When a friend cruelly calls Hibiki fat it’s like a knife stabbed into her heart. The high school girl loves to eat but decides to go on a diet to be absolutely thin by summer vacation, but she doesn’t know how to exercise properly on her own. Hibiki finds herself in front of a training gym and joins. Once there, she meets her beautiful and charismatic student council president Akemi Sōryūin and steps into the intense yet enjoyable world of weight-training. – ANN
Episode Summary: Hibiki is a growing girl with a healthy appetite, but when a friend of hers comments on her expanding midsection and overall plumpness, she decides that it’s time to slim down. She joins the Silverman Gym, and discovers that a classmate of hers, Akemi, is planning to join as well. As it turns out, Akemi has a bit of a muscle fetish, and this gym is packed to the gills with bodybuilders and their bulging muscles. Hibiki feels out of place, but decides to try to get her money’s worth anyway.
Akemi is old hat at strength training, but Machio, their personal trainer, is encouraging and helps Hibiki push herself to complete more reps than she might on her own. She learns how to do bench presses and squats during her first week. When Akemi asks how many times a day Hibiki eats, Hibiki gets ready for another scolding, but Akemi is simply impressed; with such a strong appetite, Hibiki has almost infinite potential to bulk up her muscles.
Haiji Kiyose is an enthusiastic fourth year student at Kansei University who has been stealthily gathering men for the track and field team of the campus. As Kakeru Kurahara, a snappish first year student, becomes the promising tenth member; Kiyose dreams of participating at the Hakone Ekiden, a famous relay university marathon race. – ANN
This post was originally written for the April 2019 issue of Mangaverse, the anime, manga, and comics ‘zine published by the National Fantasy Fan Federation (N3F) which I am currently in charge of editing. If you are interested in contributing to Mangaverse, please contact me at jessi@s1e1.com. I am always on the lookout for writers and artists!
This post may have been minimally-edited from its original form to correct minor errors and/or include hyperlinks.
Review:This review contains minor spoilers for the
series.
Exercise has never been one of my strengths. In elementary
school, we were tested every year on how quickly we could run a mile (4 laps
around the outdoor gravel-coated track). My best time was somewhere in the
12-minute range, and that was when I was in 1st grade. I think, deep
inside, I never saw the point of running when walking was a perfectly
serviceable mode of personal transportation. That, or I have always been
chronically out-of-shape and unwilling to admit it.
Newly-minted high schooler Tsubasa has a plan: she wants to start a girls’ baseball team at Rigahama High. Unfortunately for her, instead of going through proper channels, Tsubasa lets her enthusiasm (and maybe her friend Tomoe’s words) carry her away, and she charges onstage during the club presentation assembly to make her call for members. Although her homeroom teacher supports her efforts, and despite getting two potential members in the form of super-shy Ukita and slightly-leery Nozaki, the student council remains opposed to the team. That’s not going to keep Tsubasa down, though – the girl’s nothing if not enthusiastic and devoted to her dream. – ANN
Episode Summary: Baseball is an uncommon school sport for girls, but Tsubasa aims to change that by forming a team at her high school. She commandeers the entrance ceremony to advertise this venture, drawing all of the wrong kinds of attention. She does, however, catch the eye of Ukita, a shy girl with an interest in baseball, and Nozaki, a girl with an uncomfortable past in team sports. Though both girls are apprehensive, the circumstances align and they join Tsubasa and her friend Tomoe for an informal practice session and pickup game near the river.
Truth be told, neither girl has the skills of a practiced baseball player, but they both show potential. Once Nozaki learns that she can play left-handed, her throws start to impress. And though Ukita definitely needs to work on her confidence, she has a lot of heart. When they play a game against a group of younger kids, all the girls start to get a sense of how fun baseball can be. The camaraderie, the cheer of the audience, and the sound of the ball hitting the sweet spot of the bat is addictive. Perhaps this club might have a chance at success.
26 years after Meisei High conquered the Kōshien, a promising pitcher-catcher battery was formed in its middle school by the Tachibana step-brothers, Touma and Souichirou. – ANN
Episode Summary: 26 years ago, Meisei High School did the near-impossible – they managed to win the nation-wide high school baseball tournament held at Koshien Stadium. In the ensuing years the school never made another play at the title, and the school’s fame and ambitions cooled. The Tachibana brothers, born 10 minutes apart on the same day (but who aren’t twins), seem to have an obvious synergy with one-another, along with a keen interest in baseball. Even as young kids they had a goal in mind to one day reach Koshien.
