YMMV / PuraOre! ~Pride of Orange~

• Audience-Alienating Premise: The premise is an ice hockey, Slice of Life, and Idol Genre mashup. Putting aside that hockey is an extremely niche sport in Japan, the anime has much less in the way of actual hockey action than the premise would suggest (which turned away any pre-existing hockey fans), there are about five minutes of idol performances total across all twelve episodes, and the slice-of-life aspect suffers from the show dedicating time to the other elements. The Blu-rays flopped by most reports, and the PuraOre! mobile game that the anime was made to kickstart lasted a mere eight months before shutting down.
• Dancing Bear: Most everyone who bothers with PuraOre does so for the novelty of an ice hockey anime, hockey being a sport that is very obscure in Japan and thus has very few anime or manga focused on it.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: Smile Princess is loaded with new story content, but the hockey gameplay features extremely low-budget visuals, largely plays itself (with frustratingly-deficient AI to boot), and is tacked on with little relation to the actual story.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: After the first minute or so of the first episode of Pride of Orange, there isn't another hockey game shown until the tail end of Episode 3, and the cast doesn't officially play as the Dream Monkeys until the last few minutes of Episode 6. Everything between consists of slice-of-life, training, and flashbacks. Unsurprisingly, the first two episodes are largely considered the weakest in the series.
• So Okay, It's Average: Pride of Orange ultimately had a tepid reception because viewers who were in it for the Slice of Life elements found that it doesn't have the character depth to support a good Slice of Life anime, sports fans found that it lacked the intrigue of a good sports anime (in no small part because it tries to be a Slice of Life), and Idol Genre fans found that it does so little with the idol elements that they could be removed with next-to-no consequence.
• Special Effect Failure: Team emblems are superimposed onto the characters' jerseys instead of being drawn on. The effect is obvious and can be off-putting at times, especially when characters move in such a way that creates folds on the jersey yet the logo doesn't fold with it.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • The Dream Monkeys Senior Set gets surprisingly little screentime in Pride of Orange, considering that this includes the captain and one of the assistant captains for the team.
  • Despite being hyped up as a huge threat, Maya Walker ends up being a one-trick-pony in the single game she plays against actual named characters.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • There are very significant gaps in the plot of Pride of Orange, this being perhaps the most blatant sign that the anime is a twelve-episode advertisement for Smile Princess. Chief among them is the semifinal game that Riko had to miss that was allegedly very difficult, "replaced" with an episode where Mami returns to her old friends in Nikko that adds little to the plot.
  • Aside from the fact that all of the critical Dream Monkeys goals are scored by Manaka, there is a strong argument that the story would work better with Yu as the protagonist, Naomi and Riko as major supporting characters, and the Embroidery Club members as lesser supporting teammates. Both Yu and Naomi have plots about quitting and later returning to hockey, whereas Manaka has barely anything resembling a character arc and drags her friends into hockey on a whim. Unfortunately, Yu only has A Day in the Limelight in the Preseason manga.
  • Outside of the actual idol performances, the Idol Genre elements probably take less up less than five minutes across all twelve episodes.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: Based on preview screenshots, certain pieces of Smile Princess artwork featuring the players in uniform can be described as someone taking the characters' round, Moe heads and slapping them onto a realistically-proportioned body. It's especially bizarre as Pride of Orange has no such problem.