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| Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
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| Watch | 7 | 6 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
 Ggultra2764
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[series:3674#1552] |
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Fun fact I didn't know about Cinderella Nine before I researched a bit more on the series is that it's adapted from a Japan-only mobile game. That likely explains why the pacing for this felt rather rushed with introducing the members of the girls' baseball team and developing their team's improvements rather quickly. It takes the familiar storytelling beats found from sports titles and "cute girls doing cute things" slice-of-life titles in its superficial attempts to give its characters depth by rushing through whatever personal dramas either affect someone's potential participation on the team or affecting their teamwork to whatever capacity. But without taking the time to build things up or further flesh things out with said personal problems of the characters and their cohesion as a team, all this comes off feeling like superficial drama added in just to pad out the anime's run time. In short, this is a rather forgettable series that seems to only exist to promote the mobile game it was based off of.
Last updated Saturday, February 05 2022. Created Saturday, February 05 2022. | ||||||||
| Unevaluated |
 Stretch
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[series:3674#628] | ||||||
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(Seven episodes watched): This seemed like a very generic sports anime, with about the only unusual feature being that this will be a girl's team. Judging from the level of skill that these girls are starting with (virtually none), just winning a game may be the highest goal they could possibly ascribe to, much less a championship. Several of them have never played the game before and their abilities are laughable, if they do not make you cry. It may be that the basic conflict is not with other teams but with the people upstairs at their school who are opposed to the idea of forming a team (which might be interesting). Right from the start I began to worry that I might not be able to keep track of nine different characters, since it did not seem that their personalities were being developed much. There is a touch of humor but my impression is that for the most part this show will take its subject seriously. I am a little curious whether they will achieve much, and their underdog status allows me to sympathize with them, so I will probably watch episode two in order to get a better idea of how entertaining and believable the story turns out to be. Also generic is the experienced athlete who has become obsessed with winning and forgotten about the simple fun of playing the game. This show has one of those. As of episode three this show was walking a fine line between worth and not worth watching and might wind up going either way. The conflict with superiors who frown on forming a girl's team which I hypothesized about hasn't really panned out, and the show is looking like a typical underdogs-attain-greatness-via-pluck-and-hard-work sort of show. I guess I keep watching because most of the girls are so bad at baseball that it's hard to believe they will ever accomplish much of anything, and I'm curious if they will. And I learn a little about what organizing a team entails, which is sort of interesting. It turns out that two of the girls are first rate baseball players after all--prime mover Tsubasa and Shironome, who was once her opponent in a middle school championship. Shironome is the embittered, winning-is-everything person, and the way she is persuaded to join this ragtag team was sort of fun and plausible. As they slowly hone their skills, the girls dare to arrange an actual game against a competent team--with predictable results. Nevertheless, I thought the way the game went was cleverly written: the girls get their hopes up with some early successes, then are taught a harsh lesson. If they had somehow managed to win--or even almost win--well, that would have been very hard to believe. I thought the spat between Tsubasa and her best friend in episode six didn't work all that well. It seemed contrived and manufactured, and more like a nuisance which I wanted to hurry up and be finished than a gripping crisis. I guess I never believed that there was the slightest threat that the two girls might actually break up, perhaps because the problem completely comes and goes in the space of one episode. The story of a talented player with family problems in episode seven was more convincing. But I found that I had lost interest in this show and did not watch the rest. I was slightly surprised that my interest petered out, perhaps because it had been seeming fairly fun for awhile, but then quality had dropped off. I guess in the end it was just too generic. Last updated Saturday, April 18 2020. Created Sunday, April 14 2019. | ||||||||
