Hanebado! Episode 11 Discussion

DirectorK said:

Pfft! Are you serious? You really think that's what the Rocky movies are all about? Nothing but "enjoyable" entertainment to appeal to mass audiences who just want to be entertained? Clearly you don't aynthing about the Rocky movies.

This anime may not be perfect but it does have it's deeper meanings and it does have flawed yet very human characters. It's there, you just didn't take the time to look into it.

DirectorK said:
To her, she sincerely believed that she was doing Ayano a favor by leaving her on her own, completely unaware that she was actually hurting her.

Now with this episode ending with Elena asking Uchika about Ayano, we might get some revelation on Uchika's own past. Like how she got pregnant, how she dealt with it, and what led her to leave Ayano behind. It likely won't excuse her actions but at least we'll have a better understanding of her character.

nDroae said:
Yeah, with sports anime in general one comes to expect that seemingly despicable opponents will get a revelatory sympathetic backstory at some point. That's why I generally prefer that the initial negative portrait not go to too much of an extreme. I know that many people are enjoying Hanebado as it is, which is fine, I have no problem with that - I still want to see more "serious" women's sports anime in general. But personally, I would have been more engaged if, say, Ayano was initially driven into this terminator mode at a young age by her mom, was initially offered friendship by Kaoruko, and rejected her, creating the negativity herself. I would have preferred if Connie initially approached Ayano in a *genuine* friendly way, wanting to be a family, and was rejected, simply because that's the realistic reaction you'd expect when a teenager suddenly meets the girl her own mother replaced her with. That would have been more interesting than being the nice girl everyone hates.

Emdykay said:
I am not exactly a fan of sports shows because I usally can´t gain acess to the character drama or flat out not take it seriously, so Hanebado throwing any pretense of seriousness or believabilty out of the window from the get go actually made this much more accessible and enjoyable. And also the mood whiplash and tonal shifts don´t hit me that hard, altough it could definetly cut down on the cheap fanservice.
And yes I do hope the show won´t start trying to be reasonable anytime soon :D

nDroae said:
I can suspend disbelief and accept that real people might act the way the characters do, but I can't accept the show's framing of them. The show asked and expected me to sympathize with Kaoruko and Connie, but I didn't. You could reasonably expect I would, since I really like cute anime girls, but no. Meanwhile I'm watching Hajime no Ippo, where every seemingly unpitiable opponent gets a sympathetic backstory, and it works every time. If Hanebado works for you, great, but I don't think you were justified to place blame on others when it didn't work for them.

Uchika could have worked for me similarly if her mistakes had not been so extreme. There is a lot of territory between mistakes minor enough to be excusable, and the incredible extreme the mangaka opted for. I would have liked to see the story find balance somewhere in that territory. The "failed" main character's harsh mother and older sister in Girls und Panzer are in that territory, and the arc of their relationships to her is my favorite part of the story.

DirectorK said:
I appreciate that [Connie] tried to make up for her mistake instead of just making things worse.

PeripheralVisionary said:
I am unsure what those [serious drama] elements would bring to the sports genre, in any case. Seems [more] akin to surviving adolescent hardships with sports being in the foreground, than the greatness of sports themselves. Teamwork, camaraderie, perseverance. With how these elements are depicted, the sport itself seems trivial in comparison, due to being largely symptomatic of the actual issues here. Badminton in Hanebado isn't a cathartic measure nor a motivation or method tool to improve in all areas of one's life. It is the issue itself, or at least apart of it. Many sports anime present issues centered around sports such as acceptance of loss and perseverance, but these are more trials for the growing adult than pressing issues no one should have to deal with. Many of the best sports animes are the former, with Hanebado approaching the uncomfortable latter, but without the finesse or intent of March Comes In Like A Lion.

inisipis said:
I wonder... how come no one is wondering where's Ayano's father.

DirectorK said:

Oh, come on. Do you really think Ayano would have just simply accepted Connie's apology given the state she's in? Hell, no! Right now Ayano is bent on revenge and Connie is her final target. Any apology Connie would have given Ayano would take as an insult, which definitely would have made things worse. Connie knew this and that's why she tried to do something different instead of apologizing.

nDroae said:
I would have preferred if Connie initially approached Ayano in a *genuine* friendly way, wanting to be a family, and was rejected, simply because that's the realistic reaction you'd expect when a teenager suddenly meets the girl her own mother replaced her with.

