You have heard of “monster of the week”, now get ready for “bad parent of the week.”
What was that final episode, anyway?
Really, what was that?
Before talking about the anime in general, I just have to say that the final episode is one of the worst things I’ve ever watched.
Now, let’s begin.
...
Drama is something that has been walking side-by-side with the sport’s genre for a long time. It’s the most common element used to drive the characters’ motivations and fuel their development.
Anime such as Ashita no Joe, Touch, Ping Pong the Animation, and many other well-regarded sports anime all fit in this category, and what do they all have in common that Hoshiai doesn’t? The answer is that, at their core, they are still sports anime, and the sport has a reason to be there. It serves a purpose that couldn’t be fulfilled otherwise.
Hoshiai didn’t needed to be a sports anime. In fact, strip away every instance of sport this show has and replace it with something like a cultural club or something and the results are not very different.
Edit: news got out that the show was meant to be 25-episode long. While that does answer why many plot points were not resolved, it's unlikely this will ever get a second season, and even if it does, the points I made here remain the same for these 12 episodes. What is done is done and +13 episodes wouldn't take back what happened during this "first half."
The show has eight main characters. That is alarming enough given it wants to dramatize all of them in just 12 episode, while still holding into the soft tennis aspect, but it seems the show wasn’t satisfied with just that and decided to dramatize the side characters too.
It is as if the only way it knows how to make those characters fit into the story is to put them in some kind of predicament. However, it doesn’t even do that right because it’s more worried about setting up dramas so it can have a moment of tension during the episode, rather than solving those issues in a compelling way. It’s like a mystery show holding its mysteries’ resolution until the final episode, while introducing more and more mysteries as the story goes by for the sole purpose of holding the viewer’s attention, since it doesn’t know of any other way to do that.
I will give credit where credit’s due, though. The characters are well written enough to stand on their own initially; they have unique personalities and unique traits. However, none of that matters when the show only uses them to incite drama. They are like punching bags only waiting for the blow to give the audience some kind of conflict.
The term “forced drama” has never been more fitting. The show is desperate to make the viewer feel some kind of tension, but setting up soft tennis matches, creating interesting rivals or compelling and well-written conflict is too much work, so it relies on the cheapest tricks in the book to do so. And believe me, it goes beyond the “bad parent of the week” everyone talks about.
The conflict is generally the same. Almost all the kids have bad parents who do not approve of their behavior and want to dictate how their children should live. The show tries to pass a message about that, but fails miserably when every single drama feels so incredibly forced.
Unlike the main characters, the parents (which in a way are the “villains” of the show) are one-dimensional and stupid characters. Every word of dialogue that comes out of their mouth feels like it were generated by a computer that had a very basic idea of how these characters should be. They are purposely selfish without any given reason and end up being literal plot-devices meant to create drama. And when the show does the same thing for the 5th time (that is, introducing a bad parent), you just kind of don’t care anymore.
The only bad parent that could have been interesting is the main character’s father, which was completely forgotten after a certain event and never mentioned again. However, even he felt like a generic one-dimensional villain that you could find anywhere. He is bad because he has to be, and that’s it. It’s like that with EVERY bad character. This is beyond lazy writing, it’s offensive.
The drama itself is terribly handled. Some dramas take a whole episode while others take ¼ of one, with absolutely no set-up whatsoever. The characters are hardly affected by it and they only act as if it matters when it’s meant to create more conflict. Said conflict also doesn’t matter because most of the time it’s inconsequential. Episode 9 is probably the worst offender when it comes to this: Nao traps Shingo’s sister in a room for absolute no reason and everyone just laughs it off. It’s not brought up ever again and Nao is fine and dandy in the next episode.
Some dramas are also completely forgotten, like the matter with Yuuta’s mother or the family conflict of the student council president. Some are resolved in a very rushed and cheap way that makes you wonder why they even exist in the first place.
I can’t put into words just how desperate the show is to get some kind of reaction out of the audience.
And then, at the end of the anime, almost NOTHING that was brought up was resolved.
The show is also trying to pass a message about social matters, but it fails at that, too. It obviously tries too hard at it, taking me out of the experience. When a character talks about a delicate topic, it feels like they are reading a self-help book about it rather than giving their perspective as a teenager.
If that was not enough, it can’t even do soft tennis matches well. The opponents are mostly uninteresting. Coincidentally, the only interesting opponent got like that after he stopped being an opponent, showing just how one-dimensional the show is trying to make its villains look like. I feel like it’s doing it on purpose, honestly. The matches are very cheaply written too, following a formula of having the character adapting to the play-style of their opponent, but taking forever to realize obvious things, only dragging the match to pretend there is conflict.
On the technical aspect, the show started beautifully and declined to a depressing state. The animation gets so inconsistent it’s hard to ignore. Character models sometimes look off and there’s an intense reutilization of animation during the tennis matches. Enough to be noticeable.
To put it simply, it gets ugly. It’s a shame when the first episode had such a consistent production and fluid animation.
There’s a constant overutilization of songs, too. The opening theme is played constantly in key moments, making me desensitized to it when I should be feeling sad or happy. The theme with the piano is also overused during the matches, playing non-stop as if the show only has that one song. It’s not bad, it’s just tiring and lazy.
You might hear that Hoshiai no Sora “got bad” or “went downhill” after a couple of episodes, but I disagree. I honestly believe the show had problems right off the bat. It’s just that the culmination of drama with little to no resolution became more evident as the series went on.
Before I end the review, here are a few arguments I have read defending this show:
-In real life, not all problems are resolved, so it’s okay for the show not to solve everything
This is not real life, this is a work of fiction created by humans (although in this case a computer algorithm might as well have created it) and it’s meant to tell a cohesive story with a beginning, middle and end. This rule also applies to the subplots. There’s absolutely no reason to bring up a conflict if it’s not getting resolved or doesn’t play a role in the main story, and, as I said before, many things in Hoshiai are almost inconsequential, and even when they are consequential, it’s meant to force the plot to go in a certain direction, making it even more forced.
-This was never a show about sports, it’s primarily about drama
But it still has a sport. Putting it aside and rushing the games is still lazy.
-The character don’t appear affected by their family drama because they don’t want to show it
That is true to some extent, but it doesn’t excuse ignoring said dramas altogether, while having characters feel bad when it’s convenient.
Hoshiai no Sora is a show that has desperate desire to create conflict, alongside one of the cheapest and most dishonest writing I’ve seen, created one of the worst shows I’ve watched this year. It forgets the unnecessary plot points that the show itself had introduced, and rushes others. It tries to send a message, but it feels like it’s lecturing you about it. It fails at everything it attempts. There’s not a single redeeming quality besides the decent production of the first episode. There’s not a single thing to take out of this show, except maybe a good involuntary laugh.
Had it been a comfy slice of life soft tennis anime, maybe the end result would’ve been better.
Saying I didn't enjoy it would be an understatement though. This gave me good laughs.
Thanks for reading, and forgive my poor writing and bad English.
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Dec 26, 2019
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