Summer 2022 First Impression – Extreme Hearts

Streaming: Crunchyroll

Episodes: 12

Source: Original

Episode Summary: Hiyori’s idol career has stalled-out before it even truly began. Though she has musical talent and a desire for her songs to be heard, she just hasn’t gained the fandom that her managers would have wanted. Her one true fan, Saki, listens to Hiyori sing after school every day, but one fan does not a career make, no matter how passionate that person may be. Eventually Hiyori’s management terminates her contract, but they leave her with a piece of advice – she may be able to give her budding career the jump-start it needs by entering into one of the many Hyper Sports competitions that are all the rage.

Hyper sports players employ a wide selection of enhancement gear during their matches, which adds an additional element of excitement to the games. The best teams also tend to become famous, which is something Hiyori wants. When she starts training, however, this causes Saki to remember some painful moments from her own soccer-playing past. It isn’t until Hiyori is actually out on the field attempting to make her dream a reality that Saki truly comes to terms with her own failures, and she and her friend Sumika rush onto the field to support Hiyori.

Impressions: I’ve said before that there are typically two main ways of approaching sports narratives in anime. There are the more realistic interpretations that try to stick as close to reality as possible – no special moves, no ridiculous drama, just players and their skills. Then there are other series that use known sports as a jumping off point to feature special moves and extreme drama. I don’t typically enjoy the second type very much, because I tend to be more interested in realism and the emotions behind the games being played. I usually think that “sports ball Z” type series are better for either the younger crowd or folks who don’t have much interest in actual sports, but do enjoy watching competitions.

Extreme Hearts is more the second type. However, it almost immediately shows itself as kind of a rare oddity in that its main gimmick is that its players benefit from tools that give their moves very “shounen anime” powers, yet because it’s an established conceit from the outset it feels to my mind as more a fun enhancement rather than a way to falsely inject action into an otherwise dull story. This is clearly a future in which these types of competitions have a separate appeal from more traditional sports, and people enter into them for different reasons. It’s a rare situation in which an internal explanation does a good job of addressing the most common external questions (though I realize that won’t be universal for everyone watching).

I think it’s easy to become cynical because of the things that go on in the outside world, but I honestly do still enjoy stories that remind us of the best examples of what human persistence can accomplish. Hiyori is after a goal that for many would seem dubiously-obtainable at best – visibility for her performing talents. The traditional route proved itself to be a non-starter, and at that point I think most people would probably call it quits. Yet she pivots her approach based on a timely piece of advice toward a different method that might just be able to give her what she wants. It requires hard work and developing skills that she might be unfamiliar with, but that’s just part of the fun, right?

This episode wasn’t anything I expected, but it was fairly charming and a lot of fun.

Pros: This episode manages to pack in a lot of material without becoming confusing or feeling too fast-paced. Hiyori receives essentially an entire personal history and initial story arc without the episode seeming to break a sweat. Her comfortable friendship with Saki also undergoes an important transformation, and Sumika enters the picture naturally and with purpose. It’s refreshing to watch an opening episode that feels confident in what it wants to express, and already seems to know which information is the most important to share and when.

Cons: Perhaps this isn’t a criticism in the traditional sense, but based on what I can tell this is also meant to be an idol series. I’m pretty neutral on that but for the fact that I don’t really think that it’s completely necessary. We’re already slated to watch various different sports get played in creative ways, and the idol angle seems more like an additional complication rather than a necessity.

Content Warnings: Depictions of bullying.

Would I Watch More? – This episode has been a pleasant surprise for me, and I added it to my queue with the expectation that it will end up being some light fun from week-to-week.