Sato Tatsuo Looks Back on Basquash: What was wrong with it?

by dtshyk
Aug 17, 2010 11:48 PM | 25 Comments

An interview article with Sato Tatsuo was distributed at Comiket 78. He talked about Basquash! project, which was widely publicized as Kawamori Shoji's new project but wrecked into confusion by the dismissal of the director Itagaki in the middle of the series.

He complained that the scenario he wrote was completely re-written in the storyboard. "I had put the hometown of Dan at the center of the story and described the moon just as a symbol because I didn't want to complicate the background." But in the anime, Dan went deeply into the mystery of the moon. "It's common that episode directors make minor changes in the lines and the characters, but it should not happen that they completely alter the composition of the scenario." In order to keep the consistency of the story, Sato had to come up with new lines during the voice recording.

He also pointed out the flaws in the concept of "Basquash" game. "We put too much emphasis on the feeling of speediness and neglected the reality as an athletic game. We didn't even fixed the rules of the game." Sato got stuck in the story-making, but the characters kept on taking their shapes.

"In the preliminary stage of the project, the characters were much matured. But they turned into naughty kids in the storyboard. Then, the three idols were brought up to the main to fill the empty story with romance."

He concluded "It had a potential to be a masterpiece. After all, Basquash had made a bridge to the anime in the next generation, I think. Please see what the people involved in Basquash will create next. It will be interesting, in various meanings."

Sources: Scan of the article, Scan2

20 of 25 Comments Recent Comments

garfield15 said:
Actually, I felt this could have been a really good anime. Not a masterpiece but at least something that in conversation is like "Oh yeah, this is good, but not like Basquash last season." Of course, somewhere it completely went to crap.

What a waste.

Yeah I agree with this. Don't think it would be masterpiece status but it be a much more relevant anime to bring up in discussions. It could at least been on somewhat near or on TTGL status if all that background studio drama didn't happen.

TTGL had a lot of nonsense but it ended up well, Basquash was the complete opposite and it was so obvious watching it where things were falling apart direction wise.

Jul 25, 2011 1:57 PM by Gen2K_

Yeah I enjoyed the first half of it but by the second half I stopped watching it. Now I'm on episode 25 and almost done and I'm forcing myself to finish. I didn't like the idols so much, they seemed forced into the story.

Also my mini rant here Miyuki was suppose to end up with Dan >:O In the beginning they introduced her to be a potential secondary main character, and then half way through she fell into the background while the cliched pink haired chick shows up out of no where and takes over. :( I wanted to see a cool lead black anime character and it's a shame cause she had an awesome character design. That's my main gripe with the series.

The series could have been 'Good' but not a master piece.

Jun 26, 2011 12:53 PM by Sakura02

HalRyder said:
I actually rather enjoyed Basquash, though it's foot and boob fetish got alittle annoying at times.

foot and boob fetish..... annoying?? what madness is this? lol cause sadly thats the only part of this series that was enjoyable

Aug 19, 2010 10:07 AM by KuroLion

The first half was pretty good but second half killed it.

Aug 18, 2010 4:24 PM by SoFarGone

dtshyk said:

"In the preliminary stage of the project, the characters were much matured. But they turned into naughty kids in the storyboard. Then, the three idols were brought up to the main to fill the empty story with romance."

Yeah. That was obvious. The romance felt so forced.

Basquash never had potential to be a masterpiece, however; what it did have, was potential to be a damn good anime. The first episode, in particular, created that impression. Unfortunately, as it went on... =(

Anyway, it really is too bad about the director. Things could've turned out differently, I'm sure.

Aug 18, 2010 4:22 PM by Mormegil

Kvakond said:

this.

And this.

Aug 18, 2010 2:59 PM by Siva

this.

Aug 18, 2010 2:14 PM by Kvakond

cyruz said:
He's fucking right it was messed up!

The scenario change shouldn't have happened, they ruined it. I enjoyed Basquash but it could've been so much more.

Fuck, Industry, stop messing with the authors gfkdghjkdshgsdnaghjmdahbnkjfbn!!

lol, I see the point. This guy has been raging on for a while. I enjoyed the show, I see what he means by it could've been better. Since the plot for the show became so over-ambitious that many questions were left unanswered.

Aug 18, 2010 1:58 PM by Tyranid5

He's fucking right it was messed up!

The scenario change shouldn't have happened, they ruined it. I enjoyed Basquash but it could've been so much more.

Fuck, Industry, stop messing with the authors gfkdghjkdshgsdnaghjmdahbnkjfbn!!

Aug 18, 2010 12:37 PM by cyruz

HalRyder said:
I actually rather enjoyed Basquash, though it's foot and boob fetish got alittle annoying at times.

Why the sudden talk about it though? It's been ages since its airing.

i couldn't agree more with u

Aug 18, 2010 10:02 AM by Mr_Gutts

Actually, I felt this could have been a really good anime. Not a masterpiece but at least something that in conversation is like "Oh yeah, this is good, but not like Basquash last season." Of course, somewhere it completely went to crap.

What a waste.

Aug 18, 2010 8:17 AM by garfield15

Its funny how describing anything that fail "has potential to be the greatest".

Aug 18, 2010 7:34 AM by pitman

I believe too that it had a potential to be really good anime. I enjoyed watching it. But something went wrong in the story, specially in the last episodes.

Aug 18, 2010 4:01 AM by Kokoro_chan

Was kinda sad how everything turned out when there was so much expectation built up when the project was first announced.

It wasn't too bad, but definitely it could have been much better.

Well, at least the concept was rather fresh. :P

Aug 18, 2010 2:58 AM by zvuc

TTGL style anime. You involve almost whole universe and in the end you get nothing. Like watching 26 episodes to get to the start of it.

Aug 18, 2010 1:58 AM by ksanders

I remember watching Basquash and dropping it soon afterwards, which is something I rarely do. Just shows how awesome his mecha basketball concept was, though maybe it could have turned out better if the storyboard wasn't supposedly fucked up.

Aug 18, 2010 1:41 AM by Master10K

i dropped this anime the animation consistently dropped after like 10 episodes i think thesame goes with Macross Frontier the animation drops horribly like 10 episodes up wtf is Satelight Studio doing with their anime lol

Aug 18, 2010 1:38 AM by deg

I really enjoyed this anime. But some of it like the ending was really bad like "did the sister ended up walking again" or did she just fall down. This anime should have gone just that one extra episode to explain it.

Aug 18, 2010 1:15 AM by serg231

Well, I liked Basquash(for only basketball, that's all). But yeah, it had a potential to be really good anime.

Aug 18, 2010 1:09 AM by TadloS

dtshyk said:

He concluded "It had a potential to be a masterpiece. After all, Basquash had made a bridge to the anime in the next generation, I think. Please see what the people involved in Basquash will create next. It will be interesting, in various meanings."

Sources: Scan of the article, Scan2

I wonder what emoticon this statement warrants.

Aug 18, 2010 12:40 AM by JusticeGundam

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