Baby Steps

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Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Baby Steps

Japanese: ベイビーステップ

Information

Type: TV

Episodes: 25

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Apr 6, 2014 to Sep 21, 2014

Premiered: Spring 2014

Broadcast: Unknown

Producers: NHK

Licensors: None found, add some

Studios: Pierrot

Source: Manga

Genre: Sports

Theme: School

Demographic: Shounen

Duration: 24 min. per ep.

Rating: PG-13 - Teens 13 or older

Statistics

Score: 7.80¹ (scored by 74,474 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #1003²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #1559

Members: 146,934

Favorites: 848

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Crunchyroll

7.80

Ranked #1003Popularity #1559Members 146,934

Spring 2014TVPierrot

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Episodes: /25

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Synopsis

Diligent and methodical honor student Eiichirou Maruo decides to exercise more during the little free time he has available because he is worried about his health. For this reason, after seeing a flyer, he joins the Southern Tennis Club at the beginning of his freshman year.

During his free trial at the club, he meets Natsu Takasaki, another first year student, who is determined on becoming a professional tennis player due to her love for the sport. In contrast, Eiichirou's study-oriented life exists because he believes that it is what he has to do, not because he enjoys it. However, his monotonous days come to an end as the more he plays tennis, the more he becomes fascinated by it.

Baby Steps is the story of a boy who makes the most of his hard-working and perfectionist nature to develop his own unique playing style. Little by little, Eiichirou's skills begin to improve, and he hopes to stand on equal footing with tennis' best players.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Episode Videos

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Related Anime

Adaptation:	Baby Steps
Sequel:	Baby Steps 2nd Season

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Maruo, Eiichirou

Main

Murata, Taishi
Japanese

Takasaki, Natsu

Main

Kotobuki, Minako
Japanese

Ike, Souji

Supporting

Hosoya, Yoshimasa
Japanese

Egawa, Takuma

Supporting

Namikawa, Daisuke
Japanese

Nabae, Yuu

Supporting

Sakurai, Takahiro
Japanese

Fukazawa, Yukichi

Supporting

Shimono, Hiro
Japanese

Miyagawa, Takuya

Supporting

Kakihara, Tetsuya
Japanese

Oobayashi, Ryou

Supporting

Maeno, Tomoaki
Japanese

Miura

Supporting

Kusunoki, Taiten
Japanese

Kageyama, Kojirou

Supporting

Terashima, Takuma
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Murata, Masahiko

Director

Takakuwa, Hajime

Sound Director

Kodaira, Maki

Episode Director, Storyboard, Key Animation

Heo, Pyeonggang

Episode Director, Storyboard

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Opening Theme

"Believe in yourself" by Mao Abe (阿部真央)

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Ending Theme

"Baby Steps (ベイビーステップ)" by Babyraids (ベイビーレイズ)

Reviews

May 4, 2023

sirnothing

Recommended

Baby Steps

Baby Steps is a memorable sports anime with informative analysis of tennis, likable characters, and thrilling gameplay.

CHARACTERS: 20/25
The protagonist of this series is Eiichiro Maruo. Supporting characters are Natsu Takasaki, Takuma Egawa, Kojirou Kageyama, Yukichi Fukuzawa, and Himeko Sasaki. Eiichiro plays against and continually interacts with other tennis players such as Takuya Miyagawa, Ryou Oobayashi, Hitoshi Araya, Hiromi Iwasa, Souji Ike, and Yuu Nabae. Other supporting cast include Eiichiro’s parents and his coaches, Coach Miura and Coach Ryuuhei Aoi. Eiichiro is a very likable and hard-working student who decides to try his hand at tennis and ends up loving it. Throughout the series the ... viewer grows to admire and root for Eiichiro’s unique approach to mastering tennis and is charmed by Eiichiro’s growing love interest, Natsu. Kageyama and Sasaki play supportive, comedic, and unobtrusive roles. Eiichiro’s parents both support and challenge Eiichiro’s pursuit to go pro. The coaches and Eiichiro himself provide a majority of the analyses about training and gameplay. What is greatly impressive is the number and variety of other tennis players that Eiichiro faces, providing new and unique spins to each series of episodes in which Eiichiro is playing against one of them. The viewer grows to admire the uniqueness of each person’s game and how Eiichiro learns something different when/after facing each player. Something that might be lacking is character development and screen time for some of the other characters, like Natsu, as she is basically just a strong tennis player who is supportive of Eiichiro and is the cutest girl in class. Kageyama ends up just being someone who goes to Eiichiro’s matches and is talked to by the coaches. In addition, Eiichiro may be almost too analytical and focused on tennis, as other aspects of his life, such as his love life, are really very superficial and don’t get the depth of character development that the viewer may want to see.

STORY: 38/45
The story of Baby Steps draws you in and leaves you wondering what happens next, especially when Eiichiro is playing in a match. While one might think that watching Eiichiro play in matches multiple times can get repetitive, every opponent is unique and possesses different skills, making every match feel fresh and thrilling. What’s great is also that while Eiichiro is a rising star in tennis who is improving at an alarming rate, he doesn’t win every match, keeping the story feeling a bit more realistic. The gameplay analysis narrated usually by Eiichiro himself or the coaches is very strong and informative. There is also, of course, the overarching story of Eiichiro growing as a tennis player and deciding that he wants to go pro. For this reason, the stakes are raised, causing viewers to root for Eiichiro even more as there are concrete goals he has to achieve. The overall development of his relationship to the sport and to his studies are done very well, as are his training and adjustments in his training. What may be lacking, as mentioned previously, is more about Eiichiro’s personality and life other than being an honors student and being very focused on tennis. For example, there’s not much regarding his friendship with Kageyama. In addition, while Natsu plays heroine to Eiichiro’s main character role, their interactions are quite minimal and Natsu doesn’t receive much character development other than being another tennis player trying to go pro who happens to be the cutest girl in class.

