Wandance – Episode 1

What’s it about? Kaboku has always done what was expected of him, living a mundanely predictable life to meet the ideals of those around him. It’s safe, but it’s also incredibly unfulfilling. Then one night, he meets a girl dancing in a way he’s never seen, transforming the concrete into her own stage. Kaboku is immediately smitten, but it’s a long way to learn how to dance in a hip-hop style; just maybe, this will be his path to freedom… 

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Episode 1 begins with a young girl dancing in broad daylight, moving in such a way that she mirrors modern hip-hop dance. Her moves are fluid, and when protagonist Kaboku sees her in action, it’s love at first sight with the power of dance.

But that’s just a taste of the story: Kaboku has lived an entire life before that moment, and that life has been filled with meeting the societal expectations of the culture around him. This manifests in a young man who is the color beige: that is to say a perfectly mundane young man who offers the facade of a well mannered teen. Yet this leaves Kaboku feeling empty inside, yearning for more. 

So when he encounters Wanda, a fellow student and a hip-hop dancer, Kaboku feels his life changing for the better as he finally realizes that maybe, he can use his body as a vehicle for joy instead of playing the game of life…

Right off the bat, this is a really, really gorgeous show. The 2D animation really shows an understanding of the source manga, which is a credit to Madhouse’s ongoing skill level. I really like how the character designs have translated from black and white manga pages to a full-fledged animation. It certainly has me itching to grab copies of the manga, which is at a heft thirteen volumes in its official English localization right now.

My one biggest complaint? Using 3DCGI for the dance sequences. Having seen the manga in-person, it really breaks the immersion of seeing bodies move in a hip-hop style. Instead of feeling fluid and sharp against the 2D animation, anyone who’s dancing during a significant sequence looks like Baby’s First Blender Animation in a bad way. It’s a choice, and it definitely is…something to see. (Something bad, y’all. Something very uncanny and bad and unfortunately, meme worthy.)

This is a shame because like…Netflix just released one of the biggest movies—K-Pop Demon Hunters— that while I might be the last American to not have seen it, has an immense amount of dancing that looks fluid. This can definitely be done: it’s just a matter of using a studio and team that are capable of doing justice to a series where dancing is at the core.

Still, there’s a lot to like about Wandance, and I’m not just talking about the pleasant jumpscare of Scatman Joe as a vehicle for Kaboku talking about his speech difficulties and desire to dance. But I am talking about Kaboku here because he’s one of my favorite aspects of this premiere. 

Kaboku is a really relatable character, a young man existing in a society and doing his level best to be in the comfortable middle. In many ways, this manifest as being similar to autism, from my perspective: Kaboku feels at odds in his body, so he uses rigid social rules to guide him despite that leaving him empty. Thus dance becomes the gateway to him finding who he actually is and breaking free of the mold he’s forced himself into.

It helps that we get a lot of context in this premiere about him and his interior life. One thing of note is Kaboku’s height: he towers above his classmates, and has for years. Because of that, he plays basketball, but not because he wants to. He does it because his friends told him that’s what’s right for his body and size. 

Another marker of his personality and being is how he speaks: he uses a lot of hand motions, tangles words, processes differently. To classmates, this comes across as him being, quite frankly, weird, but as an autistic reviewer, this struck me as a young man trapped in his body without a way to orient himself. We even see him practicing vocal sounds from a textbook, which feels like something he’s done lots of times. 

This, combined, results in a character that is immensely likeable, especially as our focal point into the world of dance. Combined with the beginnings of Wanda’s characterization, I think there’s a lot of potential for a really deep story that never loses its spark, and I’m definitely willing to find out. 

Wandance is one of my favorite premiere’s thus far, and if we gave out stars, it damn near five. The 3DCGI really drags it down as feeling immensely uncanny in a show that, otherwise, is perfectly executing the start of a coming-of-age story about a boy who wants to dance and girl who loves to dance, even if she’s only just started gaining skill. 

Consider me sat every week for this, and definitely know I’ll be snagging the manga: I’ve been waiting for a series like this to capture my full attention in this particular way, and along with a few other select titles, I’m feeling ready to fill out my watchlist, especially with shows of this caliber.