Basquash! – 05

If you’re wondering what happened to the synopsis and episode rating at the beginning of each post: I decided to remove it. It was beginning to get tedious again to every time write up some spoiler-free synopsis and the episode ratings didn’t really have lots of meaning: I was too busy labelling those episodes in different categories rather than paying attention to what was really going on. I’ll probably still do these blurbs in my quick first impressions at the beginning of each season, but to do this for every single episode has become quite redundant. If I loved an episode, it’s much easier for me to just write it in the actual post.

In any case, I’m glad that I ended up blogging Basquash!, because this show seriously is only getting better and better. It knows exactly when it needs to be silly and when to be serious. In this episode, we see the first real match of Dan, Sera and Iceman against another mecha-basketball team, and it’s just as I hoped: while a big focus of this series is show is basketball, there’s much more going on than just that. It just keeps the baseball tactics for what they are, and instead focuses on the audience: what moves a crowd and how to make optimal use of it.

This episode again showed how distant Dan and Coco actually are from each other. Because Dan has been busy with Haruka he has been forced to live along with Miyuki and the others, but this hasn’t closed the gap between them at all. You’d think that the two of them need a bit f time on their own, but Dan never bothers to try and understand, and Coco just refuses to give him the opportunity to do so. I don’t think that she specifically hates him for what happened to her legs, but I think it’s a combination between a typical brother-sister relationship and how she’s jealous of him, having legs and still being able to have fun with his friends.

And despite that huge bosom of hers, I’m surprised at how much I like Haruka. She definitely adds some spice to this show with her ambitious plans to promote her shoe designs through basketball, not to mention that this episode shows how she’s a control freak: she likes to be totally in charge, and when things don’t go according to how she wants it, she really gets poisonous.

And at the same time, this show isn’t afraid to remind everyone that this is just supposed to be a fun show. I’ve never heard of a mecha that can be controlled by basketballs out of all things, and you just have to love how that guy on the moon, despite looking like either a mid-boss or the final bad guy, is blowing soap bubbles like it’s the most normal thing to do. ^^;