Basquash! Episode 1 - I Am Legend
I know what I’m SUPPOSED to say about Basquash. I’m a self-admitted Shoji Kawamori fan. The show has the most INCREDIBLE production design imaginable, and all sorts of crazy visual ideas, and I usually go all ga-ga for that sort of thing.
I’m sorry, though. I’m just too old for this shit.
The plot, such as it is, is the launching point of almost any shounen anime, sporting, mecha or otherwise, you care to name. I’m not even sure it’s worth me describing it, to be honest. If you know that this show is about basketball playing mecha, you know that the main character will end up playing basketball in a mecha by the end of the first episode; it’s just an irreversible law of episodic entertainment. Throw in a few side characters, a bit of backstory (which in this case is that the protagonist’s sister is confined to a wheelchair after an accident with one of these basketball playing mecha) and you’ve got the recipe for an anime with a couple of minor twists along the way.
It’s unfortunate, really, but I just can’t even bring myself to care about this show. It looks fantastic, and that’s all I’ve really got to say about it. I could complain about the stereotypical characters but I’m not even really that bothered by them; they serve a purpose, after all, which is to enable the snazzy CG basketball scenes, and that’s the whole point of the show.
As it is, there’s nothing to make me want to watch more from a narrative point of view. Where is the mystery? Where are the hidden depths to explore, beyond which girl Dan (the protagonist) will end up with - a story I have little interest in as Dan isn’t an intriguing enough character? Sheer visual audacity alone isn’t enough to keep me hooked on anything, regretfully; there will be other shows with good art this season (one can hope?) and as impressive as Satelight’s CG sequences are, my brain switches off entirely when they start going - you think I watched Aquarion or Macross for the mecha?
What this show really should be doing is airing in a sensible dinner time slot during the week or on a Sunday morning, something like that. This is a show for kids that just happens to have a notorious director and wodges of wonga behind it; even the occasional eye-rolling fanservice shot wouldn’t be out of place in something like Blue Dragon these days. It’s the sort of thing I might have watched ten or fifteen years ago after school, perhaps, but it’s basically got nothing to offer me now, and I don’t see why Satelight have ended up with the Thursday night slot on MBS except by previous association (it’s airing in the same timeslot that Macross F did last year).
I don’t mean all this in a pretentious way at all. I know that virtually all anime is aimed at an audience in their teens to early twenties at most (and the otaku that place themselves outside of time), but Basquash feels like it skews young nonetheless. I had a very similar reaction to Oban Star Racers, which was also directed by Thomas Romain who’s working on Basquash with Kawamori - it was a beautiful show, but squarely for ten to twelve year olds.
Thankfully, I’m no longer twelve.
(I had really bad hair when I was twelve. Full-on bowl cut. ’twas a horror.)
April 8th, 2009 at 1:10 am
I thought this was wonderful, and it reminded me a lot of Gad Guard. It definitely skewed young, but it has that exuberance and attitude that most shows never manage despite wanting to appear…wacky I guess. If it keeps up on the same level, it will more than make up for the stinking mediocrity of Macross F (of which the CG was really the only appealing part I thought, as I found the majority of it to be utterly hateful)
April 8th, 2009 at 4:04 am
Bububut… Bowl-cuts can be cute IMO :(
I didn’t expect to like it (the character profiles were yawn-inducing) so I didn’t bother checking it out, sad to hear all the pretty visuals didn’t make up for it. Guess I won’t bother with it.
I wonder how bad the shoe ads were though.
April 10th, 2009 at 1:10 am
Watched the first episode of this and like Passer says the show just had a certain amount of charisma in it that kept me going,in addition to the mesmerizingly beautiful animation. But if all this show is going to be about is kooky basketball matches then I don’t see myself watching past the 2nd or 3rd ep. And that would be real shame. In fact I can’t imagine why the studio would drop so much money on the anime’s production values and then give it a shallow, meaningless plot.
April 10th, 2009 at 1:16 am
I also wonder if this is really just meant to be a kid’s show. I mean there was a ton of sexual innuendo in the first ep, and I’m not just talking about Miyuki’s bouncing bodacious boobs (damn those things should get their own episode, or maybe just a five minute interlude somewhere…)
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:17 am
“Bububut… Bowl-cuts can be cute IMO :(”
They’re cute, in theory, like on a child who has moon-sized eyes, is prone to tears, and drags a blankie or stuffed alpaca wherever he goes. But in real-life they are the absolute horrors of horrors, and equally cringe-inducing as a mullet.
May 3rd, 2009 at 7:40 pm
I agree that the show is “little kiddish” but .. you gotta admit, there’s so much energy and fun! The attention to detail is incredible. While the story is predictable, it’s still interesting enough to not bore me. I have to say that this is the best anime this season. The idea behind it is much more creative than the other sappy, bad, and game copy cat animes. It’s certainly not an anime that requires deep thinking ;)
July 30th, 2009 at 6:37 am
I suspect this is one of those times where the first episode was either a hit or a miss, and for those for whom it was a miss it just becomes a loss. There’s definitely things I could list that SHOULD make it bad, but they don’t for inexplicable reasons.
Also, I guess it wasn’t obvious enough in the first episode but this is SO not a kids show. Kids could watch it,sure, but only because they might be so ignorant to the sexual references that it goes right over their head. Can you say for sure this impression of yours wasn’t based on the fact that the star’s a short guy with a head piece?