Baby Steps 2nd Season

After having decided to play tennis at the professional level, Eiichirou Maruo now needs to convince his parents to support his decision. To do so, he makes a wager: if he cannot win the All-Japan Junior Tennis Tournament, he will give up on his dream. However, he will need to improve his skills quickly if he wants to qualify for the tournament and have any chance of defeating the best players in the country. For this reason, his new coach Ryuuhei Aoi suggests that Eiichirou travel abroad to train at the Florida Tennis Academy.

Baby Steps 2nd Season takes the action to America as Eiichirou begins his two-week training program, getting a taste of what tennis is like outside of Japan. With this exciting experience awaiting him, Eiichirou hopes that his training will get him closer to his goal of becoming a professional player.

[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

O'Brian, Marcia Supporting

Han, Megumi Japanese

Oobayashi, Ryou Supporting

Maeno, Tomoaki Japanese

Krishna, Rames Supporting

Hanae, Natsuki Japanese

Murata, Masahiko Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Takakuwa, Hajime Sound Director

Fukutomi, Hiroshi Episode Director, Storyboard

Hata, Yoshito Episode Director

Reviews

Feb 6, 2020

Flameling

Recommended

Paced quickly, nothing ever lingers or over stays its welcome. This season maximizes the set-up and progression of the main characters to it's fullest, putting them in situations where they bounce off nicely each other or where they can show growth that feels earned after season one. It's everything a second season should be.

But apart from how it relates to the first season, it's own achievements are worth mention. For a 25 episode show, characters never looked off model and animation remained smooth in most all moments. The season introduces many new characters, some that feel like are set up for a third season. ... The OST while more than just satisfactory isn't the most memorable part of the show. Most of the best auditory moments are from the sounds of running, the ball or the net, the show displays good sound design throughout the many matches in the show.

As a short note on the ending, without spoilers, it was a satisfying ending, one that felt very appropriate. The only detriment to it is the lack of a season three. Enough loose threads are left open that a season three would be much appreciated and only to the shows benefit, yet without it the show ended in a satisfying way that leaving it there isn't an issue.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Oct 20, 2017

Widdall

Recommended

Who knew tennis could be so riveting? The first season of Baby Steps was pretty good but I found season two even better. Ei-chan has a great character progression from a boring reserved teenager into a passionate tennis player and we really see the fruition of it in this season.

The side characters are also endearing and I found myself rooting for man. The tennis battles are fantastic and created tension in me I haven't felt since I last watched Kaiji and the almost every player Maruo faces is well developed and feels like a real character with their own goals. Perhaps the strongest aspect ... of Baby Steps is the relationship between the male and female leads. They actually care about each other, inpire and support each other and don't blueball viewers about the nature of their relationship for five hundred episodes.

Yes there are a couple of nitpicks like the life story monologues (often right in the middle of a match) and some awkward animation.These are very minor cosmetic flaws hiding in a very exciting, inspiring and endearing show. The final reminder here is that season two ends in the middle of the manga and there are currently no plans for a season three so you will have to read the manga to see what happens next.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Sep 13, 2023

GakutoDeathGlare

Mixed Feelings

As an avid tennis fan and player for almost twenty years now, I stayed away from tennis anime like the plague, for fear of anticipating constant cringe in an anime, from a sport that I know and love. Let's just get one thing out of the way, I REALLY like tennis and have been pretty obsessed with it in the past. I mean, absolutely balls deep into the game, following the professional tour every tournament, playing down at my local club 3-4 days a week (used to me more back in my School days), learning and studying the techniques, the grips used, the rules, the ... players, the history of the game, etc, the list could go on and on.

These days, I don't have as much time to keep up with the tennis world as intensely and rigorously, as I once had, and I have a couple of other interests that also share up that time, one of them being obviously, anime watching. I still go down to the courts when I can and while I don't watch nearly as many full length tennis matches of the pro tour, I still follow what's going on, who's winning, who's losing, who's injured, replays if I have time, highlights on YouTube if I don't, etc. Still, nothing compared to what I was doing a few years back.