DirectorK said:
As for Uchika, yes I would give her the benefit of the doubt because we still need to hear her side of the story before deciding on what she really is. I don't disagree that leaving her child behind was stupid but again, she's sees herself as a coach, not as a mother. This obsession of hers with badminton has caused a lot of damaged to those around her and it's something she needs to come to terms with it. Hopefully Elena manages to wake her up in their conversation because at this point Ayano is on the brink of insanity and the one who can save her now is her mother.

nDroae said:
No.

Obviously Connie sent Ayano way out of reach, but Connie acting like she didn't just ruin everything was absolutely more stupid and pointless than apologizing.

Leaving without a word after a loss would have been bad even if she had been only Ayano's coach.

The tragedy on Ayano's side of this show sums up to "Wow, look how much these characters are suffering and hurting each other from being written to be so amazingly stupid."

DirectorK said:

You just answered the problem with one key word: teenagers. These are teenagers we're talking about here. At that age you're bound to make more mistakes than you would as an adult. And again, Connie didn't know about Ayano's condition until she actually met her. Even if she did approach Ayano in a nice genuine matter as you suggested the result would more or less be the same, especially given that Ayano already knew about her mother's other student.

DirectorK said:

This is what's called being human my friend. It's not that they're being stupidly written, the problem is is that you're not looking at it from their own perspectives but instead are just focusing on your own and making conclusions that in the end may not even be true.

nDroae said:

And it would have made better television.

I think they could been more clear on this, but my read on it is that the only thing Connie knows she has in common with Ayano is playing badminton. She is super-competitive with badminton, Uchika is super-competitive with badminton, and so Connie assumes Ayano will be the same. She WANTS to bridge the gap between them, but does not have the social skills or wherewithal to do so in a normal manner. This is the same reason she shows up and immediately challenges her in the 9th episode, even though the entire point of the excursion was to confess that she wants them to be a family. Thus her later line about knowing they can only communicate with badminton.

The reason she's hostile to Ayano's opinions on being part of a team I think comes from insecurity. She wants to be a family with her, yet Ayano has seemingly created this pseudo-family of her teammates in the meantime. They become a threat to Connie (in her mind), and it makes her hostile toward Ayano's team and just the idea of team itself.

Shiwahime and the other FreGirls have apparently overturned this impression in Connie's mind in the interim, which is why in the second meeting Connie no longer has anything antagonistic to say about friendships or teammates. I think this is supported by her emotional display at the end of the 9th episode and her thoughts about introducing the FreGirls to Uchika and Ayano one day.

Either way, we should not expect characters who are dealing with past trauma or the fallout from other mental health issues to act in a way that 'make sense' to us in the audience. Even people with the exact same mental health problems do not necessarily understand each other or why they think/act as they do (at least before being trained/educated). I feel like abandonment issues match up with some of the unexpected behavior from both girls. There may be more as well (Ayano's fluid thoughts toward relationships remind me of BPD for example), but since they have the same mother it makes sense to me that they would both react to the same root cause.

It sounds like you think the flawed characters in the other shows I praised are less human, less realistic than these ones, because apparently I have a problem with realistic human characters.

BatWeeb said:


Uh, you know badminton is not purely a solo sport, right? There's also doubles. Just because Ayano plays solo right now doesn't mean she has to be an asshole with everyone else. She's part of a club and a certain level of respect towards her seniors and other club mates is needed.



My feelings exactly.

nDroae said:
Meanwhile I'm watching Hajime no Ippo, where every seemingly unpitiable opponent gets a sympathetic backstory, and it works every time.

DirectorK said:
If you want characters to be super nice to each other(...)

SoraSenpai said:


See...I kinda disagree with the respect thing. It's an interesting subject since they are apart of the same club, but these two are not really friends, they're acquaintances pitted against each other. Like if the disrespect Ayano is delivering has an affect on the outlook of the school itself then yeah. But really what she is doing is somewhat natural.

nDroae said:

"I'm going to beat you and prove my worth to Mama."

Apparently "lack of social skills" can result in calmly and deliberately undermining one's own objective.

