Slow Step

Title:Slow Step
スローステップ
Overall:Watch
Keywords: , , , , , , ,
Notables: Original Concept - ADACHI Mitsuru
A high school romance triangle between Minatsu Nakazato, a member of the girl’s softball team; Shu Akiba, a fellow student; and Naoto Kodamatsu, an up-and-coming boxer. And things get even more complicated when Naoto falls for a girl named Maria, (who was really Minatsu in a disguise she used to escape from someone.)

5 episodes (each 43 minutes long), aired in early 1991

Based on a manga series by Adachi Mitsuru by the same name. Adachi has also authored other popular sports manga series which have been animated - H2, Touch, Cross Game.

Read the translated manga online at MangaFox
OverallArtAnimationCharacter Design MusicSeries StoryEpisode StoryReviewer
Watch 7 6 7 6 5 5 Ggultra2764 [series:1086#1552]
Slow Step felt too much like a vanilla high school rom-com for me beyond its quirky premise and sports theme. As one would expect from an Adachi work, this OAV series mixes around romance, sports, comedy and drama in its focus on Minatsu's complicated developments with two boys who are on rival school boxing teams and are attracted to her. Also like other Adachi works, Slow Step tosses in a seemingly surprising element into the mix to try making things interesting where Minatsu dates one of the boys while in disguise. Pretty much, the romance element to this anime relies on plenty of cliches to push along its developments thanks to the "identity changing" element that Minatsu is entangled in and signed agreements between characters regarding romantic developments. It also doesn't help that many of the prominent characters in this series are tacked on with archetypes typical of the time period in which Slow Step was made from the somewhat perverted teacher to the delinquent girl, making them feel quite a bit flat in personality and hard to really connect with. The anime makes use of softball and boxing as their sports of focus with Minatsu being in softball and the two boys going for her being in boxing. While the competitive and training elements to both sports in Slow Step have their moments, they mostly felt like a backdrop to the cliched romantic developments that the anime was setting up. It does have an unexpected ending which I won't spoil here, but even that fell flat for me due to how shallow many of the characters in the series are. With Cross Game being the only Adachi work I genuinely cared for, I'm thinking Adachi is a one-hit wonder for my anime enjoyment considering I couldn't get into his other works as well as I could with Cross Game.

Last updated Monday, June 18 2012. Created Sunday, June 17 2012.
Unevaluated Jan-Chan [series:1086#967]
First episode has been released as a fansub

Last updated Sunday, June 12 2005. Created Sunday, June 12 2005.

Other Sites
NameURL
Fansub Web site for the Manga Series http://www.adachiuniverse.com/Release02/_AUprojects.html
Animesuki Torrent Site http://www.animesuki.com/series.php/630.html
Bit-torrent site for anime NOT yet licensed for the R1/USA market.

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