Another cheerful series, about a boy named Fujisaki Shun who wants to win a gold medal in Olympics. That’s it. That’s literally the story behind Ganbarist Shun (ガンバリスト!駿). He just shows up at his middle school gymnastics club, blurts this out and the story is underway.
Things get interesting after that though, when it turns out Shun can’t even turn a simple cartwheel. And he has to perform in the regional tournament the very next day. This leads to one of the funniest first episodes I’ve watched in a long, looong time.
After that the humor content goes down a lot, in favor of Shun and the rest of his club members slowly but surely improving under the guidance of various coaches. Some of the performances are seriously impressive, especially Shun’s two turns on the horizontal bar (the manga co-author Morisue was an Olympic gold medalist in the same event). It’s spoiled a bit by the lengthy flashbacks, sideline comments and internal thought processes that punctuate every single move, but it’s still gripping to watch anyway. But, you never do get to find out why Shun wants to be a medalist anyway. He just does.
The series is only 30 episodes long (yes, 30 is “only” for a series as fun as this), and it’s never been officially released, so it’s not very well-known in the west. Even in Japan it never got a DVD release so you’d have to get VHS (what’s that mommy?) tapes if you wanted to own it. The only subs available are some seriously atrocious “Engrish” subs that I quickly ignored in favor of just watching it for myself. If you’re lucky enough to find it in a language you understand, I highly, highly recommend it.