Slow Start
Both 2016 and 2017 proved that cutesy anime that feature all-girl casts, like New Game! or Hinako Note, are somehow perfect for exploring relatable problems that everyone faces, like professional rivals and stage fright. It looks like that trend will be continuing into 2018 with Slow Start.
The show follows Hana Ichinose, a student who’s just starting high school as a freshman. She makes plenty of friends, and seems normal enough to everyone around her. But she has a secret: she’s sixteen. Yes, Hana is one year older than all of her peers because she enrolled in high school late. Hana’s first year of school is spent trying to maintain the illusion that she’s the same age of her classmates.
Slow Start is primed to explore the unnecessary stresses placed upon students that either struggle with school, or face unseen circumstances that impede their school life. Hana isn’t dumb. She’s just starting a year later than most students. However, she fears, as most teenagers would, that the truth would cause everyone around her to think she’s stupid or incompetent.
Slow Start will stir up long forgotten memories of your own struggles to hide your insecurities when it came to school, and encourage audiences to rethink how much pressure we put on kids to succeed in education. It will only broach these subjects though. Most of the show will be a go-happy romp of cute anime girls doing cute anime things. It’ll make you feel warm and fuzzy on the inside. Despite its title, Slow Start will start before many other 2018 anime, beginning to stream on Crunchyroll on Jan. 6.
