Will 'Narenare: Cheer For You!' Cheer Up Anime Fans This Season?

The Summer 2024 anime season is shaping up to be a pretty good one. We’ve got an anime about an otaku who gets a harem of cosplaying girls, a cute anime about a lovey-dovey Russian waifu, and a ridiculously cute show about a girl who uses her acting ability to make her crush fall in love with her. Another fun new show is Narenare: Cheer For You!, a cute anime about cheerleading from P.A. Works. Let’s check it out in this post!

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Will ‘Narenare: Cheer For You!’ Cheer Up Anime Fans This Season?

I love how literally any topic imaginable can be the subject of a ‘cute girls doing cute things’ (CGDCT) anime. The story might follow girls who are struck by the desire to join their school’s light music club (K-On!). Or learn about ‘solo camping’ in the winter (Yuru Camp), move to Tokyo and join the anime industry (Shirobako), or discover a passion for astronomy (Koi Suru Asteroid). We might get a really engaging tale about cute girls who get the urge to visit Antarctica! Today let’s look at a cute-girls-doing-cheerleading-things anime called Narenare: Cheer For You! (Japanese title: Na Nare Hana Nare.)

Narenare: Cheer For You! follows six high school girls with varied interests, who join the same cheerleading team and find friendship. The series is by P.A. Works, a well-regarded studio that loves to tell stories that get us to appreciate life in rural Japan.

The Characters of Narenare: Cheer For You!

You almost know what to expect before starting a new CGDCT anime, and what kinds of characters you’ll get. The extremely shy Japanese girl who represents the audience’s starting point. A super strong opponent (usually with dark blue hair) who will become an ally by episode three. A blonde character who will put the other characters off balance by her mere existence, and so on. All these fun elements are in the Narenare: Cheer For You! cheerleading anime! Let’s check out all the girls here!

Kanata Misora

The main character fulfills the standard Japanese “everygirl” role, which viewers will instantly identify with. She’s passionate about cheerleading but injured herself in junior high school and can’t jump properly.

Anna Aveiro Nakamura dos Santos Morella Cuccittini

A half-Japanese, half-Brazilian girl with an extremely long name who’s always scouting for athletic girls for the cheerleading team. The anime uses the (somewhat tired) trope that Westerners will suddenly kiss any Japanese without warning, because “in the West, it’s just a greeting.” Yes, Brazilians have the European cheek kiss custom, but no one in their right mind would do this in a conservative country like Japan.

Suzuha Obunai, The Parkour Girl

A strange girl who performs Parkour-esque feats on par with Spider-Man, she’s easily the most interesting character in the first three episodes. Can Kanata or Anna convince her to join the cheerleading team?

Super Calm Girl Nodoka Otani

The calm and cute dojikko of the group. Her name Nodoka literally means ‘calming.’

Megumi Kaionji Brings Wheelchair Moe?

A girl who was injured in the past and is in a wheelchair, Megumi seems to indicate that this won’t necessarily be a totally happy anime about cute cheerleaders, since injury is always a risk.

Shion Tanizaki

Megumi’s friend, who is super cute and athletic and is perfect for recruiting into the cheerleading squad.

Narenare Cheer For You Gunma Prefecture 2

Narenare Cheer For You Gunma Prefecture 1

An Anime Set in J-List’s Home Prefecture of Gunma

Ever since the groundbreaking Onegai☆Teacher! and its sequel Onegai☆Twins! (both set in the scenic Lake Kizaki area of Nagano Prefecture), it’s been common for anime planners to set their stories in real locations. This allows for a level of realism and sets up the potential for “otaku tourism.”

The trend of setting fictional anime in “anime holy lands” can be fun, but it can also become quite clumsy and awkward. Do high school girls really hang out in the most famous historic ruins in the historic town of Numata? But if it makes fans happy and promotes local tourism, I’m fine with it.

[ASW] Na Nare Hana Nare 03 [1080p HEVC][D861156A] 0038

A Bad Title for Foreign Fans?

When I pick an anime to blog about, I naturally have to choose what title to refer to it. Should I go with the easy-to-understand English title, like Pseudo Harem or Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian? Or should I be as “pure” as possible and use the Japanese title? In the end I go with whichever seems like it will be easiest for fans to understand. If the Japanese title has already been embraced by fans (ala Mushoku Tensei), I use that.

I consider Na Nare Hana Nare to be a bad title, from the standpoint of hoping that the anime will find fertile soil with foreign fans. The phrase is a wordplay on the words 菜の花 na-no-hana, a flower with the unfortunate English name of “rapeseed,” and 離れ離れ hanare-hanare, meaning “apart” or “separated.” The combined phrase represents the fleeting beauty of rapeseed flowers being scattered in the wind…which doesn’t mean much to anime fans outside of Japan. I’m positive whoever came up with the name of the Hanasaku Iroha anime (also by P.A. Works) also named this show.

Thanks for reading this blog about the Narenare: Cheer For You! anime. Will you be giving the show a watch? Let us know in the comments below…and thanks for reading!

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