Kids on the Slope Episode 6 Review

Kaoru has had one tough life. Not parents dying or abandoning like Sentaro. No. His is a little different kind of tough. And we delve into that a little bit in this particular episode. In both life and love, Kaoru seems far behind his time (reminds me on someone). For a normal college student, he might not seem very relatable. But we’ve all been there. We’ve had selfish outbursts that make us older folk seem like we’re still five years old. And we can sympathize with Kaoru here. He’s realized that his first real love, Ritsuko, is actually in love with her childhood friend, Sentaro. And Sentaro is in love with Yurika. Who likes Jun. It’s like School Rumble, but you can actually follow the love story.

It’s easy to realize, now, that the show is not going to be about becoming jazz musicians or, really, anything to do with music in terms of the plot beyond that these characters play jazz. What the music does is provide a metaphor for each episode representing what these characters are feeling at the time. Other shows do it too, of course. But those shows aren’t composed by Yoko Kanno (except the ones that are). My point, though, is that this is about high schoolers trying to live their life as normal high schoolers and not trying to be jazz musicians or stars like BECK or K-ON! or Nerima Daikon Brothers or something.

No what’s going on here is your high school drama story. What makes it so interesting is that A. it’s directed by Shinichiro Watanabe and composed by Yoko Kanno (at least, for us anime fans, that’s a selling point), B. it’s set in the ‘60s Japan, and C. it’s very realistic and down to earth. It realizes that the interesting part isn’t the music (and the music certainly wouldn’t be the interesting part in manga format), it’s the dynamics between Kaoru, Sentaro, and Ritsuko and how new players in their trifecta interrupt that dynamic (like Yurika, Seiji, and Jun via Yurika).

The show has finally settled into its own groove after last week or two weeks ago and I’m excited to see where it goes from here. I except good things. It’s only got 11 episodes to do so after all.