We usually played volleyball or basketball in high school, but occasionally we had to try badminton as well. I was never good at it, unlike these girls:
This is in the establishing flashback with which the episode starts. Aragaki Nagisa, the intense girl in the background will lose this match 21-0 to the badminton monster that is Hanesaki Ayano, the girl in the blue shirt, driving the former to ‘git gud’, in the process driving her club mates to despair, while the latter leaves badminton altogether. That is, until she enrolls in the same high school as the first girl and is challenged to a match with her. This takes the whole episode to set up, but that wasn’t a problem for me.
What was a problem was coach grabby over here, who actually climbs over a fence onto the tennis court to fondle her hands when he sees Ayano protect her friend from a stray ball hit by the tennis club’s ace player. Which is supposed to show he’s a badminton savant but which comes across as creepy, as it always does. The second problem is that there was little badminton on offer here after the flashback, but that can be excused by the need for character establishment. Less excusable is that the point of the whole episode is to force Ayano into a match when it’s clear she doesn’t want to play badminton anymore. It’s an old, tired trope to have an ace player fed up with their sport being forced to return to it only to rediscover their love for it.
Much can be excused for intense faces like this though, Nagisa after she finds out that the rival she’s determined to beat is at her own school, playing tennis instead of badminton. In general the animation and design quality of this first episode is quite high, especially in that badminton match and I like that none of the characters look particularly ‘anime’ but a bit more realistic. This has good potential. I like a good sports series, as long as it doesn’t faff about too much.