Kids on the Slope is the latest, likely, soon-to-be masterpiece from the minds of Shinichiro Watanabe and Yoko Kanno, who have previously teamed up for a few shows you might know of as Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo. It is also the first collaboration between the two that’s based on a manga.
If you know me, you’ll know that I have a weakness for anime based around music. I love Nerima Daikon Brothers, BECK, K-ON!, and all the other music-based shows that I’ve seen. This one is no exception and the fact that it’s helmed by Watanabe and Kanno makes me have that much more confidence in it.
But there are a few setbacks to this series; there are a few trope-y things that are typical of all the, well, typical anime. For example, the childhood friends routine between Sentaro, the jazz drummer, and Ritsuko, the nice girl, is pretty cliché. Ritsuko being the nice girl is pretty cliché too, but given that the Japanese appear to hand off showing the new kid around to the nice girl (based on my anime experience), I’ll let that slide for now. I’ll also let slide the “new kid in town” routine since that is, of course, one of the two possible ways to begin a story (not that I remember what the other way to begin a story was).
Despite these trope-y things (which really are evident in all shows), this series has a lot of potential. The music was, of course, great with shades of Cowboy Bebop in them. I believe that, once we really get into the music, the soul, of this show, it’ll be great.
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