Ginban Kaleidoscope

Figure skater Tazusa Sakurano is on the fast track to the Olympics. As a top contender, her chances rest on a single competition in Canada. However, during her program, she falls and hits her head on the ice, knocking her unconscious. At the same time, Canadian stunt pilot Pete Pumps goes down in a fiery blaze.

After her devastating failure, Tazusa returns home to Japan, but she starts hearing a voice in her head. In reality, when Pete had arrived at the gates of heaven, he was denied access for his sins. Instead, he was told to wait 100 days and is now trapped in Tazusa's body! Unwilling to let this interrupt her life—even if her body is a bit crowded—Tazusa moves forward with skating, all while a pesky voice may just be able to help her achieve her dream.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Sakurano, Tazusa Main

Kawasumi, Ayako Japanese

Pumps, Pete Main

Yoshino, Hiroyuki Japanese

Miller, Dominique ing

Okamoto, Maya Japanese

Juiltyve, Ria Garnet ing

Noto, Mamiko Japanese

Takashima, Yuuji ing

Kosugi, Juurouta Japanese

Yano, Hitomi ing

Nakamura, Chie Japanese

Mishiro, Yukie ing

Suzuki, Hiroko Japanese

Honjou, Mika ing

Inoue, Marina Japanese

Shitou, Kyouko ing

Murai, Kazusa Japanese

Nitta, Kazuya ing

Chiba, Isshin Japanese

Maruyama, Shunpei Producer

Takahashi, Yuu Producer

Takamatsu, Shinji Director, Episode Director

Iwanami, Yoshikazu Sound Director

Reviews

Sep 29, 2009

Skadi

Recommended

Being from a cold weather climate winter sports have always been a part of my life, and that includes figure skating. What little girl from my generation didn’t ire the grace and beauty of Katarina Witt and not want to emulate her? Ice skating anime is pretty rare and to my knowledge this is the only one I know of. It’s quite good and should appeal to almost anyone, even if you don’t know a double axel from a triple toe loop.

Ginban Kaleidoscope revolves around a young Japanese skater, Tazusa Sakurano whose dream is to make it to the 2006 Winter ... Games in Torino. She is one of the top skaters in Japan but has the unfortunate tendency to fall in big events. After another disappointment while at an event in Canada in which she suffers a bad fall she suddenly finds herself possessed by the spirit of a Canadian teen who died in a plane crash, Pete Pumps. What follows is some hilarious comedy, sports drama, and a little romance.

Having an athletic background I think I can relate too many of the themes presented in this anime. Though it is obviously dramatized for the screen I think the figure skating portion of it is fairly realistic. The interaction between Tazusa and Pete is amusing considering to everyone else she is talking to herself. Some of it is the kind of things only Japan would think about, such as Tazusa holding in going to the bathroom because she didn’t want him to see her doing that. Everything from her changing her clothes and bathing blindfolded so that he couldn’t peep on her to her eating tomatos because he hated them was also amusing and in a way gave some realism to the situation they were in. The comedy all works and I found myself laughing all the way through it.

There are a few inconsistencies though. Mainly they revolve around Pete's possession of Tazusa. In the beginning we are told that he can only see what she sees and can’t manifest his spirit outside of her but this is contradicted many times later. Pete sees things that he shouldn’t be able to be seen, and Tazusa will speak at him as if he was standing next to her. Now I know why they did it, to have her not speak to anyone and not have a physical form for Pete for the audience to see might have been a bit odd but the story could have been written better to for this. It’s a minor annoyance but significant considering how important this was to the plot.

Tazusa and Pete are the only real important characters in the story. The entire show is seen pretty much through her perspective. Little development or screen time is given to any of her classmates, family, or even skating rivals. Most of them just come across as background scenery. None of them really feel like villains as the main antagonist in the story is really Tazusa against her own fears. Anyone who has competed in athletics knows that, especially at higher levels of competition, everyone has talent and everyone’s talent is usually pretty close to one another it is the mental toughness that often makes the difference. Tazusa's doubts about herself and her ability and her fears are very important to the story and make her feel very real. I thought she was a very interesting character and was the main reason I liked this show so much.

Pete is also a good character but ultimately not as interesting as Tazusa. This is mainly because the story really shows no interest in developing him at all as a character. We learn almost nothing about him. He was a pilot, he lived in Japan a lot, and he hates tomatoes. That’s about it. Never does Tazusa even try to find out about his personal life, his family and friends, or even what he looked like. I thought this was a bit farfetched as if I had some guy possessing me I think I would probably want to learn something about him.

I wouldn’t call the art amazing but it is very good. The settings are very nice and the characters are appealing. I really liked Tazusa's skating costumes and the sports action was well done. There were a few inconsistencies such as characters talking in profile out of the sides of their mouths. The music was good, the OP/EN songs as well as the incidental score and the songs played during the skating events. I thought Tazusa's and Pete’s voice actors turned in a solid performance.

Those of you who like sports drama and comedy should really enjoy Ginban Kaleidoscope. While it’s not an amazing series for the ages, it should be worth quite a few laughs and tears.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Dec 29, 2008

Splitter

Recommended

For every anime where a plucky amateur becomes the star of the competition, for every anime where love and peace makes the hero or heroine new friends, and for every anime where dreams come true, there is Ginban Kaleidoscope; a bittersweet tale about reaching for your dreams and finding that winning isn't everything.

