Busou Chuugakusei: Basket Army

Busou Chuugakusei: Basket Army. What is this little obscure ONA with 4 minute episodes, you ask? That is a very good question, and I have no clue.

I think Busuo Chuugakusei is supposed to be about a group of 8 middle school students fighting off some sort of evil military group from their school. I think, as this show never tells you. Apparently based off of a novel, Busuo Chuugakusei is more or less a series of short stories as these random group of kids fight against... Whatever... Actually, they don't even fight at all. It's more or less their daily life in this random school ... as they clean their guns and do... I don't know.

Busou Chuugakusei's biggest flaw is that it wants to do too much in a short amount of time, but it ends up doing nothing in a short amount of time. We're introduced to eight, eight characters in the first episode, with little slides with a narration by the main character (?) telling us some random fact about them and their names. And the next episode? Introduces like, three bad guys. WHO NEVER GET MENTIONED AGAIN! They waste a whole episode badly introducing a group of people who play no role in the story. Why do we need that? Why couldn't they have showed us more of the daily life of the main eight instead of trying to show us some sort of story it never explains? The last episodes are just slice-of-life stuff. While it is nice to watch, I had no clue who any of these people were supposed to be, which really takes away from the enjoyment. Most of the main eight barely even get any screen-time. Only like, half of them even do anything!

The animation is actually very nice, with cute character designs, really neat CGI, and a resemblance of a budget. While it does have perhaps one two many pan outs, it's very well animated compared to most ONAs. The backgrounds are kinda blah though, but hey. The music is also good enough too, and the voice acting is very good.

I did enjoy Busou Chuugakusei a whole lot as it does do a good job on the slice-of-life parts, but it just does not do anything with its' plot at all, and having no clue what was going on takes away form the experience. Overall, I give Busou Chuugakusei: Basket Army a score of 6 and a recommendation to not watch it.

I recommend reading this if you are deciding on whether or not to watch this anime.

I'm gonna say straight up that this is not worth watching just by itself. This anime doesn't present any normal or acceptable storyline that would have any significant meaning. It is basically just a trailer for you to read the light novel.

Still, I have to admit, the idea presented here is kind of intriguing: the middle schoolers of an unknown school are armed and decide to protect some kind of cube that decides the fate of Japan. They are now hunted or rather pulled into war with some other ... unknown soldiers, who seek to obtain this sort of 'cube'.

This 'anime' or rather trailer for the light novel has decent animation, good choice of music and good sound quality, yet lacks a conclusive storyline or multidimensional characters.

If you are intrigued by the idea of middle schoolers having a war with some 'evil guys', potential for some romantic development (that's the hint I got from these few episodes, though I haven't read the light novel) and a mysterious story, then go ahead and read the light novel cause you'll probably like it. I haven't read it, but it seemed intriguing, this by itself though can't be counted as a 'watchable anime'.

Thank you for reading!

I thought that I should write a review about this anime, since it has an interesting premise. There's not much to say about the anime, but I will elaborate why my interests were attained during the course of this short work of anime.

Story: 2/10
Being a 5 episode anime, with 4 minutes in each episode the story definitely wasn't there. It had an interesting backstory, and it seemed the anime was created with the thought that it would be completed. The anime contained many plot holes which would probably have been explained in later episodes if there were any. The lack of story/ story development and ... the amount of plot holes forces me to give the story a 2/10, despite it's intriguing backstory.

Art: 8/10
One of the highlights of this anime was the detail and art style of this anime. The art was simply breath-taking and not something you would see in many anime today, which was somewhat surprising considering the anime only had 5 episodes (of 4 minutes each). The animations were fluid, and quite frankly the characters had some interesting designs. Because of such a limited time-span, I was unable to give a score higher than 8, given time, I'd probably give it a 9/10.

Sound: 4/10
Don't misunderstand the 4/10. The anime had some great moments with the sound and music, but being such a short piece of work, it was hard to give it a high score. To be perfectly honest, I was quite impressed by its smooth integration of music. It was a shame that it ended with only a 4/10, if the anime had a more time, it would have been interesting to see how much was added and how well it was integrated. If the sound quality was continued in future episodes, the score would definitely be up in the 7 or 8 range.

Character: 1/10
The anime severely lacked any character development, and its perfectly understandable. After being introduced to over 10 characters it's amazing how we even manage to understand and perceive certain aspects of the characters personality and traits within 20 minutes. Despite this, none of the characters were develop and we have no clue who is 'good' and who is 'bad', this is not necessarily bad if it was intended to blur the lines between good and bad, but within the 20 minutes, it is very unclear whether or not this was intended and even if it was, it was lacking too much character development.

Enjoyment: 6/10
Despite such negativity, I found myself to enjoy the anime quite some bit. Honestly I didn't expect much coming into this anime, but it was only 20 minutes so I thought I might as well watch it. Needless to say, I was not disappointed and quite happy that I made the decision to watch it.

Overall: 4/10
The anime had its many flaws but it had great potential. This anime was unique in many ways and anime of today lack such aspects which uniquely and daringly pushes itself outside the box to differentiate itself from today's standards.

The backstory was definitely what actually made me finish this show. It quickly explores the impact of death, which was quite important as (to be perfectly honest) anime, especially those today do not even dare touch on this. We all agree that SAO could have been something truly amazing, but lost its impact very early in. What made SAO such a success was the psychological aspects and the impact of death on the characters. Death was a very real thing in SAO, which was something that it should have revolved around, instead it quickly changes into a typical romance with beautiful art, and unique backstory. Surely enough, SAO is something that I still find myself attached to and that I like it a lot, despite its flaws, I cannot stop liking this anime. Back on topic, Basket Army was an interesting anime and I would like to see more anime take on this train of thought. An anime which explores friendships and bonds between characters through the course of their training, then those characters are thrown into the midst of war and slowly, the characters die off and it is clear that death is very real, that even the viewer can see and feel it. Nevertheless it is quite amazing how something so short (20 minutes) can earn itself a 4/10 for its overall score, it is something to be proud of despite its low score.