Reviews

Story: Pretty standard story. Nothing was standout great, but nothing was terrible enough to make me drop it either. It is definitely less hand-holdy than Haikyuu - if you don't know anything about baseball it's harder to follow since there's no expository dialogue about the sport itself. The last match was the only one that spanned longer than one episode, but actually the flow of that match was done well and was entertaining. The pacing of the story was good.

Art: Art is a letdown. At it's best, it's just standard anime art, but a lot of the time proportions are weird and after episode 3 the quality control goes down too. Especially episode 4 has a sudden decline in art quality. After that, it's touch and go.

Characters: Okay characters. There's not much character exploration, but I can at least say one thing about every girl on the team. The most character development is from a secondary character Nozomi, and the biggest range of emotions is from another secondary character Yoshino. They develop a nice friendship by the end, which was character-wise my favorite point. (But Yoshino also tends to be annoying, especially at the start). The main character Yomi also shows a good growth in skill, so that was good to see.

Sound: Voice acting is okay but the characters don't really undergo big emotional moments that would let the voice actors to really show off skills. In terms of the voice, the emotions conveyed are limited by the story and the characters. The opening and ending theme songs aren't to my liking, and I don't recall hearing any theme songs either (if there were theme songs, then they were completely forgettable)

All in all, this is a foundation that they can improve and build a franchise on, but as it's own thing, the anime is just mediocre.