When I picked up Ayane’s High Kick, I knew at first glance that I was in for an entertaining dose of crippling mediocrity.  It somehow managed to exceed my expectations.  I was not prepared to see just how mediocre it could get.

First off, I want to say I actually really enjoyed watching this.  I probably wouldn’t mind watching it again in full… but it isn’t likely.

I’m not sure if this is supposed to be a movie or two episodes, actually.  It’s divided into two parts, but we only see one set of the opening and ending credits.  At least on my DVD copy.  The opening song, BTW, is absolutely terrible, cheezy, and depressingly catchy.

Ayane Mitsui has one dream: to become a pro wrestler and become champion.  Ayane Mitsui has one major roadblock: she’s freaking terrible at it.

As a major pro wrestling fan, I just found this entire opening sequence degrading.  But perhaps it was meant to.  I’m honestly not entirely sure.  The point is, Ayane failed her audition.  However, on her way home she is accosted by Kunimitsu, a shady old man that offers to train her at his gym under the highway.

What ensues is Ayane spending her nights training with Kunimitsu and sleeping in her high school classes.

Ayane’s best friend, Kayoko, is worried about her activities and also happens to be a cookie cutter sidekick.  You could probably just look at that screencap and guess what kind of character she is.

While Kayoko is suspicious of Kunimitsu, she can’t let her friend suffer alone, so she offers to help train Ayane.

As it turns out, Kunimitsu has been taking advantage of Ayane’s dedication, which she learns once she shows up at her debut match… in kickboxing.

In what I was hoping would be a case of ensuing reality, Ayane gets the beatdown of a lifetime.  Even after she drums up some motivation to fight back.

Alas, our heroine can’t be done in just like that, so she delivers the perfect high kick to take the KO victory.

As it turns out, Ayane has a “talent” for kickboxing.  But not really since she just got beat up most of the fight, then got a lucky kick in.  Understandably, rising star Sakurako Miyagawa (who, surprisingly, has some decent Rule 34 going on) is pissed that her fifth straight KO victory has been overshadowed in the media by coverage of Ayane’s debut match.  She demands a fight with Ayane despite the fact that Ayane plans to go one-and-done with her kickboxing career and focus on pro wrestling.

That’s right.  Ayane’s High Kick is the Happy Gilmore of anime.

Meanwhile, the Vice Principal decides to be a colossal douchebag of western cartoon vice principal proportions and makes it his mission to expel Ayane from the school for breaking their “no jobs” rule.  He finally gets his chance to prove she’s a rule-breaker after Miyagawa issues a public challenge in front of the school.

As it turns out, the gifted athlete Miyagawa is also incredibly wealthy and either runs or is the daughter of whoever runs the Miyagawa company.  As such, she acts like the typical high-and-mighty princess character.  So when her spotlight is taken away, she is prone to pull out all the stops against Ayane with all the vengeance of Pizzazz from Jem.

To think, Jem could have been a much shorter series if Pizzazz just challenged Jem to a kickboxing match.

Miyagawa’s challenge actually got the school some good press, so the Principal decides to overrule the Vice Principal’s douchebaggery, giving Ayane only a 2 week suspension and allowing her to return to school IF she wins her fight.  If not, she’ll be expelled.  After a completely out-of-nowhere reminder that Ayane and Kayoko promised each other they would graduate together, Ayane now has the motivation to train.

Ayane returns to Kunimitsu and trains harder than she’s ever trained before.  Meanwhile, Miyagawa uses some ridiculous technology to train, not unlike Rocky IV.

Scratch that.  VERY unlike Rocky IV.  It’s like she stepped into a completely different anime genre entirely.

Finally, the big day arrives.  Ayane GETS BEAT UP HARDER THAN SHE’S EVER BEEN BEATEN BEFORE.  Even after a motivation plea from Kayoko, at best Ayane manages to fight evenly with Miyagawa in brief spurts.

Then, halfway through the final round, Ayane delivers her signature high kick… and grazes Miyagawa.  A cut opens up above her eye, but Miyagawa tanks it like a pro.  Just as she goes in for the kill, the ref stops her and calls the fight doctor in.  The doctor tells the ref to waive off the fight, and Ayame wins by TKO!

And that’s how the final fight of this anime ends.  By a technicality.  Ayane showed brief flashes of improvement and actual skill, but for the most part she just got the hell beat out of her and she won by a single lucky kick late in the fight.  Of course, Miyagawa straight up tells Ayane she didn’t beat her, and Ayane agrees.  She seems to want to fight Miyagawa again and prove herself, but she hasn’t given up on her pro wrestling dream either.

That’s where the series ends.  There’s nothing left, it was just canned.  And honestly?  It’s kind of disappointing.  The very beginning of the anime was downright awful, but it didn’t take very long for things to get rolling, and some of the characters started to grow on me.  There’s a lot of potential with the dynamic between Ayane’s skill at kickboxing and her dream to wrestle, and the main rivalry of the “series” started out as a caricature, but it ended up feeling kind of legit.

It’s almost as if how good the potential of the series is and how poorly it was executed were itself a metaphor for Ayane’s potential in kickboxing and how badly she got beat up.  Or… the other way around, I suppose.

Comedy: 4
Honestly, the humor is nothing I haven’t seen before.  But I was laughing through so much of it.  Most of it because it was genuinely funny, though there were a few times I was laughing at how obvious it was.
Pleasure Rating:  Guilty Pleasure
Absolutely a guilty pleasure.  There’s nothing about it that truly stands out, and it’s pretty much an amalgamation of things we’ve seen everywhere else.  But the unique combination of those parts turns out to be charming in its own way.

Rewatchability: 2
I would not mind watching Ayane’s High Kick again, but I don’t see myself ever having any reason to.  Like I said, it has a certain charm to it.  But that’s all it has.  It’s not a complete story, and the characters only show flashes of what they could be. Since there is literally no more of Ayane’s story out there, choosing to watch it again is an exercise in frustration.

Music: Mostly Forgettable
The music used ranges from wildly inappropriate to generic stock tunes.  But in a handful of key scenes, there’s a catchy musical callback that’s used fairly brilliantly.

Marketability: 3
The characters do have some pretty good designs.  But then again, that’s because they’re so cookie cutter.  You look at one character and you don’t think of that actual person.  You think of their role.

Ayane’s High Kick is ultimately forgettable, but surprisingly good.  If it were allowed to go on, it could have been something special.  It takes serious skill to make something look so painfully average but seem like it has something so much more.  I’ve seen a lot of mediocre anime and a lot of downright bad ones that had to rely on fanservice as some form of saving grace.  Ayane’s High Kick managed to keep me interested all the way through.  I never felt invested in it, to be sure… but I never had the urge to stop watching or skip parts.  Overall, it’s comfortably mediocre.