Kids on the Slope

If you've ever in your life sat down and spent some free time watching anime, odds are you've heard the name Shinichirō Watanabe and Yoko Kanno. With two of the best well-known names in anime, you will not be disappointed when you get high hopes for this piece of work. My purpose of this review is not to go in depth of the story or its characters, but to hopefully help those who are undecided about putting this one on their watch-list.

The animation is incredible, the colors perfect, as expected the score is remarkable, character development is on point, and this story can be quite touching at times. I'm usually not interested into the more drama driven anime, but Kids on the Slope is an easy exception.

But to make the point perfectly clear, if you're debating watching Kids on the Slope, stop debating and watch it, period.

The anime has a total of 12 episodes and was broadcast between April and June in 2012. The story begins with a high school boy (Kaoru Nishimi) who moves to Saseho in Nagasaki prefecture due to his father's business matter. Kaoru is the best student at his previous school but he doesn't fit into the environment and doesn't have friends because of his frequent changes of schools. After he meets a problem kid and a Jazz drummer, Sentaro, Kaoru finds a light in his school life. As Kaoru is a classic pianist, he starts playing Jazz under Sentaro's influence. Soon after Kaoru falls in love with Ritsuko, Sentaro's childhood friend. However, Kaoru is rejected because he finds out that Ritsuko's favourite person is Sentaro. Meanwhile, Ritsuko also notices that Sentaro comes to like a mysterious upperclass student, Yurika. Yurika loves Junichi who is a saxophone player and comes back from Tokyo after joining a student movement and is renounced by his father.

Love and relationship are unpredictable just like jams and Jazz improvisations, and they are leaping impulses and swinging like a person running down a slope. Each episode is composed of a small story along with a Jazz song such as "Someday My Prince Will Come," "Now's the Time," "Moanin," "Summertime," etc. The story is a really heartwarming. Perhaps, the time background of the story in the 1970s, where people listen to records, no musical score, transcriptions of songs, student movements, and people, makes the viewer feel warm. Above all, the music is brilliant! Yoko Kanno worked on the songs; the arrangement of Jazz songs, and the jams and improvisations are top-notch! I highly recommend this anime, and you will find passion and bittersweet in the story.

As an older person who isn't into anime I have nevertheless watched all of Watanabe's works and find this one to be my absolute favourite. Don't be put off by the fact that Cowboy Beebop or Samurai Champloo are more popular and highly rated than Kids on the Slope. This has probably got more to do with the fact that you are more likely to appreciate Kids on the slope if you have a passion for music and know how it can bring people together. It also helps if there is some distance between your school days and now, as older people have a much warmer place for that period in their life and know to place a higher value on it.

This show works wonderfully well as a 4 hour movie and manages to capture the naivety, innocence and passion of youth in all it's charming glory. Personally, having changed schools and countries throughout my childhood, as well as loving music, and having experienced the way music always made new friends for me, some which still last to this day, I can say that this series is overwhelmingly powerful and true in every sense. To laugh and cry with a smile on your face and remember the first time you heard Bill Evans, Miles Davis, or the rhythm section on Coltrane's My Favourite Things and be shocked by beauty once again.

If any of this sounds familiar to you, buy it, watch it. And then watch it again every year or so.

Is it perfect nope.

But I can't help but smile throughout watching this show its slice of life element remind me of my high school days and the music my god the music is magnificent it's entrancing and fun in a way jazz can only be

God bless shinchiro Watanabe for his amazing taste in music.

Shinichiro Watanabe is as close to a cult anime director as you get and with Kids on the Slope he addresses directly the stylistic thread that runs through everything he does, music.

Kaoru Nishimi is the buttoned down, classically trained protagonist, carrying his emotions bundled up in his suitcase through an endless carousel of schools and communities. Never having time for friends or even acquaintances, and drawing his only pleasure from the structured performance of classical piano. The series begins with the door to his sheltered existence creaked open by the self-styled drummer Sentaro Kawabuchi. In a cacophony of fists, romance, and blaring jazz, Sentaro awakens Kaoru to the wonders of expression.

Shinichiro Watanabe, along with composer Yoko Kanno, has sketched a nostalgic portrait of 60s Japan, and in what i'm sure are touches of autobiography shown an adrift young man find a home in the beautifully flawed world of jazz. Watanabe draws his characters with a loving hand, appreciating nuance and weakness as part and parcel, however this adoration can sometimes come across as sentimentally watery. But the show is made with a joy that leaps out from every vivid image and roaring musical number, that would suppress any criticism in sheer enthusiasm.

Drawing from the American Beatniks and his own experience Watanabe produces a delicate character play enriched by one of the finer soundtracks i've heard.