As students of Meisei Middle School, they find that baseball team ambitions are somewhat lacking. Still, there are a few talented students chomping at the bit, and Touma and Souichiro Tachibana make an obviously talented pitcher-catcher pair. Could this be the latent beginning of a new era for Meisei?
Minato Narumiya is beginning his freshman year at the local Kazemai High School. Mr. Tommy, adviser to the Japanese archery Club, is keen to recruit Minato, as well as his childhood friends Seiya Takehaya and Ryohei Yamanouchi. Ryohei convinces the reluctant Minato to attend the Club’s orientation, where he also meets Kaito Onogi and Nanao Kisaragi. Singling Minato out, Mr. Tommy introduces him as a rare Japanese archery talent and asks him to demonstrate in front of everyone. However, Minato’s arrow fails to hit the mark because he is afflicted by a serious condition. – ANN
Episode Summary: With a new school year comes a fresh start, and Minato needs one; after the death of his mother, most of the household responsibilities have fallen on his shoulders. At a new school where he expects to know very few people, he thinks he might be able to fade into the background enough to go home rather than joining a club (which he doesn’t have time for anyway). This plan falls apart quickly as several factors come into focus. First, his neighbor Seiya is one of the few people from his previous school attending the same high school, so they end up having to interact as a matter of course. Secondly, the two boys reunite with Ryohei, a friend from their elementary-school days who transferred away in middle school. Thirdly, the high school is hoping to resurrect its Kyudo – traditional archery – program, and Minato may end up right in the middle of it.
Minato has some history with the martial art, though he’s adamant that his domestic responsibilities necessarily keep him from getting involved in the newly-re-established club. His friends, suspecting that his internal desire might win-out against his perceived familial obligations, manage to get him to come to the first club meeting. But it turns out that Minato is carrying some additional baggage and the resulting anxiety results in missed shots and a some subsequent bad feelings. As he mulls the situation, he finds himself drawn to a hilltop Kyudo practice field within a shrine as the moon glows above. There he meets a mysterious archer, one with beautiful form and perfect aim.
Kohane Hatoya is a girl who loves to be helpful to others. After she moves from middle school to high school, she becomes fascinated with cheerleading, and she starts a cheerleading club at her high school. Joining Kohane in her cheerleading activities is the experienced Hizume and Kohane’s childhood friend Uki. – ANN
Episode Summary: Kohane has a formative experience one day when she happens to see a group of cheerleaders performing a routine outdoors. She decides to join her high school’s cheer squad in the upcoming school year, but the joke’s on her – there isn’t one. Not one to wither in defeat, Kohane decides to create her own club, but faces an uphill battle in both recruitment (not even her friend Uki seems interested in joining) and skill level (she’s a beginner who can’t even pronounce “cheer” correctly).
Kohane recognizes her classmate Hizume as one of the squad members who inspired her that fateful day, but Hizume’s a tough sell; she’s dealing with some emotional baggage that’s caused her to give up on the sport all together. Still, Kohane spends the next several days practicing her skills, including trying to overcome her fear of heights. When she jumps out of a tree to support Hizume in her emotional time of need, Hizume finally seems convinced. But they’ll still have to find three other people willing to give their new cheer club a chance.
A “small” new student, Ushio Hinomaru, appears before the weak little sumo club of Oodachi High School. The words “big” and “heavy” are the rules to this sport, which does not fit this newbie one bit, but Ushio surprises everyone. Ushio and the small sumo club climbs its way to the top with a goal to reach the highest rank, Hinoshita Kaisan. – ANN
Episode Summary: Ushio Hinomaru is a small guy with a big dream – to achieve the rank of Yokozuna, the highest honor in sumo wresting. He takes a day to scout a high school with a famous sumo program, but gets off at the wrong train stop and finds his way to Oodachi High School instead. He meets Ozeki Shinya, practicing his sumo techniques outside. Though he’s lovingly constructed a sumo ring outdoors, Ushio wonders why he doesn’t make use of the perfectly good dojo on the school grounds. Unfortunately, it’s been overrun by delinquents and Ozeki is too timid to kick them out.
