number24

YoukoChan Apr 26, 2020

9

I don't understand Rugby as a sport after watching this, but what I do understand even more now than I did before is that the relationships you form as a part of a team can be beautiful, complicated, and wonderful. The characters threw me for a loop more often than not, some coming to realize their flaws and doing their best to improve themselves with the help of their teamates. The MC had me laughing all the damn time because despite the fact that he's a little shit, he still cares, and he seems to know all the right buttons to push in order to help motivate someone, even if that means in the end someone gets angry with him. It didn't teach me about Rugby itself, but it did teach me about teamwork and I thought it was just beautiful. As a side note, I'd like to express something interesting I thought while watching this. There were times when the skinship between the players made me think "Wow this is erotic!" and blush about it and get excited. And there are probably people who will sneer and say "Ew, it's just more of that gay sports anime stuff." and I'll have to say... I think that's just way too narrow minded. If you replaced everyone in this anime with a women, you just... wouldn't get that kind of response. Everyone would just nod there heads and say "Yes, yeah, that's just normal team/female behavior, it's not gay at all." but somehow, men hugging, men being comfortable touching each other in friendly ways, men helping each other, is seen as "Gay" and in some people's eyes that puts it into a "Catagory" and lessens it's worth in their eyes. I think this double standard is shitty, and while as a bisexual lady I certainly ENJOYED the skinship, I don't think it's alright for people to write it off as "Just another gay sports anime". There's so much more to it than that, and I hope that some people can look past the urge to call close or affectionate relationships between men "Gay". Because god damn it, men have feelings to. I do feel like this is an important part of my review of this anime, because I feel like this type of attitude ultimately causes the popularity or recommendations for this kind of thing to drop, because the only ones who will give it a chance are those that don't have a problem with male-male affection. Give it a try. Learn something about teamwork. Learn something about friendship. You probably won't learn anything about Rugby, but you'll learn something.

miyane Aug 5, 2020

7

i'm writing this review mostly based on the notes i took while watching so it'll only be brief points that i won't explain too much in depht. this review might end up somewhat negative, but in reality it's not a bad anime ! you might still like it so it's always best to form your own opinion before listening to others' <3 i'll start straight away. number24 has somewhat clumsy pacing. it doesn't really get you excited for the games. probably because it Does Not explain rugby at all. it would've been nice to get at least some kind of simple knowledge about the game after watching an anime about said game for 12 episodes. i have no idea about the game rules or positions and that's one reason why the anime felt lacking. it's alright to have a sports anime where the main focus isn't the sport, but that would mean there needs to be another focus. number24 tries to focus on relationships and such, but the large amount of characters and their feelings get mixed up and in the end it's too difficult to follow any of the conflicts or relationships. this anime has a lot of fanservice. it's clear from the very first episode that it's all just muscles, pretty faces and odd camera angles. regarding the characters; there's a lot of them and many of them look very similar to each other. and besides the 3 main characters, the others don't really get any proper plot. that made it really had to connect with the characters even though there were a few i really wanted to like.  the story-/plotbuilding was really bad. most backstory was only sidehandedly mentioned in speech even though most of the players had a lot of history with each other. number24 felt like a second season to an anime that never existed. also: the ending scene came out of nowhere, the anime had no foreshadowing. that being said, it's not bad. it was interesting to see how some of the relationships worked out and conflicts were resolved. is it about rugby? no. will you learn anything about rugby? no. can you enjoy idol look-alike dudes being dudes? yes, to your heart's content.

Fionka Jan 12, 2021

8

This is my first review so please bear with me. I know nothing about rugby and I haven't watched many sports anime but I actually really enjoyed this one! I think it had a really good proportion bewteen the story and actual sport. I really enjoyed the realtionships between the characters. The only let down about them was that the anime was too short to show more of those relationships. I wanted to see more flashback stories, more interactions between characters and their personal developments. The main character, Natsusa Yuzuki, was extrodinary. I loved his personality, his story and how he interacted with others. He was pretty funny, petty, sly, yet emotional and very suportive. I feel there is so much more they can show, develope and achieve with this anime so I hope for another season. Overal it was really a good anime to watch. It was really funny and enjoyable to watch.