I frequent a tennis forum and I got recommended this anime from another member, who knew I was into anime. Prince of Tennis was a no go for me, mostly due to the amount of episodes, but this show "only had 50" in comparison. He told me he enjoyed it himself and his analytical tennis brain is similar to mine, so I ended up taking him up on his recommendation.

So, what did I enjoy about this show? Well, the first thing is, and this goes even more so for the first season, was how much time and effort went into explaining the rules, strategies, game styles, the mindset, the overall physicality of it all, the training side of things, it was rather meticulous and detailed, you can obviously tell that the author is a fan of tennis or at least has people in his vicinity that know their stuff. A lot of accuracy in all this information we are spoon-fed. And it is spoon-fed, for better or for worse.

The second thing I enjoyed was the little romantic sub plot, it didn't feel forced, nor was it swept to the side, their chemistry was always there and it finally came to fruition in this 2nd season. It was handled well and it didn't become overbearing or affect the plot much at all.

The third thing were the characters, especially Maruo. All different personalities, builds and game plans, same end goal. To turn professional. Maruo has to be most analytical main character I have ever seen, not just in sports anime, but in anime overall. I loved the notebook thing (even if remembering and drawing patterns of play, point by point during a match, suspends my belief lol), it reminded me of myself who would take notes and do write ups of every pro match I used to watch, did hundreds and hundreds of them, so I could relate to the nerd inside him. I did like the idea of an MC like that, my favorite players are the smart tacticians, and most sports protagonists are generally gifted elsewhere, mainly physically.

Now, what I didn't enjoy. His rise to the top is ridiculous and clashes with the realism of the sport shown and the meticulous analytical side of things, to the point where it is a little too nonsensical for me, even as a sports shounen. No tennis player EVER has managed to do what Maruo does, no matter what other members here say, "some people develop at a much faster rate, yada yada", no. This goes well beyond that. Maruo's incredibly fast development and rise is a big "press X to doubt" moment throughout the series for me, though I kind of took all that at face value for the most part. You can be the most dedicated, diligent person on Earth, you're not improving at such a quick rate and competing against top 500 players in the world, which he was doing a couple of times during the show XD This could have all been prevented if the author just tweaked his backstory a little bit or something, he started young, quite tennis, but came back, for example. I don't think you would have lost much overall.

The second thing I thought was overdone, was the introspection side of things. The endless inner monologue, the dry exposition of the way a match was going, his thoughts and feelings about every single thing, no matter how big or little it was, all throughout his tennis matches. This is where my thing as a tennis fan comes into play, personally, this was torture at times, listening to him repeat things ad nauseum, information that I am already aware of. I could also see this being incredibly boring and off putting for a casual watcher, getting info dumped like this during a match or Maruo's.

The third thing I thought was subpar at best, was the visual direction of the tennis matches. The animation of the matches themselves were poor overall (whether it was in birds eye view or not), from the overall fluid movements of the strokes (the serve looked quite good for the most part) to the player positioning on the court, to the wide shots of the court and the frigid player and ball movement. It left a lot to be desired unfortunately. Still, ten times better than 1973's "Aim for the Ace", where everyone is falling over every damn point, so I suppose there's that XD

There were other minor nitpicking things, technique being completely wrong for the underhand serve, the complete lack of forced errors in matches, Maruo being very competent in almost all areas of the game, yet not enough screen time or practice on these certain elements to believe it, etc, small things in the grand scheme of things (well, maybe not that last one lol), but again, it's the tennis fan and player in me.

Overall, it was a pretty solid watch and around the same sort of level that the first season showed. Fairly abrupt ending, though obviously they were hoping for a 3rd season in the near future. Unfortunately, it's been about 8 years, one can still hope though, especially with all these anime being adapted with big gaps in time between seasons.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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