Is there such a thing as functional fanservice? Asking for a friend.
Harukana Receive is a sports anime about beach volleyball, so having girls in swimming suits jumping around is a given. It’s how it’s animated that makes the difference between a sports series and a fanservice show. So far, Harukana Receive is a mixed bag. That screen filling butt above starting off the series doesn’t help, even if it’s in service to a close up of hand signals, in turn illustrating the need for communication and trust in beach volleyball. Complicating things is that in real life beach volleyball isn’t exactly free from sexism either, with the women in bikini while the men wear shirts, so any anime series based on it will have the same issues. Again, how it will animate and show off the matches will determine whether the beach volleyball is more than just an excuse for fanservice.
If the first episode is any guide, Harukana Receive is trying to be a serious sports series. The vast majority of this episode was filled with girls in swimsuits jumping and diving around, but the amount of excessive breast flopping was far less than in the first two minutes of Hanebado. In fact, there wasn’t any. And while the camera might have a fondness for the occassional butt shot, it doesn’t linger or leer, it’s all functional rather than letching. Here for example it’s trying to reinforce the authority of the girl in the foreground, scolding our flustered looking protagonist. However, this particular shot does point out one problem: a definitive lack of muscles for girls used to playing beach volleyball. Our protagonist being a bit soft looking, being new to the sport, is not a problem, but the other two are experienced players and should be a bit more muscular.
Harukana Receive is a simple story at heart. Haruka’a mother is going overseas for work, so Haruka moves in with her grandmother and her cousin Kanata, who live near the beach. Unsurprisingly, Haruka decides to strip off and take a swim there and then, already wearing her swimsuit underneath her clothes. She stumbles across Narumi and Ayasa’s beach volleyball practise when she’s almost hit by their ball, gets interested and asks if she can try it out. One way or another it leads to a match between them, with Kanata — who seems to share some history with Narumi — playing together with Haruka. They lose badly but Haruka promises Narumi that she’ll get better and will play her again. It’s only after she made that promise that she finds out Narumi & Ayase are the current high school champions… It’s a good setup for a sport series and I’m looking forward to following it.
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