Category: Finished Series: Sports

Basquash! – 05

by psgels, posted in Basquash!


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. ^^;

Cross Game – 04

by psgels, posted in Cross Game



Short Synopsis: Kou and Aoba find a creative way to catch a burglar.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
It’s interesting that, even though Adachi’s series are all about the same thing (talented guy playing baseball), the anime adaptations of his works all have these subtle differences that make them totally different series (or at least the ones that I’ve seen so far, being this one and Touch). It’s going to be a bit hard to talk about these differences due to my fear of Touch spoilers, but even though Touch and Cross Game look a lot like each other, I just don’t see them as rip-offs of each other, and they both have their own unique parts.

The big difference between the two lead males is that Kou of Cross Game has nobody to look up to: he’s already the most talented at baseball, and instead we see him in this episode pull everyone along, even though he isn’t actively playing baseball, whereas Tatsuya had Kazuya and was only able to come as far as he did because of his brother’s influence. I’m interested to see what’s going to happen when Kou enters high-school, as it seems that he’s going to be joining the same team as that arrogant baseball-guy whose name I can’t find, which seems to suggest that the baseball in Cross Game is going to be much more about rivalry, rather than commitments to the past like in Touch.

And while I can’t say this for sure, since Touch also took around ten episodes for the first real baseball match to occur, but according to the things I’ve heard about the manga Cross Game seems to focus a bit more on slice of life than Touch did, and you can hear that through the music as well: the soundtrack of Touch was very typical for a sports game: fast-paced, up-beat and overall cheerful, while you wouldn’t be able to guess that Cross Game was a show about baseball by solely hearing its soundtrack: the background tunes here more sound like that of a heart-warming slice of life series.

The sense of humour also feels more tongue-in-cheek than its predecessor: in Touch, you knew when to laugh and when to take the show seriously. In Cross Game, you only realize something funny has happened, two second after it’s already over, and it’s another example of the unpredictability of Adachi: while in Cross Game the overall plot might be easier to predict, this time it’s the humour that you can’t see coming.

In any case, this episode was a bit strange; I mean, how often do you see a burglar through a window in a house inside a metro in broad daylight? That thug must have been really stupid in order to allow for such a miss. And yet it had its purposes: we now know that Kou isn’t a complete lazy bum, and for some reason he also always carries a baseball ball with him. Something tells me that he doesn’t exactly know what he wants to do later, which in a way is typical of a teenager his age, especially after he had been scared out of the baseball club like the way he was three years ago.

Basquash! – 04

by psgels, posted in Basquash!



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?

Cross Game – 03

by psgels, posted in Cross Game



Short Synopsis: Kou gets invited to substitute in a local baseball team.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
Oh this show is SO good. It may be one of the dark horses of the season, but in three episodes it has already done what most series can’t even do in twice that amount. Don’t get fooled off by the simplistic character-designs, because as a series focusing on middle- and high-school kids it does so many things right. This episode again had such a wonderful combination between subtle humour and drama, slice of life, character-development. There are already so many different characters, and yet all of them feel different with their own personalities.

And even though the character-designs are simplistic and leave out a lot of details, they still feel realistic: the school is filled with all different kinds and shapes of people of which a surprising amount is obese (really: finally after Real Drive we finally have another show that realizes that not everyone has the perfect body). What I also like is the people like the captain of Aoba’s baseball team: usually in anime these guys are the evil punks, who do evil stuff because they’re evil, or they’re especially that exaggerated to make fun of these stereotypes, but this guy feels nothing like that: he’s just a regular middle schooler with a tough physique.

As for the main character, it was of course obvious that he was going to be very talented at baseball, but the writers gave him quite an interesting back-story for it. Like Touch, he never went to join the baseball club in middle school, but unlike Touch this was because of a fight that broke out when he attempted to join it three years before. Instead, he just kept practicing by himself because his parents were involved with baseball anyway. It makes sense: the past three episodes have really shown that he’s a carefree guy who doesn’t like to get into trouble, and yet at the same time you can see how he’s still affected by something that happened three years ago. I don’t recall having seen anyone cry about Wakaba’s death, but you can see its influence very subtly in all of the characters that she hung out with when she was still alive.

