100 Days of Anime: Day Thirty Six – Hanebado! & ISLAND Three Episode Trial

My anime list may not be as full as some fans, but I know what I like. I’m not normally a fan of the three episode test. I can tell from the get go if I’m going to like something, and very few things grow on me. Free time is precious.

But I’ve decided to give the shows I’m watching this season three episodes, and at the three episode mark, I’ll be making posts here, usually in batches. This will give me a little more blog fodder, and I’ll feel a little more knowledgeable going into Anime Weekend Atlanta this September.

Hanebado!

Verdict: Keep

Logically speaking, sports anime shouldn’t be my thing. I have never played a sport for more than gym class required. To steal a saying from a favorite professor, I will not run, even if being chased. It’s no good dying sweaty.

That said, I have tried a few sports anime, loved them and then somehow didn’t end up sticking with them. This time, I’m sticking with Hanebado!.

It’s a show about badminton, and it’s based on a manga by the same name. But this is not the casual badminton of my grandparents’ neighbors back in the ’90s. This is serious badminton. This is high school badminton, and it is the most important thing in the lives of our protagonists. It might be the most important thing in the world. I think someone might die for badminton or from it.

Nagisa is the tomboy-ish team captain with a short temper. Kentarō is their coach, an Olympian-level badminton… badminton-ist. And Ayano is a dead-eyed little girl badminton terminator. The supporting characters (there are a lot of them already) are all interesting on their own with plenty of personality and lots of clear motivations.

The animation is also really detailed and fluid, so much so that I was actually beginning to wonder if there was some motion capture involved.

I’m not exactly sure what happens next, and I’m getting a kick out of that.

ISLAND

Verdict: Hiatus

I know what I like, and what I don’t like. If it weren’t for this blog, I’d have dropped ISLAND after a girl fell face first onto a naked man’s crotch (in the most PG-13 way possible) within the first 10 minutes.

But I did say I’m putting this one on hiatus. I may come back later in the season if I hear good things coming out.

ISLAND is based on a visual novel, and it shows. Thus far there are very few characters (that can be a plus sometimes but not here), and few of them have personalities beyond how they relate to the protagonists, a dude with amnesia and three girls.

The girls all belong to prestigious families on this isolated island. There is a legend about how the island was cursed with a mysterious disease called soot blight syndrome. The legend involves incestuous lovers from one girl’s family and… well it all gets a bit foggy from there.

There’s obviously some mystery at the heart of this story, but I’m not interested enough in the weird story of an amnesiac twenty-something with next to no personality flirting with three high school girls who are immediately obsessed with him.

I don’t find any of the characters all that charming. Setsuna, our male lead, doesn’t remember how he got to the island, but he thinks he’s a time traveler and he mildly flirts with the girls. Renne, Karen and Sara are each distinct, but so obviously calculated to get viewers infatuated that it’s giving me hives.

Also, at various points one of the girls sings with sudden full instrumentation, and that just really gets on my nerves for some reason.

Maybe it works better as a visual novel. Maybe it’ll get better, and I’ll give it a watch later in the season. For now though, I’m putting this one back on the shelf.