Franconator

The first things you really notice about Tsurune are how great it looks and sounds. This is despite the fact that, for a sports show, Tsurune is quietly-paced and shines a bigger light on the athletes instead of the sport. And it makes sense too: kyudo, or traditional archery, is a sport that demands patience, focus, and discipline, which is why it’s great that the series was able to properly relay all these qualities through its technical aspects.

If only the same could be said for everything else.

Tsurune starts strong: when we begin the series, we meet main character Minato, a former promising archer who is now dealing with target panic and can no longer hit the targets like he used to. It’s the same kind of slump you normally see in other athletes, and it’s hoped that, through Minato’s forced return to archery, he’ll regain his form and learn to love his sport again. The premise is already plenty interesting on its own, so you’d think the show would be careful enough to avoid rushing through things and go off-tangent. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what Tsurune does, so despite its amazing technicals, it still manages to bog itself down by neglecting its more important facets.

The main draw of this series’ story was supposed to be Minato’s resolution of his target panic, but Tsurune wanted to over-complicate things by introducing all sorts of additional plot details that initially looked important… only for the show to breeze its way to the conclusions, so most of these issues were glossed over and then thrown to the wayside. The result: conflicts that were originally there to give depth to the characters and the story became completely unnecessary, because of how quickly they were resolved. Most of the time, Tsurune drama’d for drama’s sake – so much so, that it begun to resemble a classic soap opera at several points. The characters didn’t fare much better either: if they weren’t Minato’s teammates or coach, then they were just one-note personalities with none of the character quirks that were hurriedly tacked onto the main bunch to give some semblance of depth.

It would be too much to call Tsurune a complete misfire, because it isn’t. Despite everything, it’s the stand-out technical aspects that make this look like an attractive draw for any viewer looking to avoid the other cliché-ridden sports shows. In the end, however, it’s due to its character and story fumbles that Tsurune becomes the archer with solid form and a good eye on the target – but because it doesn’t allow itself to breathe, its shot veers off-course and misses the bullseye by a wide margin.