Ushio’s love of sumo is such that, when the ringleader of the delinquents makes a mess of Ozeki’s wrestling area, Ushio challenges him to a duel. Ozeki offers to give up sumo to protect him, but Ushio will have none of it. In order to win this rigged contest, he’ll have to endure 10 minutes worth of punches without defending himself, something that his fine-tuned muscular body seems to do effortlessly (even when an extra 5 minutes is added in secret). Ozeki gets his dojo back, and Ushio goes to find the high school he was actually looking for. When Spring arrives, Ozeki receives a big surprise; Ushio decided to transfer to Oodachi High after all, because he was so wow-ed by Ozeki’s dedication to sumo wrestling.
Kakeru, a former elite runner at high school, is chased for stealing food. He is saved by a Kansei University student Haiji, who is also a runner. Haiji persuades Kakeru to live in the old apartment “Chikuseisou” where he plans to team up with fellow residents to enter Hakone Ekiden Marathon, one of the most prominent university races in Japan. Kakeru soon finds out that all of the residents except for Haiji and himself are complete novices. – MAL
Episode Summary: Kakeru Kurehara has fallen on hard times since losing his apartment down-payment to the whims of the mahjong table. He’s been reduced to stealing bread from the local convenience store. Luckily he’s a practiced runner with speed enough to get away with this misdeed. He can’t outrun all of his problems, though; he’s eventually chased down by an energetic man on a bike. Haiji Kiyose is on the prowl for one last person to fill the vacant room in the boarding house he shares with several other young men, and he invites Kakeru to take the final slot.
Haiji has ulterior motives, as Kakeru soon learns. Boarding House Chikuseiso is filled with all kinds of young men, from geeky, to studious, to those with certain vices. Haiji invites them to celebrate the addition of their tenth resident with a trip out of town – namely, to Hakone. It’s his dream to participate in the Hakone Ekiden, a famous annual relay race. With their landlord (a former runner) as their coach he feels that this is their best (and his only) shot. But Kakeru isn’t even sure he wants to stay, let alone tackle this monumental task, especially when the other residents seem hesitant at best.
Haruka is a girl who has a complex about how she is very tall, and Kanata is about to give up beach volleyball because she is too short. With Haruka’s height and Kanata’s experience, the two girls form a pair to play beach volleyball in Okinawa. – ANN
Episode 1 Summary: Because her mother is leaving the country on business, Haruka gets to spend her Summer vacation in beautiful, sunny Okinawa with her grandmother and cousin. She’s absolutely looking forward to it, down to wearing her swimsuit underneath her clothes so she can get into the water as soon as humanly possible when she arrives. At the airport, it takes a while for Haruka to recognize her cousin, Kanata; after puberty hit, Haruka gained a lot of height and Kanata really didn’t. They both feel that the grass is greener in that regard. After taking a dip in the ocean near grandma’s house, Haruka meets a couple of girls her age playing volleyball on the beach. When Kanata arrives to join her it becomes clear that there’s some history between them. A fun pickup volleyball match becomes intense when the relationship between Kanata and Narumi (one of the other girls) starts to reflect some past strain. When Haruka and Kanata suffer an unsurprising loss, Haruka begs for a rematch. Narumi decides to grant one on one condition – Haruka should spend the next week practicing and learning the rules of the game.
Kentarō Tachibana is the coach of Kitakomachi High School’s badminton team. He is worried because the team has so few members that it cannot even enter competitions, but then he spots a student named Ayano Hanesaki easily climbing a large tree on the school grounds, expertly demonstrating excellent motor skills. Tachibana tries to get Ayano to join the badminton team, but finds out that Ayano hates badminton. – ANN
Episode 1 Summary: Nagisa Aragaki tries her hardest to improve her badminton game and she’s very skillful, but not quite good enough to survive a match with Ayano Hanesaki, someone who seems to have boundless natural talent. After being shut-out against Hanesaki, Nagisa returns to her high school badminton club and begins to take the loss out on others. As people are driven away from the team one-by-one (including the upperclassmen), Nagisa comes to the painful realization that she’s begun to take her own insecurities out on the people around her, blaming them for her inability to achieve the things she wishes to. To add insult to injury, Hanesaki attends the same high school, and the badminton team’s new coach, Kentaro Tachibana (a former olympian), is convinced that Hanesaki is what their team needs to become competitive. But Hanesaki has no interest in playing badminton again, and Nagisa is still struggling with those painful losses.