Basquash! – 03

by psgels, posted in Basquash!



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?

Cross Game – 02

by psgels, posted in Cross Game



Short Synopsis: Aoba thinks back to a game that she played against Kou.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
As for the shows I”m not going to blog:
– Shin Mazinger Z is manly, GAR, fun, epic and a whole lot more things, but you want to watch that series for the entertainment value, not its depth.

There are many reasons for me to blog Cross Game, but the most important one is the cast of characters. It’s only been two episodes, and they’re already very charming and relaxing to watch. This is promising to be an awesome slice of life show if this keeps up. The baseball is just second place for what’s really important here: the character-development and interaction.

And I must say, that it was a very nice idea to rush the first episode through the first volume so that it’d include the big twist of Aoba’s sister dying. this way, the melodrama is gone, and the important stuff that was missed can just be pasted in through flashbacks (which is exactly what this episode did). This really spices up things compared to when the creators would just have chosen the linear storyline, because this way you can really see the subtle character-development and how the big death influenced all of them.

I really like the wit of this series, but what stands out even more is that every single character, even the tiny ones with a few or no lines, have their charms and are interesting to watch, already within two episodes! The soundtrack also excellent, so if you’d ask me we have ourselves a winner here. 🙂

Basquash! – 02

by psgels, posted in Basquash!



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.

Some quick first Impressions: Cross Game, Tears to Tiara and Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood

by psgels, posted in Cross Game, Full Metal Alchemist - Brotherhood, Some Quick First Impressions

Cross Game

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is talented at baseball
Chance of me Blogging: 50% (Surprisingly good)
Oh boy, I’m impressed. After this episode, I can fully understand why people were looking forward to this series, even though from the outside it just looks like yet another show in which a bunch of talented kids play baseball. Cross Game may have your usual stereotypes, but it also has a quiet slice-of-life pacing, already very fleshed out and charming characters, a male lead who already doesn’t feel like a carbon copy of your average male protagonist in such a series, and a very nice surprise at the end of the episode there. There’s lots of subtlety in this episode, which is something I’m a really big fan of. This series could get really good if it keeps this up.

Tears to Tiara

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has the power to summon an almighty demon king.
Chance of me Blogging: 20% (If the second episode is good)
And here we have yet another fantasy-series. My big problem with those shows these season is that they all seem to look like each other. A random fantasy show like Tears to Tiara really needs to find something in this fantasy-packed season to stand out, and I didn’t find that yet. Nevertheless, though: this episode did the job. It wasn’t anything good, but nothing bad either. In fact, this episode mostly served as a very dark introduction to the series, especially considering the contrast with the rather happy OP and the continuous dark atmosphere of the actual episode. I do hope that the show is going to be about more than simply “kill that demon king” in the end.

Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a famous State Alchemist (as in, someone who draws circles on floors).
Chance of me Blogging: 70% (Unless lots of other great series air in the rest of the season)
I have never read the manga, so I don’t know where this episode exactly fits into the continuity of the series, but I’m glad that the creators skipped the first thirteen episodes of the original series (which really were a pain to get through for me). This episode seriously was good stuff, though. What I’ve seen of the characterization is much better than that of the original series. My only complaint was that characters seemed to run into each other a bit too conveniently, but overall this was a very good opening. At the moment, I’m a bit wary of Bones since nearly all of their endings have a finale in which at leastsomething goes wrong, but for now I’ll remain positive about the Full Metal Alchemist remake.

Some quick first Impressions: Infinite Space, K-On and Basquash!

by psgels, posted in Basquash!, Some Quick First Impressions

Infinite Space

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets a space-ship from a mysterious lady
Chance of me Blogging: 10% (Again, only if the rest of the season is bad)
Well what do you know? Yet another show with episodes of only five minutes. This one seems to go for a fully fledged storyline, though. That makes me wonder a bit whether it’s trying to bite off more than it can chew, but the potential is there at least. What it really needs to do now is make optimal use of the fact that it only has a very limited airtime, and seriously improve on the bad GC here. There’s actually quite a bit of potential in the story, but after only five minutes there’s hardly a lot to say about it. I do hope, though, that it’s going to last longer than simply 13 episodes that really is going to be the recipe for disaster.
EDIT: oh crap, it’s just a generic promotion for a video game of only 4 episodes long. Scratch all that I said above. This thing sucks.

