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| Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
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| Watch | 8 | 7 | 8 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
 Ggultra2764
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[series:3790#1552] |
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Imagine Paradise Kiss as a shounen series and you'll get Smile Down the Runway. The focus on the design and modeling of fashion largely exists as another typical shounen series about having perseverance and defying the odds to become successful in fulfilling your goals and dreams with poor male lead Ikuto wanting to be a designer and female lead Chiyuki wanting to be a professional model despite her short height. This does consist of a number of the typical trappings of this story mold such as the series relishing in conflict, competition, and cheap drama to test the resolves of the show's leads in accomplishing their goals; this getting hammered enough with Ikuto's family situation, mostly every modeling gig turning away Chiyuki due to her height, and several characters seemingly existing to stir conflict with our two leads in some capacity. I'm not exactly a fan of this sort of storytelling within shounen titles because of how blatant and frustrating I get with such titles relishing in putting its characters through misery in a superficial attempt to create character development for them and having the subtlety of a brick with pushing said developments. Want a better show dabbling into the fashion world? Track down Paradise Kiss. Prefer it over this frustrating tripe aimed for the shounen demographic.
Last updated Wednesday, September 15 2021. Created Wednesday, September 15 2021. | ||||||||
| Unevaluated |
 Stretch
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[series:3790#628] | ||||||
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(Three episodes watched): Well, this show was by no means bad, and included some clever touches like the episode one incident in which Fujito realizes that she has become as much of a discouragement for Tsumura as other people used to be for her. One of the first things I noticed was that the character designs were fairly detailed and recognizable, which usually means that some effort is going to be made to make the characters' personalities distinctive and original as well. I wonder if any sort of romance will develop between them. I also wonder if we will learn anything interesting about how the fashion and modelling industries operate. The amount of comedy seems minimal. One confusing thing was that at the end of episode one it sort of seems as if to a large extent each of the two protagonists has already achieved their dream--they have each gotten a job, Fujito (who had been unemployed for a good while) as a model and Tsumura (who had feared he would have to give up his dream occupation) as an apprentice designer. This happened largely as the result of a pair of coincidences--her discovering him, and the photo taken of her wearing his creation by a roaming fashion photographer. Will this be a realistic, believable story, or will the two of them just keep getting lucky? I felt after episode one that we've gotten to know the two of them fairly well, but not quite well enough to be certain that they will be dynamic, interesting characters. I found my interest to be flagging during episodes two and three, however. Fujito and Tsumura run into each other again at a design firm run by an abrasive and demanding professional, and together they save an important fashion show from disaster. But, perhaps because the show was seeming to be more about their careers than themselves, and perhaps because modelling isn't all that exciting, I was not particularly impressed. I suspect others would enjoy this show more than I did, but I think I will dispense with Runway de Waratte. Last updated Monday, April 13 2020. Created Monday, January 13 2020. | ||||||||
