Dive!!

The story centers on the Mizuki Diving Club (MDC) member Tomoki Sakai. The MDC has fallen on hard times, and their sponsors are preparing to pull their support. They promise to give the club another year of support if the new coach, Kayoko Asaki, can get one of the members into the Olympics in a year's time.[5]

Anime News Network had five editors review the first episode of the anime:[16] Theron Martin said that despite the animation not being eye-catching, he commended it for having likable characters with heart and setting up an intriguing story from the start; Paul Jensen was critical of both the male cast having dissimilar personalities and the art of diving only being half explained but said that a couple of episodes can help the series' narrative be more focused and capture the attention of genre viewers; James Beckett found the cast of male characters unappealing in terms of design and the diving scenes lacking in excitement but was optimistic of the Olympic plotline being able to put the series in the right direction; Rebecca Silverman felt that both plotlines involving the Mizuki Diving Club and Tomoki's arc weren't particularly interesting and the lack of characterization for Yoichi beyond his physique and being the sport's motivational spokesman. The fifth reviewer, Nick Creamer, criticized it for making the sport of diving sound boring, lacking any directional hook for both the story and its characters and being unimpressive in its animation, concluding that it "isn't necessarily the worst show I've watched this season, it probably does the most to squander its potential. Maybe check it out if you're really intrigued by the concept, but both the writing and visual problems here seem pretty insurmountable."[16]

Silverman reviewed the first two volumes of the 2017 manga adaptation in 2019.[17] Despite finding criticism in the characterization of Asaki and the story being too angst-ridden and poorly paced in places, she praised the focus on the characters' insecurities away from the sport (highlighting Tomoki's personal life) and the art for capturing the difficulties of diving, concluding that "[I]t certainly deserves to stand on its own merits rather than suffer from comparisons, and if you're looking for something a little less intense on the sports manga front than some of the other offerings out there, this is an interesting story."[17]

• Dive!! at Websunday.net (in Japanese)
• Dive!! (anime) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia