Manga Adaptation by Voil
Streaming on Crunchyroll

Premise

Chizuru is a quiet, withdrawn girl who finds an outlet for her passion in following the local magical girl, Berry Blossom. Unfortunately, interest in Berry Blossom is decreasing due to how easily she can beat her arch-enemy Chrome. It’s with this in mind that Chizuru decides to team up with Chrome, improve his evil plans, and put Berry Blossom back in the spotlight.

Zigg’s verdict: Remarkably Unremarkable

(Note – Acro Trip released two episodes at once for the premiere, but in order to keep to classic First Look rules this piece is based only on Episode 1)

Acro Trip is another in the long, long line of anime ‘comedies’ that have a pleasant vibe and an interesting premise with a lot of potential, and then proceeds to do almost nothing with them except take the broadest possible swings. I’ve spoken in the past about how shows like this don’t really have jokes per se, they have the idea of a joke which they’ll gesture at a bunch, and then you have to put it together yourself. Acro Trip has some decently goofy scenarios and a couple of fun sight gags, but there’s no bite or punchline to any of the attempts at humour. Honestly, I kind of found the withdrawn, contemplative Chizuru of the first half of the episode more interesting than the generic fangirl she becomes in the back half. They’re both cliches but at least one had a little moodiness to it.

It doesn’t help that Acro Trip isn’t much of a looker either. Character designs are basic and very limited in their movement, while backgrounds are bland and anonymous, and the entire show has a sort of flat, simplistic feel. The only distinctive visual flourish  is the unusual eye design of the characters, which certainly gives them a distinctive look, but is arguably out of place on some of the more mundane figures, like Grandpa. Even Berry Blossom’s design is kind of bland, and while it’s clearly intended to be goofy, a lack of costuming flair is an issue in a magical girl show. The animation is never laughably bad but is clearly limited, and there’s just an overall lack of flair to the direction. Considering this is Voil’s debut effort I’m willing to cut them a bit of slack on this front, but it can’t really be said that visual fidelity is a strength of the show either.

In the end, all of that adds up to a show which is almost aggressively completely fine, without ever really threatening to become more than that. It’s arguably not even a magical girl show at all, as it seems the emphasis is going to be far more on Chizuru and Chrome goofing about with Berry Blossom a more background presence. I think there’s a lot of people who will enjoy this sort of gentle, meandering comedy (and the show is at least commendably clean and non-problematic so far) but I don’t think I’m one of them. I need my stories to have a little more pizazz in any number of ways, and what’s on show in this opener doesn’t have any of that.