Hanebado!

Title:Hanebado!
はねバド!
Overall:Rent
Keywords: , , , , , ,
Notables: Animation - LIDEN FILMS
OHWADA Hitomi
Nagisa Aragaki is the captain of the badminton team at Kitakomachi high school. However, she is largely burnt-out regarding the sport as a result of a crushing loss she suffered in a tournament six months ago. She gave 110% but could not prevail. Now she tends to take her frustrations out on her team members, and as a result the team is in disarray. Then the girl who beat her turns up at the school--and it seems that she isn't all that interested in badminton anymore!

13 episodes
OverallArtAnimationCharacter Design MusicSeries StoryEpisode StoryReviewer
Rent 8 8 8 6 7 8 Ggultra2764 [series:3546#1552]
Hanebado is mainly focused on its main heroines of Nagisa Aragaki and Ayano Hanesaki who are members of a high school badminton club and both find themselves having personal issues to overcome with their involvement in the club. The series is rather blatant at trying to make a moral out of showing one is at their best in a sport when they are genuinely enjoying it, with forcing oneself to get into it doing more harm than good for one's mental well-being in the long run. I'm not familiar with the title's manga source material, but my understanding is that it is a bit more on the comical and light-hearted side compared to the anime's heavy dabbling into drama. Things are fairly heavy for the inner problems of our two female leads between Nagisa's aggression from her frustration over her shocking loss to Ayano in a past match and Ayano having hesitation and signs of mental trauma involving herself in badminton due to an event in her past. On the plus side though, the series does know when to restrain itself with said drama in most instances to avoid having it get too overbearing and our two girls undergo varying degrees of development throughout Hanebado's 13-episode run, helping to add some layers of depth on top of the typical storytelling developments the series has with its sports story. Other supporting characters within Nagisa and Ayano's team get their focus exploring their efforts at badminton and whatever bonds they have with our two characters, having just enough depth where you can care for them. The heavy focus on drama does have its shortcomings as it does make some characters look unlikeable due to their actions and attitude toward Ayano, and the heavier moments within Ayano and Nagisa's developments do have their iffy moments with how they play out. But in spite of its flaws, Hanebado does have a solid foundation for character development with its two lead characters and a relatable theme involving how one approaches their interest in a sport that makes it at least considering worth checking out at least once.

Last updated Thursday, August 25 2022. Created Thursday, August 25 2022.
Unevaluated Stretch [series:3546#628]
(Four episodes watched):

Is there any sport that won't be the subject of an anime nowadays? Diving, tennis, figure skating, you name it. I couldn't help wondering if this show had been about badminton because the author was looking for any sport hadn't already had a manga/anime about it produced, regardless of whether it was particularly interesting in itself. I had never thought of badminton as a particularly exhausting, vigorous, hyper-competitive sport; it seemed more like something the wealthy do for exercise. Nevertheless, I was pleasantly surprised to find that this show wasn't about bouncing boobs and lame jokes but rather seemed to be taking its subject quite seriously and was making a serious attempt to tell an interesting and entertaining story. Fairly detailed character designs suggest that a good deal of effort is being devoted to creating interesting and likeable characters (although it looks like there will be a lot to keep track of). There are some halfway decent jokes here and there, and several clever and convincing observations are made by supporting characters. As it should, the first episode leaves us with a question that we want answers to, namely why does the girl who beat Nagisa now seem to hate badminton so much, when she was once so good at it? There was no guarantee that this would develop into an intriguing tale, but it seemed to be good enough to be worth watching a second episode.

Unfortunately, as the answer to the question slowly became apparent, I found it to be unconvincing and uninteresting. Her mother once was a badminton superstar (does such a thing exist?) and cared far more about the sport than about her daughter? That is hard to take seriously and it is likewise hard to believe that it is a problem that could possibly be solved by the girl getting better and better at the sport herself. It seems to me that that would only make the problem worse. Basically, it is such a stretch that I had a hard time suspending disbelief. I was also annoyed by the arrogance of the Danish badminton prodigy who has apparently come to Japan just to humiliate a rival; that's not a particularly deep or interesting character. Perhaps the problem was that despite some encouraging signs early on, I didn't really see anything all that special about the protagonists which made me want to see them win at all costs. Or maybe badminton just isn't all that exciting a sport. Or both. After four episodes I still could not say that I saw a particularly intriguing and engaging basic conflict behind this story, or what was at stake, or exactly why I should continue watching. After a few minutes of episode five I realized that I would much rather watch any of the other Summer 2018 anime that I was following, and decided to quit Hanebado.

Last updated Monday, October 01 2018. Created Tuesday, July 17 2018.

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