Sayonara Watashi no Cramer

Over the years, the reputation of women's soccer in Japan has been gradually waning. Despite this rather bleak scenario, there are still some schools with teams trying to keep the sport alive. With that, glimmers of hope are starting to appear.

Having played for the boys' soccer club when she was in middle school, Nozomi Onda's skills are nothing less than prodigious. Because of this, she thinks that playing soccer with fellow girls would only drag her down. She is only motivated to play her best when facing those she deems worthy opponents. Meanwhile, Sumire Suou is a promising rookie with exceptional talent—a talent hindered by a team that cannot keep up with her abilities.

Onda, convinced by her former coach to a girls' soccer club, and Suou, accompanied by her close friend and rival Midori Soshizaki, cross paths as of the Warabi Seinan High School's girls' soccer team. In this new field, both girls begin to display their full potential and skills. Along with their teammates, each of their steps, kicks, and goals will grant them victory—and perhaps also ensure that the sport begins its journey back into the spotlight.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Onda, Nozomi Main

Shimabukuro, Miyuri Japanese

Suou, Sumire Main

Kurosawa, Tomoyo Japanese

Soshizaki, Midori Main

Yuuki, Aoi Japanese

Itou, Haruna ing

Ishikawa, Yui Japanese

Tase, Eriko ing

Shimamura, Yuu Japanese

Echizen, Sawa ing

Wakayama, Shion Japanese

Tenma, Yuu ing

Kobayashi, Aika Japanese

Kutani, Rei ing

Uchiyama, Yumi Japanese

Adatara, Alice ing

Kiso, Hiroko Japanese

Kishi, Ayumu ing

Waki, Azumi Japanese

Kamiya, Hiroshi Producer

Maeda, Yoshiteru Producer

Yonezawa, Akira Producer

Yamaoka, Yuuki Producer

Reviews

Jun 27, 2021

theneilesh

Recommended

Looking at the reviews on here I feel serve this anime a real injustice. Your Lie in April fans are expecting it to be Your Lie in April v2 and getting disappointed because its based around a Soccer and not Drama are unfairly reviewing Sayonara Watashi no Cramer.

For what it is and it main portrayal, it has done a very good job. It tackles real life issue in Soccer. It translates how soccer players are and react to situations very nicely. This is one of the better Soccer anime I have watched because it real and captures everything around soccer perfectly.

So if you like Your ... Lie in April and don't understand anything about soccer you will be left disappointed. However if you are a Soccer fan you will enjoy this anime a lot and will love all the name drops too

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Jun 27, 2021

OneFaintingRobin

Mixed Feelings

A frustrating show in a lot of ways, "Farewell, My Dear Cramer" should have a lot of potential, with a lot going in its favour. The show adapts the manga by Naoshi Arakawa, author of "Your Lie in April", a beautiful, emotionally-resonant story. And, to be fair, this source material, in its story and characterisation, is where this show does shine. Watching the characters come together as a real team over the course of the season is really satisfying, and even if things don't always go fantastically for them, you can see how they make clear progress as the series goes on. It's these characters, ... this story, that did keep me onboard with this show, and will likely make sure I come back for a second season, should that come in the future.

Unfortunately, the production often lets this source material down. I've enjoyed an awful lot of Liden Films works; from absurd comedies like "Sekkou Boys" to the slightly more intense "Hanebado" (ironically, a show which suffers from the opposite issue, exceptional production values with a story that slips up a lot at the end, despite some interesting ideas), I had a great time with "Otherside Picnic", and I even got some enjoyment out of "Love and Lies" and "Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka", even if the latter is still trashy as all hell and the former frustrated me just as much as it entertained me. I like this company's works more often than I don't. And I did like this too, for the most part.

But the animation is pretty sloppy at times, especially in the character animation. During more important football matches, it definitely improves a bit, you can tell that's where the budget went, but it comes at the expense of fairly stiff, dull-looking character animation, which is a real shame given the unique character designs they're working with. And, more crucially for me, the pacing is all pretty all over the place; the first half of the season speeds past, with surprisingly little time spent on the sport itself, only for the latter third to almost entirely show one single match (albeit with plenty of flashbacks and context trickled throughout). I've said this with a few shows before, but I think this would really have benefitted from a longer season, to give the plot space to spread out.

