So this week Hanebado moves from contrived drama into… shameless fanservice? Woah, honestly I didn’t see girls taking bathing naked coming in this series. In more serious affair, I enjoy the story lot better than last week. Despite the lack of smooth animation on the match, which I will discuss later, at least in this episode Connie is much more bearable. Hanebado drama remains a mixed-bag this week. The two conflicts that I mentioned last week, namely Ayano wanted to be part of the team and the sister having a beef at Ayano, are quickly raised and then resolved. Too quickly in fact that they feel half-baked. I appreciate that Hanebado raises more complex chemistry from the cast, but if they was building up Sora’s discontent of Ayano for almost 2 episodes (you can see in the top left screenshot she’s the only one who has her back against Ayano), they need to resolve it more thoroughly.
The Connie match, on the other hand, concludes in a satisfied fashion. It puts both Connie and Ayano into a new stepping stone now. For Connie, the match point her partner Tagajo saves her made Connie realize that her teammates always have her back, in addition she behave too cruel towards her friend. Ayano, in the opposite spectrum, uses it as an excuse for her lose. I reckon this nasty bit of her of blaming something else for the lost is the main reason her Mother left her. Or that could be the effect of her Mother left her generate the fear of being abandoned, that the teammates might give up on her if she doesn’t perform well. In any case, these girls have a Mama issue and soon enough her Mom will join in the picture so we can see things clearer through Mama perspective (and it’s better be good reasons).
The animation sadly takes a nosedive this week. Not that it was overly terrible but Hanebado uses many shortcuts for those sequences. Sports like badminton or boxing emphasis strongly on footwork. The production from the first few weeks nails that part down effectively with an intense footwork on the characters. But this week they focus instead on “big moment” that the don’t feature much of these small-steps movements. While it’s not a bad approach consider the match concentrates on drama rather than… sports, for a show that did everything right previously, this is a bit of a let-down. Overall, this week of Hanebado has a tonal issue, it can go way melodramatic at times, while other time go all fluffy and light-hearted. Still, I’m pretty much prefer this version of mad eyes, suffering Ayano than the plain, unconcerned Ayano who literally got dragged down to the badminton club.
While I thought the author was overly harsh on previous episode, I surely do feel like he already had somehow seen the next (this) episode at the time of writing the piece, as expected of a blog author.
As has been said, animation issues, tonal issues, and much more to complain about. The events happening on the screen are so random it leaves the viewer in utter disbelief. Wtf hanebado, wtf?
I honestly do not understand how can one series be so subtle one second and so crude the other. Inconsistent series is worse than a bad one, in my book. The good qualities did not go anywhere, but they are clashing with the bad ones pretty badly.