Anima Yell! – Episode 1 – Kohane’s First Cheer

While Kohane heads home, she finds out that cheerleading would be fun to try out. She tells Uki, her childhood friend about it. Can she make her cheerleading dream a reality?

On her way home, Kohane sees a cheerleading session by the river that amazes her. She tells Uki about it while pronouncing the sport incorrectly. When she and Uki starts high school, she finds out from one of the teachers that there is no cheerleading club. Kohane would need five members to form one. First, she tries to recruit Arima, which she recognized at the performance she saw earlier. Arima rejects her invite.

Despite this, Kohane did not give up on trying to recruit her despite being afraid of heights. Kohane eventually talks to Arima in private. She shares her love towards helping others and believes that cheerleading is a good fit and Arima inspired her. However, Arima pushes her away. Afterwards, Kohane did some training on her own with Uki so she can give one to Arima from a tree. She wants to become special like Arima and that believes in her. Eventually, she decides to help Kohane to form the club.

As you would expect, Kohane despite being short and afraid of heights is a cheerful girl. While her pink hair and eyes along with her short stature make her looks similar to Kaoruko from Comic Girls. However, Kohane’s cheerful personality kind of reminds me more of Hana from Hanamata. Still, given that she helps everyone, even in high school, it’s not so surprising why she wants to do cheerleading.

That said, Kohane is fixated on Arima. It’s not so surprising since she is amazed by her performance. When she noticed that the girl making a speech in front of the new students is Arima, this becomes clear. Not only that, Arima manages to save Kohane when she fell from top of the stairs.

Still, it seems like Arima doesn’t want anything to do with cheerleading since she says it’s already in her past. I find it funny how Kohane follows her and even made a poster trying to introduce herself. Even after talking to her sharing why she wants to do cheerleading, Arima still pushes her away despite Kohane genuinely wanting to help her. It becomes obvious soon enough due to a bad experience. Still, I find it funny how she calls Kohane a “clueless goody-two shoes”. I don’t know if this is an insult or a compliment.

Either way, we learned why Arima quit. Apparently, Arima is talented compared to rest of the girls in her squad. They are simply jealous that Arima receives the most attention and want her to go down to their level as equals. However, she doesn’t want to, thus the girls abandoned her from the group.

It’s understandable why she feels that way. However, I don’t think she should give up the thing that she enjoys the most just because her team members being jealous. Still, it’s nice to see Kohane help bring her back to cheerleading. After all, she wants to become special just like her. The thing is, will Kohane be able to survive the training that Arima has planned? We have to wait and see.