Ao no Hako

Blue Box is like if someone threw a love story into a sports anime blender and forgot to hit “mix.” Our hero, Taiki, crushes on Chinatsu, the basketball queen with all the personality of a wet sock. Their romance is the slowest slow-burn ever, fueled by half-smiles and awkward silences that drag on longer than a high school lecture.

Sports? Sort of. Romance? Barely. The real MVP here is the gym bag, which gets more screen time than actual basketball. This anime is perfect for anyone who thinks love confessions and emotional breakthroughs are best delivered through endless shots of… badminton rackets.

I initially was convinced to watch this by my younger sister, and she told me this series had beautiful animation. "Ao no Hako" is one of the most gorgeous looking shows to come out all year, with beautiful animation. I really like looking at it. However I do not like watching it.I feel like this show offers me very little not done better in "Touch" and "Mix: Meisei Story" both by Mitsuru Adachi. The balance of romance, slice of life and school was all done better in both of those series, and the writing was a lot better and less generic. I know unfair seeing ... that this series is almost certainly inspired by "Touch" or a series inspired by "Touch", but aside from the beautiful animation I can't see a reason to watch a series that does most of the same things but worse. I appreciate some interesting things, like showing sports less commonly represented in Japan, and a decently executed romance. "Ao no Hako" benefits from great presentation, but that can't salvage this story using a watered down version of a formula Adachi already perfected when he was mixing sports and romance together years earlier making one of the biggest anime/manga of all time. Unless "Ao no Hako" makes a left field decision out of nowhere to make it more interesting, I can't see it getting anything more than 3/10 stars from me, 2 of those stars being for presentation.

If you ask a AI "please make a romcom anime with sports setting", don't be surprised if the result is Blue Box. If you are a sports anime fan, forget about it, because it's almost non-existent here. Instead, we got a generic romantic comedy, that just follow the genre most popular tropes instead of doing something barely inspired or original. I am not joking, because I already predicted the plot of the first few episodes by just taking a look at episode 1. That is how cliche it is.

About the positive sides, Blue Box at least has a great animation, but it doesn't matter, because ... you can give a poop a top-tier animation and by the end of the day, it will still be poop. That is what Blue Box is, a great animation with no substance at all.