K-On

Short Synopsis: Our lead character joins the light music club at her high school.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (Waah waah I hate mainstream anime waah waah)
Well, there you have it: this series yet again has the typical flaws of a Kyoani-show: it just consists out of a rip-off of some of their other franchises, most notably Lucky Star and the concert episode of Haruhi. The personality of the four main characters in this series can quite effectively be mapped to the personalities of the four lead characters of Lucky Star, and it’s a series about a school band. Granted, the one thing that was new here is a much more messy style of animation: at least that’s something new from them. The show could grow into an enjoyable slice of life series, but my big problem with it so far (aside from the lack of originality) is the female lead character. There’s actually lots of potential in a school band, but instead of choosing a lead character with a passion for music, the creators here went for a clueless and clumsy ditz without any musical talents whatsoever. I foresee some forced developments here.

Basquash!

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has spiky hairs and plays basketball in a huge car-like mecha.
Chance of me Blogging: 25% (Depends on what the heck it’s going to focus on)
Well, so this is incredibly stupid: here we have a spunky spiky-haired teenager… who is playing terrorist with a basketball of all things as a weapon. Seriously, he takes out an army of police officers with that thing. But hey: at least it’s fun! This was at least the best episode I’ve seen in this so far lackluster season, so at least that’s something. Even though there are huge amounts of bad logic and questionable plot twists (kids being able to control mechas better than trained adults? of course!), there are actually huge amounts of ideas in this series. The lead character may very well be your typical lead, but what I liked about him was his fiery passion for basketball. And I also loved the random ducks that showed up every once in a while. The visuals also looked totally sweet, but then again the question remains whether the creators can keep this up. My question for this series is the following: is the rest of the series just going to be a string of random basketball matches (very likely, considering his rival that got introduced in this episode), or is the basketball just going to be a vehicle to the real meat of the plot? Is this going to be a Buzzer Beater or a Gad Guard?

Shion no Ou Review – 94/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Shion no Ou


I doubt that I can write a review to do this series justice, but here it goes. Shion no Ou is an anime about shougi, the Japanese form of chess. The rules are quite complicated, but you don’t need to be able understand them if you want to enjoy this series. What’s much more important for Shion no Ou is the general strategies, and the mind-games that get played between the two players.

And don’t ask me how they did it, but the writers are true masters in terms of storytelling. While this series does take place mostly in a tournament-arc, they take everything that gets handed to them to spice things up. Every single character has his or her own style of playing that gradually evolves throughout the series. The police and the press often play a big role, as they support the main storyline and the main cast of characters.

And let me say that the story and characters are nothing short of incredible. The heroine, Shion, is one of the strongest female characters I’ve ever seen. Every single character is well-defined and developed. Every single episode pushes the plot forwards, without any exceptions. The original manga was also written by a woman who used to be a female shougi-player as well, and she made sure to show all the ins and outs of a shougi-tournaments.

The animation definitely is different from usual. You’ll either love it or hate it, and it does fluctuate from incredibly bad to incredibly good, due to a limited budget. But in exchange, everything looks unique, and you can see that the animators are trying everything they can to make the art stand out. The animation itself is messy, but the poses and camera-angles are creative and yet incredibly life-like, that turned this series into a visual feast for me.

Great anime usually have one or two aspects that turn out very polished, like a cast of terrific characters, or an engaging storyline, but the outstanding anime really deliver in every single department. Shion no Ou has it all: terrific storytelling, a great storyline, a cast of deep and amazing characters (both the villains, main and side-characters) that really comes to life in the second half, a terrific art-style and animation, excellent music and a good sense of realism, although you should note that Shougi is serious business in this series, and at times the characters do tend to take Shougi a bit too seriously. ^^;