After some hyper melodramatic development for several weeks, this episode unfortunately stumbles on another issue: too plain, with confusing messages all around. The main plot taking a backseat as the final match between Ayano and Nagisa is nowhere to be seen, thus this episode mainly plays around with the boy’s prelim – whom we never spend any time with. Most surprisingly plain is Ayano. After last week in which she went through some sort of a trance figuratively, this week she meets the Bad Mama and guess what’s she doing? She ignores her Mom and acts pretty normal. Which makes sense but it doesn’t justify everything that goes before it. If there’s a period where she can go nuts, it’s this time. If you tell me she acts over-confident and cruel after she sees her mother, I would have believed much better.
This episode is one of the few times where get into Nagisa’s headspace again and Hanebado reminds me how much better it handles Nagisa’s mindset compare to Ayano’s. Nagisa has all the good reasons to not playing her best in this final. It might sound weird come from me but since they’re qualified for the National tournament, it’s one of the player’s role to not overtax themselves, especially regarding her injuries. Yet she decides to push on for her own confidence. Regarding how their last match affects Nagasi severely, this match is the one where she wants to try her best in order to move on.
Nagisa’s development is the only one part I can recommend, sadly. The rest of this episode we focus on two boys at school and we have some confusing messages from Hanebado that I’m not quite sure what they want to bring across. In one scene, Coach Tachibana asks Nagisa to consider her knee in fear of permanent injury. We then learn that he had the same experience in which he stops – and loses his Olympic privilege. What?? It’s contradicting. Yuu’s crush for her upperclassman goes the same way too. Hanebado shows us how Yuu cares for him in many instances, cries for his lose and all that before it turns its head into she confessesing but not really “confess”, saying it’s her love for badminton rather she likes him. What? Come again? I don’t get it at all since the show isn’t quite clear on how it wants to approach the characters. Bad Mama has little involvement for now, but I expect she’ll turn Ayano’s head around before the match. I know it sounds strange but if I have to pick between Hanebado’s “BIG melodrama” and plain Hanebado then I prefer the former because at least then I still have something concrete to talk about them.