I know you read this:

But then you say this:

DirectorK said:

And that's exactly my point.

DirectorK said:

And your point is?

nDroae said:

The YouTuber said she wanted to use badminton to bring Ayano into the family, not to "prove my [superiority over you] to Mama." Connie defeating her competitors didn't make them want to be friends with her. It's not believable that she'd expect Ayano to want to be family via being defeated.

DirectorK said:

And your point is?

That you should have known your straw man of me, that I "want characters to be super nice to each other," was unfair and unjustified. I also said in an earlier reply that I wished Ayano had been less nice to Kaoruko and (if offered the chance) Connie, to avoid the chain of "Well... yeah, and...?" that her side of the show turned into.

DirectorK said:
However, I disagree about Ayano being less nice. Wanting to beat your opponents for the pain they caused you is one thing but taking revenge is another. To quote from the movie The Forbidden Kingdom "Vengeance has a way of rebounding one's self". I understand Ayano's anger, but if she keeps this up it's eventually going to come back to haunt her.

nDroae said:

DirectorK speculates: https://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1740572&show=0#msg55743971

SoraSenpai said:
BY THE WAY
You can hate Ayano all you want but there's no arguing she makes the best faces in this anime.

SoraSenpai said:
FINALLY Elena understands that she is at fault for bringing Ayano back into badminton.

Ayano's character just becomes more likable in my eyes. yeah she's mean but again in a Solo sport all that buddy buddy crap is meaningless.

I HATE Uchika so much. Is she just clueless as to why her daughter won't even talk to her?!?!

inisipis said:

I've read the manga. I know what her father is. I was more wondering if they'll even feature him in the anime scenario, but since the series is about to end, probably not.

BatWeeb said:


That still doesn't excuse her shitty attitude towards everyone else. For an anime that gets praised for its "realism" with the characters they fail to deliver actual realism. In a real world scenario she would've already got bitch slapped by someone or even thrown out of the club.

I understand Ayano's situation, she had a shitty life because of her shitty mother and no one was there to help her, but taking it out on others is never justified and in a truely realistic scenario it would only come to bite her in the ass.

Short_Circut said:
SHE LEFT HER YOUNG DAUGHTER JUST SO SHE COULD GET BETTER AT BADMINTON hahahahahaha kill me now

DirectorK said:
The thing you need to understand about Uchika is that she's a badminton fanatic. To her, badminton comes first and everything else is second. And that includes Ayano and Connie. If you look back at their previous conversations through flashbacks in previous episodes, she always talking about badminton and not about them. She loves badminton so much she's oblivious to everything around her.

DedPanda said:
So Uchika's reasoning for leaving her daughter was complete and utter trash. Not only was the reasoning awful but the set up for it was a waste of time. Like the anime was hyping up this fatal showdown between mother and daughter and...we get nothing. We don't get an explosive moment where Ayano could have just unleashed everything she had pent up in her chest at her mother or even some weird "show me through action" thing where Ayano and Uchika play each other to communicate that way. It was pathetic.

DedPanda said:
Hanebado, in the manga, is more cheerful, slice of life, comedy with sports involved but has troubles trying to sell a serious plot as the sports/competition vibe plays on. So the issues that the original source has is only magnified in the anime but with a different approach. Though I just want to see how it ends, safe to say that this series is one hell of a mistake in my opinion.

BatWeeb said:
That still doesn't excuse her shitty attitude towards everyone else. For an anime that gets praised for its "realism" with the characters they fail to deliver actual realism. In a real world scenario she would've already got bitch slapped by someone or even thrown out of the club.

I understand Ayano's situation, she had a shitty life because of her shitty mother and no one was there to help her, but taking it out on others is never justified and in a truely realistic scenario it would only come to bite her in the ass.

nDroae said:
I can suspend disbelief and accept that real people might act the way the characters do, but I can't accept the show's framing of them. The show asked and expected me to sympathize with Kaoruko and Connie, but I didn't. You could reasonably expect I would, since I really like cute anime girls, but no. Meanwhile I'm watching Hajime no Ippo, where every seemingly unpitiable opponent gets a sympathetic backstory, and it works every time. If Hanebado works for you, great, but I don't think you were justified to place blame on others when it didn't work for them.