Dive!!

I binged the show I think it's a good show, but not a masterpiece and not many people may like it because the anime has some negatives in my opinion which can be a huge turndown for some people.

Let's start with the negatives:

- Rules of diving and the scoring system are not explained. This is a problem because not everyone who will watch the series is a fan of the sport and it's not famous or intuitive enough for people to understand the sport.

- While I think the main cast is good enough, the secondary characters are in my opinion not well developed and/or ... serve just to drive the story forward and put struggles to our protagonists.

- We don't know enough about the personal lives of the three main characters except for Shibuki. We do see some bits like Youichi being the son of one of the coaches and Tomoki being left alone with his brother. However, I think we need to know more about these two. I know because they are competitive divers they don't have a lot of free time, but that doesn't mean they don't have any private life.

And here are the positives:

- The art is very good in my opinion. I like the aesthetic design of all the characters. And the diving animations look good in my opinion. However, I didn't like the reflection of the water on the character's skin.

- I think the story overall did a good job in portraying the growth of Tomoki, Youichi and Shibuki. Both in their athletic improvements and personality.

- I think it does a good job at showing how terrible the life of a young professional athlete (they aren't paid, but they are aiming for the Olympics) can be. Because you give up a huge portion of your free time which could be used to spend more time with some of your friends, relatives and studying a little more if needed. And many times those efforts do not pay off.

Even if the number of positives and negatives I listed is the same. Personally, for me, the positives outweigh the negatives. I think the series is good, but I think it's a bit of wasted potential. I think 12 episodes just weren't enough for the series and should have been more.

So I was looking through the "Summer Stack Challenges" and saw Dive!!, I like diving sports so I took a shot at this anime. It's missing everything that the other sports animes have, for example, there's a lack of energy and adrenaline that the characters give off making them forgettable and a bit boring. Additionally, there's a lack of information about the diving techniques, scoring, and difficulty levels. Furthermore, in other sports animes, there is competition and we get to see the teams progress in order to beat the other teams, in Dive!! there are hardly any competitors shown; it makes us ... (the audience) question what pushes these characters to improve and train harder.

Additionally, there are moments in the anime that build tension, however we don't get to see anything come out of those scenes. The characters hardly develop, and we don't get the chance to see them push or challenge themselves to overcome these hardships.

anime felt pretty boring to me to be honest, i don't think it really focus on the main plot which is "Diving". there isn't much explanation about the sport related topic as well.

additionally, the characters' drama seems to overshadow the plot. too dramatic for my liking to be honest.

even though, i like watching "diving" sport during olympics etc., i think there should have been explanation on their points grading during competition because not many people would have understand how they are being graded.

but in general, can't really expect much from anime that ends in twelve or thirteen episodes as many things will be ... squeeze into such little episodes and a lot of explanations are left out which always keep people guessing when the anime ends.