The strongest aspect of Ginban is easily story. Though the premise is hokey, the execution is flawless and handled exceptionally. Most tales of this nature often fail by lending themselves to comedy. Ironically, Ginban does that, but the jokes are just pointed enough that they sell. Not every joke, such as the running ... gag of Mika thinking Tazusa is yelling at her when she's yelling at Pete, hits the mark, but the dialogue between Tazusa and Pete is full of zingers and visual gags that nearly always hit the mark.

Still, while the comedy is suprisingly good, Ginban does a praise-worthy job at handling the gravitas of a romance between a living person and a dead one. By the end of the series, it's very clear Tazusa's feelings for Pete. The resolution of which is purely bittersweet but well-crafted. Likewise, so is the resolution to Tazusa's Olympic dreams which demonstrate how much Tazusa really won.

The characterization of Tazusa is also amazing. Her development, attitude, and the whole of her parts when all is said and done is not only the antithesis of the stereotypical Junichi Sato heroine, but it highlights her individuality, her brazen independence, and her determination as something that can be ired as well. I wish I could say the same for the rest of the cast, but Ginban is so scattered and minimalistic with how it handles the ing cast that it's better if you just focus on Tazusa and Pete, solely because this series very rarely focusing on anyone else.

Unfortunately, the technical aspects are hardly of praise. The art is sub-par and many of the performances are filled with reused animation. Even in the big performance, it's mostly just a rehash of an earlier performance with nothing that signifies how grand the performance is actually supposed to be. To further the point, I'm pretty sure you could have a drinking game for every time they use the animation where Tazusa falls on her butt.

The sound aspect is better, but not because of the BGM (which is rather bland) or the songs (which are also rather bland), but the performances, especially by lead Ayako Kawasumi in a role very uncharacteristic of her other performances. She completely sells Tazusa's entire attitude better than probably anyone else could. Hiroyuki Yoshino as Pete also does a capital job of filling the role of Pete. The Engrish was a bit hard to bear, but he was great when he stuck to Japanese.

In short, Ginban was a very pleasant experience. It's technical aspects may not be up to par, but the storyline and how the character of Tazusa is handled and performaned are praise-worthy for their brash originality.

Overall, I give Ginban Kaleidoscope an 8 out of 10.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Mar 23, 2015

Flawfinder

Not Recommended

(Author's Note: This is an old review that I would have written differently now, but I might as well post it on here just because)

One thing you’ll learn upon leaving high school is that everything that happened during that time is utterly meaningless in the adult world. And unless you’re one of those heathens who married his highschool sweetheart without divorcing her in two years time, your first love is one of those things. Pretty soon, you’ll realize that it was nothing special other than being another small experience in your youth, move on, and then date that college chick that’s as smart as she ... is fun to be around.

A similar thing happened to me when I got started on my anime hobby. Back when I thought they were all the length of American sitcoms that went on longer than a roadtrip from Texas to Brazil and I treated those anime like we were having a fling, I found a peculiar little series on Youtube that I was surprised to find was only 12 episodes long: Ginban Kaleidoscope. For those of you who have never heard of the series, it’s this anime directed by that dude who did the first 100 or so episodes of Gintama, School Rumble, and such centered on this ice-skating chick who gets possessed by this Canadian pilot that died in a plane accident. For some reason, he can only ascend to heaven after 100 days, so he has to share the girl’s experiences until then – including seeing herself when she goes to the toilet and experiencing what she eats (and he hates tomatoes), so she puts up with him until then. As you probably expect, they fall for each other, help each other out, and basically act like a retarded version of Hikaru no Go.

If you’re planning to watch this anime…uh…don’t. It’s not very funny, it adds nothing new to the coming-of-age sports genre, and it’s more of a product of its time than John Hughes’ films. As you probably surmised, I didn’t like this anime, even back then. The only real reason I committed to it was because I was more romantically inclined at the time and wanted to see these characters get together despite one of them being a ghost (who never spoke any Canadian). So I officially entered an “I watch you and you entertain me” relationship with the show, only to get frustrated with these stupid romantic comedy hijinks that felt like it was playing me for a fool without showing any real commitment to its promise. There were eventually some moments where I had fun, but around the end, I realized the show and I wanted different things and we parted ways amicably after we were finished with each other.

Looking back on that show as of today, I wonder what it was my high school self ever really saw in it. But regardless of what I feel now, I cannot deny that it was an important moment of my life due to being the first anime I ever finished from beginning to end. Even if the experience wasn’t great and there was no real love to justify that old “it’s better to have love and lost than have never loved at all” spiel, it was still an experience that helped shape future events in regards to my hobby. Okay, I went back to my long-running comfort food that will never grow old and betray me for a while, but eventually I realized how full of bullshit they were too (apart from Ranma, who forgave me for cheating on her and we entered a long-term relationship that was way more successful, but more on that another time) and sought out more of these series that were less than 100-episodes long. I think you can guess what happened from then on.

My first real girlfriend in of anime didn’t pan out. But hey, I survived didn’t I?

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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