Impressions: I was looking forward to this series a lot based primarily on some of the preview footage. I like to tell people that there’s an anime out there about anything, and that’s especially true for various sports. Badminton might bring to mind images of garden parties and women in Victorian bustle dresses, but I was impressed by how convincing the trailer was at portraying badminton as an intense sport where players actually expend a great deal of energy. As it turns out, the trailer footage is primarily taken from the opening scenes of this introductory episode, and the expression of Nagisa’s intense concentration and drive to continue a lost battle against the talented Hanesaki through her dripping sweat and tense muscles is powerful and gripping. This scene represents the most intense action in the episode, and it remains a memorable focal point throughout.
Nagisa struggles with her own behavior.
That isn’t to say that the rest of the episode is boring; while the sports action is eye-catching, there’s also a sense of tension that’s cultivated around Nagisa’s emotional journey. I was surprised by how effective this was considering that the characters are brand new at this point and their stories are only portrayed in the most basic of terms. One thing that I found helped contribute to this was Nagisa’s internal narration in the opening scene as she struggled to return each shot and yet failed to win her match. I realized that I felt a lot of sympathy towards her situation – as she asks a couple times throughout the episode, what can you possibly do when you put forth your best effort and it just isn’t good enough? How can you win against someone who has loads of natural talent when it takes you three times as much effort to get to the same level? It’s a question that I’ve asked myself a lot throughout my life, because I’ve had the joy and pain to know a lot of incredibly talented people, many of whom can best me easily in the things that I like to do but don’t have much natural talent for. With the added stress of being called “gifted” at some early point in my life and thinking I was just naturally smart, and then being confronted later on with the fact that I needed to try just as hard as anyone else at things and not having good tools to do so, you can probably guess why this part of the story resonated with me so clearly.
Hanesaki prevents a disaster.
Because the primary conflict, rivalry, and relationship in this series seems to be between two girls, at least judging by the bulk of this episode, I’m feeling a little bit less enthusiastic about the fact that not only is the male coach given a lot of air time in the descriptions I’ve been reading about the show, but he comes across as a perverted jackass from the moment he makes his on screen debut. I’d had the sinking feeling that his presence might take something away from the parts of the story that interested me, and it’s already been the case. In this Larry Nassar-tainted world that we live in, I have very little tolerance for men in positions of authority (in sports and elsewhere) being creepy towards, well, pretty much anyone, but especially teenage girls. It was the reason why I dropped Uma Musume: Pretty Derby like a hot potato almost immediately; the male coach assaulted the female main character multiple times (grabbing her body – specifically her thighs – without her consent) in the first episode and it was played for comedy. A lot of people seemed to brush it off and I gather that the show was a fun watch beyond that, but the imagery still gives me a knot in my stomach. Tachibana’s arrival is heralded by him eyeballing female tennis players from the other side of a fence, and one of the first things he does is to run to Hanesaki and start grabbing at her wrists without any sort of introduction or consent. Again, this is played for comedy, or at least is meant to imply that the coach is so focused on his sports-related goals that his possibly dubious grasp of social norms gets thrown out the window. What it is is gross, and I wish that better decisions had been made at some point along the line (possibly in the original manga, assuming this adaptation is faithful).
Hanesaki is done with badminton.
I’m not against having male authority figures in anime about girls’ sports, but I found that the story was unfolding just fine without that particular contrivance and was really enjoying the episode more when the girls were working through things in their own way, using their own voices. Perhaps I’m just overlooking some really obvious example, but I feel like sports anime starring girls tends to lack some of the seriousness that you get from much of the sports anime starring boys, and this series looks a lot like it could buck that trend. It will just have to get over the inclination towards creeper “comedy” and show a little more confidence in its characterization of the coach.
I’m finding more and more that my strongest negative reactions towards anime are not because a show is just outright terrible, but more because it managed to do so many things well and then managed to biff it in a way that bothers me personally and fundamentally. I certainly don’t think that this show is irredeemable; If subsequent episodes are anything like this one they’ll be both visually interesting and emotionally compelling. I loved the use of color throughout and though the animation was really well done. It got me interested in watching badminton! I would just hope that the coach character is given the chance to behave like a normal human being and that the show lets go of this “young adult males love to creep on teenage girls” thing it’s got going on.
Pros: The action is well-animated. Much of the episode is visually rendered very well. Nagisa’s emotions are portrayed very truthfully in a short amount of time.
Cons: There’s some ill-timed perverted “comedy” that undercuts the tone of the rest of the episode.
