Baby Steps

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]

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

Krishna, Rames Supporting

Murata, Masahiko Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Takakuwa, Hajime Sound Director

Mizuno, Kazunori Episode Director

Murayama, Kiyoshi Episode Director

Reviews

Jun 21, 2025

GamiKhan

Recommended

Simple show about tennis, it is the type of sports anime more focused in the journey than anything else. It isnt afraid to skip irrelevant matches and points. While a full match of 3 sets could definetly last 4 episodes in other animes, here at times they quickly wrap them up in a single episode.

To me skipping irrelevant stuff is a plus, the anime is ultimately focused on the thought process in which the protagonist advances and the fact that he skipped a leisure guaranteed free life for something that he loves, though the thing he loves is not only tennis.

Nor the anime or manga ... are finished, both of them got cancelled at different points of time but I think it is worth the watch, also the show even if it is not very applicable cause he does have an insane innate talent for tennis but as I said I do think a lot of his thought process covers everything, if you do stuff thoughtfully and diligently you will get results, and this anime might be a little inspiring if you are in need of some.

8/10 Not groundbreaking but really good sports with a touch of romance anime

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

What did you think of this review?

Nice 0

Love it 0

Funny 0

Confusing 0

Informative 0

Well-written 0

Creative 0

More reviews by GamiKhan (27)

Show all

Read more

Show less

Open

Gift

Report

Jan 4, 2025

YBYUVI

Mixed Feelings

Love the anime, it's a really good anime, the story is top tier, and the characters are written very well. But the only thing is that the matches in this anime are super annoying, I mean if you are watching this anime you probably have already watched Haikyuu, so imagine haikyuu match but they never actually show the dang court and just speak volleyball jargon. Like blud show me the damn court, I don't know what a frickin slice, or cross shot or any of that stuff is, and the main thing that if the matches are going to last 2 episodes I just don't ... wanna see him or the opposite player just give a monolgue, I also wanna see the dang match like the audience in the anime. Becuase it's just not fun someone just explaining what they are doing in the match and not actually seeing what they are doing. Other than that the anime I would reccomed you give the anime a try.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

What did you think of this review?

Nice 0

Love it 0

Funny 0

Confusing 0

Informative 0

Well-written 0

Creative 0

More reviews by YBYUVI (13)

Show all

Read more

Show less

Open

Gift

Report

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.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

What did you think of this review?

Nice 0

Love it 0

Funny 0

Confusing 0

Informative 0

Well-written 0

Creative 0

More reviews by PixelB (466)

Show all

Read more

Show less

Open

Gift

Report

OVERPoWERED (Every Genre) ▌#05▐

by 1List2RuleThemAl

11 Entries · 7 Restacks

Best Starter Sports Anime 🎌 | Your Ultimate Beginner’s Pick!

by HazlerManga

50 Entries · 9 Restacks

Frutiger Aero

by jkstats00

20 Entries · 28 Restacks

Spring 2014 Simulcast List [Update 4/19]

Crunchyroll (All times are Pacific for premium users):Dragon Collection Territories: USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Denmark, Finland...read more

Apr 1, 2014 3:25 PM by Dunois | Discuss (168 comments)

	Poll: Baby Steps Episode 25 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Sep 21, 2014	94 replies	by wildhood »» Nov 9, 8:21 AM
	Poll: Baby Steps Episode 24 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Sep 14, 2014	56 replies	by wildhood »» Oct 12, 1:06 PM
	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 23 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Sep 7, 2014	54 replies	by 1Konochi »» Jun 5, 2023 12:04 PM
	Poll: Baby Steps Episode 21 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Aug 24, 2014	52 replies	by 1Konochi »» May 27, 2023 10:16 AM

Top 5 Best Tennis Anime of All Time

Tennis has been around in anime for some time now, but the number of series dedicated to it are surprisingly low. In the following list, we'll take a look at five popular tennis anime, including not only iconic classics, but also some newbie gems!

by removed_user

352,364 views

RecommendationCollectionSportsGIF

Sports Anime: Before the Boom Part II

Yowamushi Pedal, Kuroko no Basuke, Baby Steps, Haikyuu!! - modern anime fans are spoiled for choice. But there's a lot of other great sports anime out there just waiting to be discovered.

by GuardianEnzo

25,718 views

RecommendationSports