Dance Dance Danseur – 4 [I Can Do Ballet Now]

Welcome back everyone, to another week of Dance Dance Danseur. This week we follow up with Luou on the bullying, Jumpei embraces ballet and the show becomes just a tad bit more Shounen. What does that mean? Read on to find out.

Right off the bat I want to, once again, praise Danseur for its visuals. The eyes still look off in wide shots sadly. I think the lines just do not look good without the proper tapering and details provided by the closeups. There was also an issue regarding Miyako’s tutu just being a static image moving across the screen rather than any kind of animation. But I find both of these to be ultimately small, almost irrelevant, issues. Neither of them changes how good the character movement is. Especially the legs! Oh how I love the legs in Danseur. The attention to detail on their form, the way the joints move, the careful way they must be posed and walk during a ballet… I find it beautiful. I haven’t been able to fill hunger for dance since the Princess Tutu Throwback Thursday series, so this has been a welcome find.

And as for the narrative? Well that was pretty damn good too.

I’m really, really happy with what Danseur did with Jumpei this week, for a lot of reasons. The biggest, most obvious one being that the bullying stuff isn’t over. I was afraid that this was going to be a one-and-done sort of thing. That Jumpei and Luou would never mention it again and it would just be used to push him into Ballet. The sort of surface-level thing you see in a lot of Shounen. So to instead see it return, to see Hyou lurking in the background, and for Jumpei to have an open and honest talk with Luou about why he did what he did? About how much Luou’s dancing affected him? It made me excited. I don’t want Jumpei to have a singular realization and to then reach an emotional plateau. I want this, for his growth to be a process. And so far I’m getting it.

That’s not the only reason why I’m happy with Jumpei though. I also love how much more… open he’s being about his passion. Not just telling his mother and getting a supportive response, but literally dancing down the halls of the school and publicly professing his love for the art. He’s noticeably more happy and carefree than when he was struggling over what to choose. It’s like a weight has been visibly lifted off of his shoulders and he is free to just be Jumpei now. I thought this was really cool! A lot of anime will have a character act exactly the same after a big event as they did before. This of course makes the event feel less important, less impactful. But I think Danseur is doing a good job separating pre and post-ballet Jumpei.

Along with all that though, it also lets Danseur start to shift gears a bit and become a tad more… Shounen. What do I mean by that? Simply that Danseur is starting to introduce more traditional sports Shounen elements into the story. Stuff like setting neigh-unattainable goals such as becoming a Danseur Noble at a prestigious Russian company. Or the way Danseur focuses much more on Jumpei’s training this week, showing us just how hard he is working both by his time on screen and the wearing down of his shoes. These are both pretty typical Shounen things, measures of easy to follow progress in a storyline.

To be clear, I don’t think these are bad! The hard work and goals aren’t being used solely to justify Jumpei’s increasing skill nor as cheap, fast-food style narrative. It’s also being used to inspire Luou, our “rival”, to start taking ballet more seriously again. Again, this all pretty standard Shounen tropey stuff. We see it in a lot of series. And yet, so many of those series screw it up by taking the most lazy, cookie cutter route imaginable. So I’m happy that Danseur is handling it as solidly as it is. Yes, its a well established and often seen story structure. But those story structures are used because they work and Danseur is supporting it’s own rather well. Whether it be character arcs that are somewhat independent of ballet, such as Jumpei’s masculinity or Luou’s abuse, or their public perception at school. There are… Layers, so to speak.

Speaking of Luou, this week we get more tidbits about his history. We already knew leading up to this that he was abused. We could surmise that based on his body language and actions. However this week we get concrete examples of what happened. The best way I can describe would be… Kousei Arima, from Your Lie in April. Luou wasn’t abused maliciously so to speak, though I want to be clear no abuse is acceptable. Rather it seems to have come from his Grandmother trying to build a future for him through ballet that ended up escalating to the level of physical abuse. After all, it’s obviously not ok to force a child’s legs to bend that much or put them in those kinds of positions. What I’m getting at here though is that Luou’s relationship with her appears to be more complex than just “shitty dad”.

What I’m curious about with this though is how it will influence his relationship/interactions with Jumpei. We can see through the post-cards he saves that Luou seems to still care for his Grandmother, it’s more like he has just come to hate Ballet. So what happens when he sees someone like Jumpei enjoying ballet so much? Someone who wasn’t formally trained, who only started up the sport in their teens, excelling at it. And how will this fit in to Jumpei wanting to play Rothbart rather than the Prince? Is this a sign that Jumpei won’t end up with Miyako, instead dedicating himself to Ballet while Luou finds happiness outside of the art? I don’t know! And while I don’t want Miyako to end up as a “prize”, I am intrigued by the MC not “getting the girl” by the end of the series.

Lastly I want to just point out a few things I thought were cool. I mentioned it before, but I like how supportive Jumpei’s mom is being about his Ballet. And I especially liked how Danseur brought the father back into the picture through her words. Making sure that Jumpei knew that his dad would approve of his decision. It’s a small moment, but one I think reinforces Danseur’s idea of masculinity which I find so important. There was also Miyako’s mom being exhausted from Jumpei’s training, along with Luou and Miyako seeing his barre work and being impressed. They are all small moments but I enjoyed them in the episode.

So yeah, all in all I would call this a successful episode. Danseur did a good job of following up last weeks bullying as well as giving us enough content with Jumpei while it slow-rolls Luou’s backstory. My main concern at this point is where exactly this season will end. As I understand it, Danseur is an ongoing manga, there is no set ending yet. So what’s going to happen in 7 episodes at the end of this season? What kind of cliffhanger finale are we going to get? This is, understandably, a difficult position for a series to be in since a second season isn’t guaranteed. Do we go for “Just read the manga” or leave it open for more seasons? Sadly I don’t have an answer for this. Hopefully Danseur does as we get closer to the finale.