Review Episode 8:
We seem to just keep finding club members like they grow on trees. I kind of get why we didn’t meet all the senior players at the start because that would have been character overload and it would have made it harder to actually like the first year characters, but it just seems strange that so many of the other players just weren’t around. That said, the two characters we meet this episode seem like they’ll be a nice addition and not just because they’ll help the team but because it seems like their personalities will fit in nicely and fill in some missing spaces. Their advisor seems to have spent most of his energy this episode trying to find an actual coach for the team and who the would be coach is was pretty predictable and yet not unpleasant. All and all, this episode was kind of slow but lots of little things seemed to be getting set up.
Review Episode 9:
It’s kind of heartening that so many of these players end up having mid-game therapy sessions. It’s too bad all their trauma is actually from playing the sport and feeling the weight of the game.
It is nice and all to see the Ace on the court and swinging again but did we need a whole two episodes for him to come to the basic realisation that it is a team sport? That’s probably my biggest complaint about this anime at the moment. Very small character epiphanies that are kind of blindingly obvious take far too long to unfold leaving you just waiting for them to get to the end of the sequence, get the realisation, and move on. I’m guessing we’re supposed to be connecting with them as they go through this but I find the players who’ve already kind of moved on a bit more interesting at this point.
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