Category: Basquash!

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.

So at last we’ve gotten to the main part of the story: getting Dan to the moon so that he can find a way to fix Coco’s legs through some version of major league basketball (or Basquash). This episode shows the auditions, which include of course Dan, Sera and Iceman, but also one of Iceman’s old rivals, a tall black long-haired guy (apparently called Man-Z) and… our little princess (coached by Coco). Never knew that she had that much inner basketball talents.

But yeah, the reason why I like Basquash so far is that there’s always so many different stuff going on. The show doesn’t have a particularly big cast when compared to others, but it does feel like everyone is doing something. There are countless subplots going on in every episode, ranging from trivial to important. It’s great to see a character in which everyone is chasing after their own agenda and what they themselves feel important, rather than everyone walking after the lead character like a tame little lamb. Sure, Dan’s passion for basketball is the thing that keeps this series together, but everyone seems to react in a different way to this.

And that’s the thing with this show: behind the boobs, strange use of basketball and… businessmen who give pet names to boobs and blow soap bubbles, there’s quite a bit of substance behind it that you wouldn’t suspect on first sight. This series never forgets that it’s supposed to be a fun show (at least, up to this point), and yet there’s an air of seriousness that never feels out of place.

It’s also good to finally see some of the faces behind those pesky cops who keep ruining everything as soon as they come walking in with their own mechas (walking police cars… you just have to think of it). I also like how this show manages to portray the street culture here. Man-Z for example: he never got himself a proper introduction, but he was just one of the other guys who passed the audition and simply started chatting with Sera and the other winners. Very natural.

Rating: * (Good)
Introduces a bunch of new characters, a new arc and quite a bit of potential while still remaining fun. But why he bubbles?

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. ^^;

Short Synopsis: ‘boob-san’ organizes a rematch between Iceman, Dan and Sela.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
Now I know for sure: this show is weird.

If the woman with the huge bosom at the end of the previous episode wasn’t enough: it now turns out that she’s a famous shoe designer with a feet fetish… yeah. She even goes as far as selecting one of Dan’s friends to accompany her because his face resembles a foot. Not only that, but she also designs shoes for Bigfoots…

The result was an episode full of ‘big’-jokes around her.

My question now is: why the heck am I enjoying this show so much? The premise gets more ridiculous with every single episode, and yet I’m really digging the chemistry between the characters so far. Dan’s ramblings don’t get on my nerves at all, and in fact are hilarious at times. I like how this episode emphasized how broken mechas remain broken until fixed (compare that to your average mecha-series, in which the machines magically fix themselves at the beginning of every episode), and it was especially fun to see a stressed out Miyuki as she tried to get everything fixed properly before the above-mentioned rematch.

I am curious though: where does this series think it’s going in the end? Up till now, there hasn’t been any major storyline popping up: all we’ve seen is a bunch of hints: what role is the moon going to play in the end? Is Coco simply there to give Dan some background or is there more to her? Will this turn into a basketball show with mechas, or is the basketball simply going to be a vehicle to the real meat of the story? What is going to be the role of the little princess that we’ve been seeing now and then?

Short Synopsis: Apparently, one year has passed since the first episode and some mysterious guy is wreaking havoc in Rollingtown
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
Let me first hijack this post for a bit to react on some comments that I received on this post. I personally thought that nobody would be interested in reading my thoughts on the new FMA that already was blogged by many other people, but I might have been wrong in this. Are there more people who are interested to see me blogging that series? At this point, I can still easily swap it with Valkyria Chronicles.

In any case, regarding this episode: it was what I’d like to call creative cutting of corners. While the background art looked as solid as ever, it was clearly obvious that the animation on the foreground was rushed. More often than not, the camera would pan away from a character when he or she was talking in order to save up on trying to synchronize their lips. Interesting effect, but it remains cheap. ^^; The question is now going to be whether the budget has run out completely or the creators are just saving some budget for later episodes. It’s annoying that you can never really predict this.

Still, this episode didn’t lose the fun-factor that this series has. I especially liked how Iceman Hotty (also the guy with the weirdest name of the season) turned out to be competely different from what I expected him to be, and he seems to be suffering from either hypocrisy or a bipolar disorder: on one hand he diligently plays official basketball, and on the other hand he wreaks havoc at night because he hates street basketball.

I also liked how people actually made a monument of Dan’s mecha crashing into the baseball post a year after it happened. That’s not a statue you see every day, is it? This episode also introduced some sort of princess or daughter of a very rich person, who is probably going to play a big role in the future. Sela Miranda meanwhile is also a very strange character: she’s a talented hard-working girl who gets turned on by being dominated. I’m still not convinced at how this series made both the princess and Sera look way more composed and talented than most adults, to be honest I didn’t expect any different. What I didn’t expect was that woman with the incredibly huge bust that showed up in this episode and offered to be Dan’s manager. What the?

Short Synopsis: Dan quickly loses his status of hero when he goes up against a girl.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
As for the shows I’m not going to blog:
– Asura Cryin’ has annoying characters.
– K-On also has annoying characters, and its sense of humour just isn’t my cup of tea.
– Sengoku Basara’s ridiculously overpowered sword-fights are fun; I’ll give it that, but it also remains just another incredibly overblown shounen series. Fine to watch… but to blog?

Basquash isn’t exactly my favourite show of the season, and there are a lot of things wrong with this, but I decided to give it the benefit of doubt. The biggest reasons for that:
– It’s got style.
– The setting really feels like something different. Despite the silly premise, you can see that there went a lot of attention in developing it. It’s one of the few original settings this season.
– Very nice graphics, if you can stomach the CG.
– A charming cast of characters, despite being a bunch of kids they’re fun to watch.

My biggest reason not to blog this show was that I’m not the biggest fan of Shoji Kawamori. Especially when I tried to blog Macross Frontier last year: I just couldn’t get myself to like the characters in the end. Still, I guess that the cast of Basquash feels a lot more colourful (on first glance, at least). I’m not exactly sure why, but what this show reminds me off the most is Gad Guard, a surprisingly good underrated show that especially became something unique in its second half, and I’m curious to see whether Basquash can do the same.

But yeah, until then I guess that I’m going to have to suspend disbelief quite a bit for that, with the 14-year-old lead and all (at least, I think that that’s his age). Ignoring cliche’s though, he amuses me so far. Especially how his attempts at setting up a delivery business only ended up in an increase of the bounty on him, and I also laughed at the incredible incompetence of the police in the city.

What this show needs to do now is continue fleshing out the characters. The cast right now has quite an interesting dynamic between them, but it needs to keep pushing this development forward. This doesn’t really look like the series that would work if it just descended into episodic random stories: this really looks like a typical series that needs some sort of plot to keep things going, unlike shows as Natsume Yuujinchou or xxxHolic and the like.