Tag: hoshiai no sora

This episode was a tale of two halves in my view, but there’s no good tennis metaphor that I can use as a comparison, so a direct explanation will have to do. Essentially, I found the first half (the conclusion of Maki and Toma’s doubles match) to be a dull affair, while the team barbecue during the B part reignited my interest in the series. Hoshiai no Sora established itself as a character drama from its very first outing, and with so many unresolved anxieties still to address within Shijo’s tennis club, the recent emphasis on sports has generated mixed results. No such issues arise, however, when the show sits a bunch of people around a table to converse about their lives (the food is just a pretext).

Continue reading “Hoshiai no Sora – 07” →

I’ll say this for Hoshiai no Sora – the tennis scenes look good. Characters are shown positioning themselves, swinging, and following through with remarkable consistency. The shortcuts that once plagued Baby Steps and Prince of Tennis rarely appear during this series, and that’s worth celebrating. There were even a few serves in this episode that approached Hanebado levels of frame density, so it’s clear that the show’s animators are reaching for the stars. That said, many of the characters are given the same form on their forehand shots, and the matches are composed with ample time for them to set up in front of the ball. Without mixing in more backhand winners, smashes, and diving returns, games will start to feel too familiar once we enter the eventual tournament arc. The alternative would be to be to rely on gimmicks, and judging by this episode’s third match, that’s not Sora’s strong suit.

Continue reading “Hoshiai no Sora – 06” →

Let’s have a round of applause for Maki the Genius, everyone. In a tennis club full of clashing personalities, only he was incisive enough to see that hotheads and shy boys shouldn’t be paired together. Imagine everyone’s surprise when he put compatible players on the same doubles teams and they immediately started to work in synchronicity. He even took it easy on them to boost their confidence, a gesture that the script bends over backwards to illustrate. And just in case you missed his masterful makeover of the tennis team, Toma directly thanks him for bringing about all this change in such a short amount of time. How does Maki respond? “Naw, everyone is just trying their best.” Sasuga Maki-sama. Is there anything this kid can’t do? Apart from stopping his new best friend from signing his own death warrant, I mean.

Continue reading “Hoshiai no Sora – 04/05” →

After a relatively tame second episode, Hoshiai no Sora went dark again in its third week. Child abuse is a recurring theme at this point, and I’m already wondering how the series could possibly conclude its scant one cour run when its teenage characters are this emotionally damaged. As if watching Maki’s father assault his son wasn’t hard enough, this time we were subjected to a story where a mother poured boiling water on her infant child’s back. This was brutal stuff – so brutal, in fact, that the episode’s sunny resolution felt wrong to me. Of course, it’s possible to depict parental cruelty without soaking your entire series in despair. Not every anime with strained familial relationships needs to take the Evangelion route. Sora went so far in the other direction, though, that it threw me for a loop.

Continue reading “Hoshiai no Sora – 03” →