It's a shame that these details bring the show down, because I think with a bit more money and effort, there's no reason this show couldn't have been excellent. Again, this is the studio that made "Hanebado", and that looks phenomenal, especially during its matches. There is a fun story in here, and I did have a good time more often than I didn't. But I can't pretend that the production doesn't let the source material down.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jun 27, 2021

KANLen09

Not Recommended

More than vindicating that this is "Your Lie in April" author Naoshi Arakawa's departure of the themes that he's worked so well, to the two series of his very first manga works that would debut alongside each other. The prequel Sayonara Football (which had a movie released recently as First Touch), and the main series which is this show...suffered an abrupt turn, tantamount to the skillful likes of Ronaldo or even Messi in conflict. If I could compare the movie and anime in the Manchester United goalkeeper fashion: the movie is the former David de Gea; the latter is the infamous comedic Massimo Taibi.

With the ... whole quad-yearly Tokyo Olympics season of an affair coming up, it's yet another adaptation at a time when the world is slowly beginning to rile up from being hard hit by the pandemic (at least for Japan anyways), and more sports shows are being made to pronounce the diversity of the games featured in the Olympics. What "Sayonara Watashi no Cramer' brought to the Olympics table is women's soccer, a sport that's generally been long held by men for decades, and now slowly expanding this to the female side since it has garnered its own popularity in the modern age.

I've already watched the First Touch movie that was supposed to be released alongside the anime (that got delayed because of COVID), so I'll keep spoilers to a minimum. The gist of "enjoying" this show is that you NEED to have watched the movie first, because a key character in this show (Nozomi Onda) does the exact same soccer-trick styles here. Alas, keep your expectations super low, because the hell that Liden Films did of an astounding lackluster of a job, the animation sure don't hold up as what you'd expect of a sports show that DEMANDS animation, because that is how you excel in producing such shows. I say "enjoying", because by taking the animation away, even with good visuals, characters (and an insane multitude of them, because it's a full-fledged team), it's bound to fail anyways and look much of less unappealing.

Otherwise, the anime series is a super lackluster version of the manga, and let me show you why. First and foremost, getting the easy culprit out of the way, is Liden Films' jarring animation choices. Fun fact, the production staff for the TV series did the movie as well, and somehow by hook or by crook, the movie ended up being the superior version of the series overall. But once again as a reminder, keep your expectations low because it's subpar at best.

Secondly, I don't mind if there's a buttload of characters, especially for a sports show like soccer, where teamwork is essential. But as much as I like the presentaton in the movie, the anime drops that ball hard with characters that seem too full of themselves while looking very stagnant and un-striking like the manga. Whoever tried to give both the movie and anime a young kind of look, your expectations are stooply low to the point of bare air-kicking. For reference, take the 3 central Warabi Seinan girls: Nozomi Onda, Sumire Suo and Midori Soshizaki. These 3 girls mainly have a lot of screentime, so I could understand their friendship-cum-rivalry status from the get-go. But it always seems to me that Naoshi Arakawa tries to input too much of the influence from "Your Lie in April", so much so that I can distinctively the comedic moments mirroring that of the former. These girls have dreams and aspirations, and I completely understand their action line of moods. But at the same time, the ing characters like the "princess-mannered" Aya Shiratori, they're not characters that you can reference them on the soccer field, but more like narcisstic ones that only provide comedic banter. If I were the coach of the girls' team, I wouldn't even have butt my eye on them being cardboards for a fitting story, unless they got real talent to show.

The third and last pointer of why the show failed, is that the pacing is fricking sloth levels of slow. I read the manga alongside the anime, and it seems that the production staff tried to "make it good" by including not more than 25% of all of its 13-episode length on anime-original padding, and every episode spared like 5-6 minutes of that. Granted, with all the action, the anime doesn't miss a beat, and the episodes fly by so fast that I'm always reaching for the next episode. But to see it veer back-and-forth towards the straightforward manga is asinine, and can feel like a chore to watch the show from start to finish. For that I really have to recommend reading the manga over the anime, because it gets the most important things done and grows its story so that it doesn't feel cumbersome. It's character development that the anime chose to do that's more important than the pacing, and I legitimately understand the reasons behind the directorial choice to do so. But as someone who used to watch soccer with friends, the sport is supposed to be as frenetic as possible, and sadly this show lost all of that mojo. Heck, a counterattack is easier done than said.

At least the OST was decent though. Aika Kobayashi's OP "AMBITIOUS GOAL" suits the show's themes to score the brillant goal, and is a nice song to listen to on its own. I could not say the same for the ED, which sounds very generic even with its upbeat sounds. A goal and own goal (of the metaphoric hit-and-miss) result here, I'd say that the OP is the only thing that I really liked about the show.

If you can take this with a light heart, then I suppose that this will suit to your tingling senses of playing a harmless friendly game of soccer. Otherwise, it's a snoozefest of a show, stick to the movie and the 2 manga works if you can.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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