In a nutshell, if you want to learn about the sport and it's technicalities, this is not the right anime for you. However, if you want to pass some leisure time, like sports in general and are a office worker, then I would suggest to try it out for the sake of it.
Overall, it's a one-time watch anime, so I would probably not think about this anime again in future. Which also means that the impact of this anime is not that huge.
Art- The art style was average for me. The strangest part for me was that they failed to make the lead team members distinct in their physical characteristics. Quite a few characters have the same hairstyle, same facial features with a slight difference in hair tones. Honestly, in initial episodes, you might feel confused about which character is which if you are not paying enough attention. But you can tell, that the production team tried (in vain) to make as many characters pretty and flashy as possible.
Story & characters- Overall, they did attempt to bring the story and plot together. However, when you mix two major professions, sports and office worker in an anime, it's important to keep the right balance of each aspect. One would think, how a salesperson who has one of the most tedious job that impacts your physical stamina would keep up in a continued basketball practice, especially when you are ageing. Well the anime does show the age aspect in certain characters. However, except a few of the main characters with just a slight glimpse in their past, the character development is extremely subtle, if any at all. The past is what makes a person into a sport that they could care about. For that, you will need to show the viewers enough to understand each character's personality and why they play the sport. It's crazy how one of the ML almost does not even get their past featured enough. This flaw in itself makes you fail to connect to the characters as you should be able to. The story itself is pretty rushed. Has quite a few obvious loopholes (that no one bothered to do anything about). Personally, it felt that enough thought or efforts was not put into the sport itself as it should deserve. We know barely anything about the rivals in the matches except for their relationship with the MLs and yet they failed to justify that relationship enough. [Personally, this fact itself made it a little frustrating and didn't grab my attention in any of the matches except the final game]. The series DOES NOT do justice to Badminton, DOES NOT show the intricacies of the sport and neither does it show enough of the matches that lead to the ultimate game. It's almost before you know it that the team reaches their last game.
Music- Decent overall, but not particularly catchy.
The whole anime overall just felt extremely rushed and half-assed efforts at presenting the sport and story. There might have been a budget issue, I don't know. But I can tell this much, the anime had potential if done right.
Hence, I was simply glad the show ended without making me feel sorry that it did end. It failed to grab my attention and made me click next episode just to make it end. Nonetheless, the anime has it's comedic moments throughout, makes you like only 1-2 characters (for me Miyazumi), but it's not enough to make you last.
So I will suggest that you watch this if you have enough time to spare. Or else, please do go for all the other amazing sports animes out there if you wanna watch something worth your while.
