Kuroko’s Basketball Early Thoughts

I originally wasn’t planning on watching this, but then I saw some screenshots of the coach and saw how obsessively in love with the show a lot of Japan is, mostly by them flipping their shit if it got mentioned in their streams and then going full fujoshi. So I figured I’d check it out, and so far it’s actually pretty good.

The main reason I picked it up in the first place, the coach, is luckily prominent right off the bat and not some character that shows up later or is just around from time to time. She’s real cute and great at what she does thanks to spending a lot of time at her dad’s (a serious sports trainer) job, though sometimes her voice comes off as way too adult sounding rather than just masculine. The next character I think will remain my second favorite (after the coach!) is a certain tsundere from America, Kagami. All he does is eat a shit ton of cheeseburgers from McDonalds (seriously), act all tsuntsun with Kuroko, and play basketball. That’s his life, that’s all there is to it, and I think that’s hilarious. Plus his playing style is “DUNK on these bitches” and not much else.

RIIIIMFIRE

He’s also basically the main character right alongside Kuroko – rather than either being the real lead, which is kind of a nice dynamic given most sports shows tend to focus way too much on one character being ‘the one’. There are plenty that aren’t like Oofuri and stuff, but for the most part there is always one character who is “special”. But here, the whole team, and especially Kuroko and Kagami, seem to be a real pair – with perfectly contrasting abilities that need each other to make those abilities useful.

Get it? You could even say he “teleports” around the court. HA TELL ME ANOTHER ONE.

Kuroko is basically invisible, he calls himself a “shadow” because he can use misdirection and his lack of presence to pretty much sneak around the court and is also super talented at passing – let alone while barely even having contact with the ball which all on its own is kind of crazy. I don’t know much about basketball as I think it’s a lame sport, but I’m pretty sure you don’t just smack the ball in an instant and have it launched toward your teammate perfectly – but that won’t score any points. Kagami on the other hand is a hot blooded type who’d prefer to just slam jam his way to the top and dunk the shit out of these nerds – but you can’t do the space jam without getting the ball. The team aside them is actually pretty good as well, but not nearly on the same level. Kagami played in the US presumably with a lot of people who are better at American sports than tiny Japanese teenagers and Kuroko was one of the “Generation of Miracles” – while the rest of the team is just pretty good at the game high school kids with no special talents or backgrounds (as far as I’m aware), but they did okay the previous year and aren’t unskilled or anything. But even the less important characters do seem to have personality to them, so they aren’t just there to make the team have enough players to be an actual team.

I-it’s not like I like you or anything, b-but here’s one of my extra burgers, idiot.

Anyway, it’s a pretty good show with good (albeit pretty typical) characters and chemistry between them,  and this is another sports series that makes you get into it when it comes up regardless of how you feel about the sport – much like baseball shows that somehow made me really enjoy the sport as long as it’s in an anime. Hell, that Overdrive show about racing fucking bicycles even had me into that for the time I was watching the show – and I couldn’t give a shit less about riding bikes up a mountain – but it was Initial D with bikes, dude, it was great. Kuroko’s also got an awesome OST, a lot of well known voices, and nice animation. Though one thing that bugs me is the shading on their necks, it’s not horrible but I’m guessing they ported that over from the manga…and it just doesn’t look good in animated form the way it’s done. Anyway, I’d say it’s worth checking out at least. It’s the first show from this recent season I’ve actually watched any of (not that I have no interest in anything – just busy with other stuff like VIDEO GAMES) and I’m not disappointed at all. I think the charm here lies in the characters and interactions between them more than the game, it’s pretty light hearted and there’s comedy mixed in all the time (even as a core point of Kuroko’s character – as he magically appears all the time because nobody notices he’s even there), it’s far from some hardcore sports series, so you can enjoy it even if you aren’t into that.

You like coach? Check it out. You like Basketball? Check it out. You like sports shows? Check it out. You like boys love? I’m sure you can probably make a lot of gay pairings out of an almost full-male cast sports show with a clearly tsundere guy for an MC (though I’d just pair everyone with Coach and probably at the same time, because that’s how it works in doujins right? Just kidding, she’s a pure girl too busy getting off to making you a champion, she doesn’t even know sex isn’t “making this guy the best at basketball”). You like good anime even if you dislike that other stuff? Check it out.

COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOACH

oh god that moe slightly-too-long sweater