little indication here, and we don't see any of his personality outside his antagonistic interactions with Jotaro. I understand that the story of The Gymnastics Samurai is really only getting started, but it says a lot that both gymnastics routines at the end of the episode only really engaged me with how they affected Jotaro, and I had little interest in what Minamino's performance actually meant for him at this moment. I get what he thinks of Jotaro, but what I really want to know is why.

Don't get me wrong, this episode of The Gymnastics Samurai is still plenty good, it just lacks a lot of the more distinctive, punchy elements that made the first two episodes such a pleasant surprise. There's something to be said for workmanship, of course, especially in this episode getting its own kind of surprise in by traditionally animating most of the gymnastics sequences after shorter teases had used iffy-looking CGI. We've got an effective framework from those first three episodes put together so far, and those wacky government-agents look to be returning for the next episode, so I've got hopes the series won't stay this low-key for too long.

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The Gymnastics Samurai is currently streaming on Funimation.