YMMV / Welcome to the Ballroom

• Awesome Art: While the plot and characters are much praised, as well as the fresh theme of ballroom dancing in nowadays' manga, the art is probably the biggest initial hook of the manga, and readers will often underline it in their recommendations. The covers has a watercolor texture that actually present itself on the manga, in addition to the dance itself where anime viewers actually consider the manga showing more movements than the anime.
• Arc Fatigue: An unintentional one with the A Rank Metropolitan tournament, as the manga first as the mangaka's health started to take a turn of the worse causing her to put it in a hiatus for 2016 and even after the year-long hiatus is over, her health is still not fully recovered, being unable to release the new monthly chapters consistently to the point where despite wanting the arc to finish with the anime, the anime eventually Overtook the Manga.
• Broken Base: The anime adaptation. While it is one of the stronger anime in the Summer 2017 season, with some citing its consistent technical artwork and the soundtrack; it gains some criticism for not showing a lot of dancing despite being an anime about dancing, the initial treatment of the female dancers despite being a sport where the leader and the follower should be equal, and the long necks.
  • To a lesser extent, the anime being 2-cour, which while readers are ecstatic to see Chinatsu being animated, raised some doubts as the manga after Tenpei cup (which is very suited for a 1 cour) doesn't have a satisfying placement for the ending. The 2 cour ended up overtaking the manga (not helped by the mangaka being sick when working, which causes delay that contributed towards it), and the results it that some episodes are quickly rushed towards the next competition.
• Estrogen Brigade: No wonder, given that the manga is devoted to a hobby which is traditionally considered to be feminine. While the work is at least formally oriented towards boys and tries to portray the girl dancers with a subtle Male Gaze, a very bizarre character design, the girl dancers themselves being as complex and competitive as the male dancers, and the male half of the cast being rather attractive and muscular drew a lot of female fans in.
• Fandom-Enraging Misconception: Please, never say that this show is girls-oriented or will be Yaoi, if you want to stay alive.
• Fandom Rivalry: With Straighten Up! Welcome to Shika High's Competitive Dance Club, another ballroom dancing manga that's instead published by Shonen Jump, though there is some overlap in readership.
• Friendly Fandoms: The BL focused dancing manga 10 Dance does share some fans with Ballroom, as does the aforementioned Shika High.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Initially when Mako is first introduced and becomes Tatara's partner, fans liked them together compared to Tatara/Shizuku due to their matching tame personalities in the Tenpei arc, and is upset when the competition ends with them breaking up. Then Chinatsu appeared when Tatara starts high school, where their fiery chemistry and struggles during her arc got the fans to pair with each other instead (it doesn't help that Tatara and Shizuku went to different high schools as well).
• Growing the Beard: While the writing is actually decent at the start, it suffers from being a template of Shonen Sports Story clichés. Once Chinatsu enters the picture though, the writing starts to shine.
• Ho Yay:
  • While this isn't a BL series, episode 4 of the anime still resulted with quite a few viewers starting to ship Tatara with Hyoudou, due to the train scene. Extra fuel was provided by the following episodes where due to Tatara restoring Hyoudou's love (or rather excitement) for dancing resulted in Tatara becoming the main center of Hyoudou's attention. It got to the point that he even started ignoring some of the other characters.
  • Gaju has a bit with Tatara as well. It's worth noting that in a chart with everyone getting certain stats, and where all of Tatara's partners have a "Heroine" stat marker in relation to him, Gaju is the only boy with a "Heroine" stat at all^note It's the lowest at one, but still.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Hyoudou's yawning face. Even the angry variant.
  • The 'giraffe necks', for the obvious reasons.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • Many people mistakenly perceive the relationship between Mako and Gaju as Incest Subtext, especially because of the fact that they make up one of the main dance couples (a few of which admittedly do have some Ship Tease, making more confusion). In reality, relatives being dance partners is a very common phenomenon in couples' dancing, citing better mutual understanding of partners as a main reason—and this is not considered something romantic or ambiguous.
• Narm:
  • Artistic style first and especially Noodle People design. It also does not help that most of the characters have an excessively serious Large Ham reaction during the dance, which makes the perception of the show even more amusing.
  • Kaname's motorcycle helmet is absurdly small for his head, which makes it seem like a robot's head.
• Replacement Scrappy: Averted big time with Mako, and later Chinatsu.
• The Scrappy:
  • Shizuku at the start, due to her being a Reluctant Fanservice Girl and having a more subtle personality that could be seen as passive and boring (the biggest one was during Episode 5, where when Tatara and Gaju talked about the Tenpei, she's just sitting there absolutely saying nothing).
  • Gaju started off as this, due to his treatment towards Mako and immediately tried to switch partners after learning that Hyoudou has a knee injury. Fan treatment towards him noticeably gets warmer when Gaju becomes Tatara's senior in high school, and generally becomes easier to interact with.
• So Okay, It's Average: The anime when compared to its source material. Most agreed that it is rather well adapted from the manga, but it could have done better especially towards the dancing.
• Tough Act to Follow: The anime is this to Yuri!!! on Ice when it comes to the dancing aspect, where fans felt that there were too many stills used in Ballroom compared to YOI . Additionally, it is also to the manga itself when it comes to the art style.
• Values Dissonance:
  • The story tends to fall back on traditional Japanese gender roles; the female dancers have very little agency while their male partners tend to make most of the decisions for both of them, despite how real ballroom dancing puts emphasis on equality and clear communication between dance partners. Episode 6 really ignited some of the Western fandom's anger with one particular scene before the start of the Tenpei cup: the one where Tatara made a wager with Gaju in front of everyone, as their female partners (Shizuku in particular, who's just silent most of the time) just passively agree to it. As ballroom dancing is more about pairs than either individual members, this made some Western viewers come out of it thinking the boys were using their partners as bargaining chips^note Though Gaju himself is enraged at Mako (who is the one that asked to become Tatara's partner) for doing so.
  • During the Training Camp under Hyoudou, a handful of readers were made somewhat uncomfortable at the other dancers being unnecessarily harsh towards Tatara compared to Chinatsu, given that Tatara has only been training under a year by that point and Chinatsu also shares some fault for being a difficult partner.

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