Basquash! – 07

Oh my god… when I first started out this series, I never thought that I’d say this but… this show rocks. This seriously was an awesome episode and this series shows no signs yet of slowing down at all. At first sight, this might be yet another shounen sports series… but it really is so much more. Basquash! is a satire of shounen series that yet takes itself seriously and yet at the same time knows when to be a bit silly.

A common theme of these shounen heroes is their motivation to be the best [whatever] of the world: to get enough money to help out one of their poor friends. Dan is the same, but the major difference here is that Coco doesn’t want help. Dan was probably turned off by Coco’s initial disappointment of having lost her legs (which isn’t surprising: anyone would get incredibly upset after suddenly losing such important limbs). From that moment, Coco was able to accept her disability and grow further, while Dan simply stayed the same. Because Coco didn’t want any sympathy from the one who caused her her injuries, the two of them just grew apart more and more without ever trying to understand each other. In this episode, it’s indeed shown that their communication really is the biggest problem between those two, because you can really see that Coco is proud of her brother when he does what he likes: basketball.

Another common theme of shounen series is their “cheating is bad! you should follow clearly set rules!”-mentality. Well, that too gets completely smashed in this episode when James Loane tries to impose his own rules on basketball. Dan is very quick to remind him how basketball is meant to have fun, not be bound by all sorts of restrictive rules that fail to get the best out of the characters. Real fun basketball is supposed to be the kind that takes risk. And in that way, this series couldn’t possibly have chosen a better fitting lead character than Dan, because he may not be the most technically skilled basketball player, but his sheer guts and creativity when playing are what makes him unique. And really: a lot of shounen series struggle so badly to make their characters stand out. Yay! We’ve seen a teenager change the world. Why him? Why couldn’t anyone else do it? Nine out of ten shounen series simply fails to answer that, or has such a ludicrous answer for it that it’s hard to take seriously.

Some other shounen-tropes that are made completely ridiculous in this series: “screw the rules I have money” (which is really taken to the extreme by James Loane’s incredible wealth), the evil overlord who tries to look as cool as possible (James again, as he tries to look cool while blowing bubbles) and the overly obvious romance. Really, with so many girls in this series, with so much fanservice, there hasn’t been a sign of romance at all. Dan and Miyuki for once behave like real childhood friends, rather than them using it for cheap romance. Sera, while she has the hots for Dan as he plays baseball, she gets turned on by every good baseball match. I really hope that this series can continue this, because it’s felt SO refreshing so far.

But what I like the most in this series is the setting: it really feels alive: it really feels like this series takes place in a city with lots of different people, rather than a television set with a bunch of extras here and there. This has LOTS of promise for the future of this series. For example, the eye catch in this episode showed two people who I couldn’t recognize at all: I had no idea who they were. As it turns out, they were some random townsfolk who appear every once in a while and are just living their daily lives. It just shows how important Rollingtown is for this series.

Rating: *** (Awesome)
In this episode, Dan really showed why he is this series’ main character. Lots of extra depth for both the characters and setting, one heck of a successful episode.