One day, former ice dancer Tsukasa sees an 11-year-old girl, Inori, try to sneak her way into an ice rink without paying. After chasing her around and scolding her for trying to bribe the rink owner with worms, Tsukasa notices that Inori has been trying to teach herself ice skating, and encourages her to talk to her mom and get in touch with an official ice skating club. The next day, while in discussion with his former ice dance partner over an assistant coach job at the club she runs, Tsukasa meets up with Inori again, this time accompanied by her mother, who does not want her daughter to ice skate. Her other daughter started skating at age five and suffered an injury that took her out of the sport. In addition, most competitive skaters also begin at that young age, and she does not think Inori can catch up to them. Tsukasa knows the difficulty of starting late as he only started skating at fourteen, and despite having some success at the national level, he could never quite make it to the top level of the sport. Seeing some of himself in Inori, he insists that he sees Inori skate to judge her talent. After seeing that she already has the fundamentals down, as well as hearing her desperate plea to continue skating, Tsukasa declares that he will be Inori’s coach and will make her a medalist.
I have read some of the original manga and it has become one of my favorite manga of late, so I was looking forward to this anime adaptation a lot, and I have to say, it did not disappoint at all. The animation is very well done, with extended ice skating sequences blending 3DCG quite well to capture the visual appeal of the sport, while the rest of the show also looks great, especially with its use of facial expressions. The story is where this episode shines, as it portrays the full range of emotions from the situation at hand. From Inori’s desperation to find something she’s good at, to Tsukasa’s regrets over his past career, even to the mother’s concerns, I could feel every character’s desires and fears clashing together until everything builds up to Tsukasa’s passionate declaration. This is as much his story as it is Inori’s, as a chance to prove his past success wasn’t a fluke and that you can start late in the sport and still succeed. Inori herself is an excellent co-star who shows determination and joy on the ice while being an adorable bundle of nervous energy off the ice. Of course, the episode also presents some technical talk on ice skating to ensure we are learning about the sport itself. I thoroughly enjoyed this episode and it is the perfect beginning to what looks to be an amazing sports anime. Time will tell if this adaptation will make the podium at the end of the season, but for now, Medalist easily aces the qualifying stage.
Medalist is streaming on Hulu (US, also with English dub) and Disney+ (outside US).
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This sounds really sweet! I’ll keep it in mind next time I cave and sign up for Disney + for a month 😉