Spring 2021 First Impressions – Battle Athletes Victory RESTART!

Streaming: Funimation

Episodes: 12

Source: Manga

Story Summary: When Kanata was young, she witnessed the crash of a spaceship near her rural home. Thrown from the ship was a young white-haired girl who implored Kanata to train and take her place in the tournament to decide the Cosmic Beauty. Kanata’s farming skills turned out to be a major boon during the qualifiers, giving her the strength to represent Earth in the finals. But after arriving at University Satellite, an orbiting city where the competition takes place, she discovers that not everyone is quite as friendly and outgoing as she is. Still, despite her lack of social graces, Kanata’s true and pure heart begins to win over her fellow competitors. She becomes roommates with Shelley, the competitor from Venus. After finalizing her registration, Kanata is surprised to see what she believes to be a familiar face among the students.

Impressions: Battle Athletes was one of those many late-1990’s anime that sort of felt like it existed in the periphery of fandom consciousness, but which never left a huge impression on me as a baby otaku. All I really remember are a few images of it, especially the leotard/loose T-shirt combination that all the characters wore… it just felt very of its time, we’ll say. This sequel/reimagining stars a different cast, but those leotards are back, baby! Whether that’s for good or ill will probably depend a lot on your appetite for looking at characters’ butts for any length of time.

Similar to the recent Sorcerous Stabber Orphen remake, this episode really manages to conjure up the feel and attitude of a much older breed of anime series. I think Kanata’s characterization does a lot to make it seem that way. She’s kind of a classic teen girl protagonist in the vein of Usagi from Sailor Moon – clumsy, a big eater, but talented in her own way and blessed with a very earnest and hard-working attitude. Though I and my contemporaries may still be experiencing aftershocks from the advent of actively moé-style entertainment in the early-mid 2000’s – the very particular character archetypes and cutesy, cloying character designs that felt as though they altered the anime landscape for many years afterward – it’s not as if these sorts of trends didn’t exist beforehand, they were just different and perhaps more comfortable to those of us who grew up with them. So there’s something sort of nostalgic to me about Kanata’s terrible sense of direction and inability to keep herself upright coupled with her superhuman strength and sense of fairness and righteousness. It speaks to a different character creation philosophy, and it’s also just kind of nice.

On the other hand, I tend to believe that clinging too hard to old media trends puts one in a poor mindset to appreciate what the current day has to offer; I’ve watched many an acquaintance stop listening to new music after a certain point because “the classics were just better” and I don’t want to end up being that person with my anime. Some series are considered classics for good reasons, but the anime industry didn’t just stop creating interesting stories 20 years ago. I think what I’m trying to work my way around to is that this episode has a certain charm in the way it echoes older media, and I enjoyed it. But I’m not yet ready to commit to Kanata’s big space sports adventures because I feel like when I try to look deeper, whether it’s to examine what makes the episode and its story genuinely appealing or just to find something I like without caveats, I can’t land on anything I feel is specific enough for me to recommend the show.

Pros: Even though intellectually I know that deeply flawed characters can often make for very interesting protagonists, I think I’ll always have a soft spot for characters who are good-hearted and trying their best. Kanata is the type of character who, despite lacking in street smarts, deals with adversity well and with a good attitude. Her competitors aren’t enemies, they’re “rivals” and in a world where so much of what we deal with on a day-to-day basis is competitive, it’s nice to lose oneself in a fantasy where situations are not always like that.

Cons: There are a lot of low-angle shots in this episode, and while I’ve definitely seen some series that are more grossly fanservicey, this one kind of undermines its other good aspects by featuring several booties in extremely tight shorts. There’s a wholesomeness to the other 90% of this episode that makes this feel especially out-of-place.

Much of the humor also falls flat. It falls into the category of chastising characters for their obvious wrongness and simply being loud and yelling a lot, which is a type of jokery I’ll never understand.

One of the characters has prosthetic limbs, and while featuring a character with this type of body would normally be something worth complimenting in my opinion, the way in which it plays into the “climax” of this episode feels a little bit off to me. I’d be interested to hear the opinion of someone with prosthetics in this case to know whether I’m misreading intent or not.

Content Warnings: Mild fanservice (tight outfits, camera focused on body parts rather than faces during dialog). Mild bullying.

Would I Watch More? – I enjoyed this episode more than I expected, but aside from the unexpected stroll down memory lane I don’t know that there’s much here for me.