ART: 8/10
The art in Baby Steps is nothing special. Everything is well-drawn and most scenes are well-animated. What might be lacking is having more scenes with actual movement of players during matches instead of just using speed lines for the ball. The OP and ED are well-animated and set up the series well.

SOUND: 8/10
The sound in this series is great. The voice acting is done very well, including the action scenes. The sound effects are strong and matches sound like a real game is being played. I’m not sure how many variations of tennis balls being hit that they used, but it seems like a lot. Background music is used at appropriate times, but seems limited as we hear the same music used repeatedly, especially during matches.

ENJOYMENT: 9/10
Baby Steps is a very enjoyable anime. As stated before, Eiichiro’s is a very likable character and one can’t help but cheer for him to do well. Every match is unique, thrilling, and sometimes spans for several episodes, leaving viewers wanting to know what happens next. His growing relationship with Natsu is also a joy to watch.

OVERALL: 83/100
Would I recommend Baby Steps to a friend? Absolutely. It’s an informative, funny, entertaining, and thrilling anime about tennis. It makes me want to take up my racket again and get back on the court.

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Feb 19, 2022

Canary_Supremacy

Recommended

This is a great anime, and manga and definitely deserves to have more fans. Though, all the main characters are japanese the author does add POC when the character goes to America and in different tennis matches with made me happy but I also couldn’t help but laugh at the main characters hair in every scene. Maybe they could of changed that a littleee bit lol. Maybe it’s because I’m not a fan of love interests in sports mangas, and other action ml stories because the guys don’t ever know how to write a woman/girl without her being sexualize or annoying so I didn’t really ...

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Feb 27, 2023

PixelB

Not Recommended

Preliminary (12/25 eps)

Baby Steps fails as a slow-paced realistic sports anime about tennis. Compared to something like Okiku Furikake, where it's about fostering a new, all-freshmen baseball club featuring players of all skill levels aiming for nationals with a lot of obstacles along the way, Baby Steps is more about an MC that has OP learning abilities that becomes pro-level in no time.

Maruo Eichirou is Momo from Prince of Tennis if he were nerfed and could be a real-life person. That is to say, in real-world terms, Eichirou is an extreme OP. Maruo Eichirou starts as unathletic as hell, unable to even beat grade-schoolers in cardio activities ... like sprints and running. After a mere year and four months of training, he's gotten to the point of being physically capable of competing at a prefecture level. Why yes, he does a lot of training in that year, but nothing short of a genetic miracle, and steroids would let someone climb up to that level.

Of course, he’s also really skilled at learning tennis. He’s able to gain the ball skill, movements, and control in an extremely fast amount of time. He also has an amazing memory, able to memorize each trajectory of each ball in a match. He’s keeping top grades in school, has a photographic memory, and goes even beyond that considering how he’s able to remember matches so vividly as shown in his psychological training. This isn’t even his most OP selling point though. No, that goes to his extremely good kinetic vision. He’s able to analyze peoples’ movements so that he can predict where the ball will go from the person’s posture and movements.

What I’m trying to say with this is that Baby Steps wholly fails in providing a slow-paced show about a person trying to go pro in tennis. I mean, Eichirou goes from losing to all the seeded players he plays against to beating the third-best player in the region due to his great strength and physical endurance, winning with his stamina. In other sports shows, there’s no real sugarcoating the MC’s OP abilities. Everyone knows that Ashito in Ao Ashi or Echizen in Prince of Tennis have ungodly amounts of plot armor and OP abilities, and the focus is more on the exciting matches, teammates they have, and the opponents they play against, rather than a realistic self-improvement journey towards becoming pro-level in a sport. I would argue that even Ashito in Ao Ashi is still more realistic than Eichirou since at least Ashito played soccer his entire life and was extremely athletic.
The romance in Baby Steps? Very typical and straightforward. It’s predictable, and deliberately gives no doubt that the female love interest is the main character’s emotional crutch and support.

I guess matches in Baby Steps are the only good thing about this show. They’re alright, and it does go into a lot of monologuing about the game and match, but what’s the point if each character is super boring? Even super-power shows like Prince of Tennis or Kuroko no Basket have very good and detailed matches that rival Baby Steps. The difference is that in the other shows, they have good characters that stand out. Baby Steps has none of that. No character’s interesting, as an extremely large majority of screen time is spent on our MC. The rivals, side characters, and even love interests don’t have a lot of characterization. The problem is that Eichirou is bland as a protagonist, as typical with most shows, since having an inoffensive main character is the safest option. The difference here is that most shows with an inoffensive and boring MC have unique side characters that are developed and are played off the MC, but this doesn’t happen here.

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Poll: Baby Steps Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) Stark700 - Apr 6, 2014	143 replies	by JeremiahOrange »» Oct 5, 2023 6:50 AM
Poll: Baby Steps Episode 25 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Sep 21, 2014	93 replies	by 1Konochi »» Jun 14, 2023 5:49 PM
Poll: Baby Steps Episode 24 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Sep 14, 2014	55 replies	by 1Konochi »» Jun 14, 2023 2:40 PM
Poll: Baby Steps Episode 23 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Sep 7, 2014	54 replies	by 1Konochi »» Jun 5, 2023 12:04 PM
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