Extreme Hearts

Nekus Oct 8, 2022

4

“Some anime defy genres, and they usually end up being either very beloved or hated. PuraOre however defies them in a Frankenstein's monster kind of way, being a mess of different elements that barely achieves the barebones level of acceptable cohesiveness and results into a weird but ultimately forgettable and generic show.” As I sat down to write this review those were only words that came to mind. It’s the starting paragraph of my review of PuraOre, another show that tried to mix cute girls doing sports&music that aired just last year.  It’s unfortunate but this experimental mix failed once again because they still lacked a pretty fundamental story aspect: “why the fuck are they doing both?” As long as this is not made clear, you can write all the stupid events and excuses for your story but it will always just feel… off.  In Extreme Hearts for example we have some characters that really just want to sing, and others that just want to do sports… but they end up doing both just because the sporting tournament is made that way. And that just doesn’t make for a very emotional resonant story. You see the characters train for both aspects (though it’s really just 90% about the sports) but they never focus on teamwork or any aspect that would matter in any way to both. It’s just the main character being good at singing and… jumping high. I realize this is a silly example but maybe they could have had the idol performances feature them doing athletic stunts? Sure it might look dumb but it would at least give this show a reason to exist. Speaking of unnecessary things, the entire futuristic aspect is only used to have extremely uncanny android play for the first few episodes with the mc in team sports as she recruited her group and to make the girls just... jump higher and.. hit harder? Not even at ludicrous levels just... a bit more than a regular person? It was wildly unnecessary. As it stands, the sports aspects are barely acceptably animated and lack any well crafted action scene. So sports anime fans are out of luck. And fans of idols shows? Well the girls are not really that cute nor interesting/charming. Especially as far as all the rival groups go, where out of thirty or so girls only two of which are even worth remembering a single detail about.  With mediocre production, bland story and cast, and not a real reason to exist this is bound to be forgotten. And it’s fine that way, it’s not worth your time.