Autumn 2021 First Impressions – PuraOre! ~Pride of Orange~

Streaming: Funimation

Episodes: 12

Source: Multimedia Project

Episode Summary: The members of the junior high embroidery club are used to turning their stitches one-by-one into small works of art. But when Manaka invites the other group members to attend an information session for the Dream Monkeys, the local ice hockey team, they start to discover a much different way of weaving together their various talents and skills.

The mastermind behind this beginner’s class is Coach Matsunaga, a former player and someone with high aspirations for the Dream Monkeys. Not only is she on the lookout for new team members, she hopes to incorporate a brand new form of entertainment into the games – having the team members perform a victory dance following their wins, thus turning each hockey match into a show. This goal seems questionable on its surface but it just might work; the members of the embroidery club, as well as a couple of students from a neighboring school, all seem interested in giving this new sport a try.

Impressions: As a lifelong Minnesotan, whether or not I have a personal interest in hockey it’s something that’s unavoidable as part of local culture. As the snows of winter roll in and local parks begin to set up ice rinks, the popularity of the sport becomes quickly apparent. I wasn’t that into hockey until my spouse J.C. started watching it; he claims that it’s a sport that has some of the best, most logical rules (an extra-appealing facet to him in particular as someone who likes to memorize rule sets). As someone with some local pride and at least a small interest in most sports anime to begin with, I was looking forward to this series.

I’m not sure what exactly I was expecting from girls ensemble sports anime, but I don’t think it was this. And yet, while the idol component of the action seems completely shoehorned in, I find that I can’t entirely work up the energy to be mad about it. I mostly find it confusing.

I don’t have a very complete perception about girls sports culture in Japan. Farewell, my Dear Cramer implied that, much the same as it tends to be perceived elsewhere, women’s sports are often afforded much less prestige than men’s, with scrappy women playing more for the love of the game than the more tangible benefits that might be made available to their male counterparts. That sort of begs the question – what can be done make women’s sports more popular, when winning games alone doesn’t seem to be able to do it? The “solution” this series presents is to combine sports action with idol performances, which I have deeply mixed feelings about. On the one hand, it’s entertaining to watch. It’s hard to stay grim when a poppy song is playing and people are dancing in a coordinated way. On the other hand, it seems to be a ploy to emphasize the femininity of the athletes.

Because hockey is a rough sport, the players are covered in padding and wear helmets that obscure their faces, making them essentially genderless out on the rink. This very idea – that of muddying rigid barriers between genders – seems to inspire all sorts of anxiety in more “traditionally-minded” people. This song and dance routine could be interpreted as a concession to people who like to grump and groan about the transformation of women’s sports to be more competitive. On the other hand, I also don’t want to discount femininity as something “lesser-than” in the world; I think it’s cool that the girls we meet during this episode are both involved in embroidery and interested in hockey, with neither pursuit necessarily portrayed as more or less prestigious. Perhaps the true message here is that choices are rarely cut-and-dry, though I do expect, at the very least, that the idea of “hockey-playing idols” is meant to become popular and make money in the real world like any other character ensemble franchise.

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Pros: The animation during the opening hockey match is very evocative of a real hockey game. The sounds and the character movement feel very genuine and it’s clear the characters are playing for real.

I like the relationships between the characters, and that Manaka and Ayaka’s grandmother appears to be an influential and present person in their lives.

Cons: This “con” is mostly my own fault, but I think I just wanted something different from this series. I just got off of a bender where I watched a ton of great anime in short succession to prepare for a convention, and I was reminded of some of the excellent sports anime from the last year – all of them starring boys. Many female-focused sports series seem to come packaged with an asterisk denoting some gimmick that keep them from being straightforward sports series in the vein of their male counterparts, mark them as being created mostly for purposes of fanservice, or remind the audience that they’re not the type of series that get top-tier animation resources. Isn’t the story of a girls hockey team interesting enough? I guess we still don’t know the answer to that.

Content Warnings: Mild, non-sexual nudity.

Would I Watch More? – I’m still somewhat undecided. I think this could be a fun series, but the idol stuff feels like an unnecessary additional element that doesn’t ultimately add much.