In a sense, this is a rather simple series review to write.  But as tends to annoyingly be the case when it comes to these sorts of things, paradox rears its ugly head – it’s quite a difficult piece too.  I can sum up what I liked about Tsurune: Kazemai Koukou Kyuudoubu very easily, in very few words.  But there’s more to the series than that, both good and bad, and nothing exists independently of everything else.  When the elements of your reaction to a series are discordant, that makes summarizing them a bit of a puzzle.

Fundamentally, for all the lovely Kyoto Animation visuals and music, there was one thing that kept me coming back for 13 weeks, and that was the relationship between Minato-kun and Masa-san.  Even if an anime is mediocre – and if I’m honest, Tsurune was fairly mediocre in some ways – if offers something exceptional, that makes it notable.  And this was an exceptional mentor relationship.  There was something very pure and even beautiful about it, and the fact that we pretty rarely see male mentor relationships in anime these days makes it that much more special.

For that reason, I was very glad the series chose to close with those two in the epilogue – it was the best two minutes of the episode – even if I was a bit indifferent to some of what built up to it.  And that’s pretty much the story of this show for me, which I never really stopped being of two minds about.  None of it was bad or insultingly dumb or anything – that would have been a deal-breaker even accounting for the good stuff.  Tsurune’s heart was always in the right place, but a lot of what went on between the kids was pretty ordinary by comparison to what was happening when Minato was interacting with the adults.

As I feared, Kazemai did end up winning the tournament.  I can’t be totally annoyed with that, because Minato is such a good kid that I can’t help but feel happy for him to be the one that made the winning shot.  And the messages about relying on others and all that, well, they’re fine.  But again – that’s mass-produced material, for the most part.  This was all a little too pat, a little too perfect – the Kaze quintet all of a sudden catching fire and almost never missing, one of the cocky twins losing his mojo and costing his team the match (and by the way, as awful as they were spare a thought for him, because he really played the goat here and may even now have target panic), Masa-san showing up just in time to catch the final act.

No, apart from Minato’s personal struggle – which I felt he overcame just a bit too easily there in the end – the adults in Tsurune were way more interesting than the kids.  Even Tommy-sensei’s reflection that he still regretted forcing Minato to shoot at the club’s intro meeting, and that he could never stop thinking about how to be a better guide for the kids, was really insightful and unexpected.  I think there were two potential stories this show could have focused on and potentially been great – the nature of teaching and nurturing, and the nature of grief (especially Minato’s).  We almost never see that show (either of them), but the show that Tsurune mostly was we see all the time.  Whenever it veered off its school life rails and pursued those other themes, it showed what it was capable of.  I just wish it had happened more often.

Still, I got my ending (though there is a special 14th episode to come with the Blu-ray release) so all I can say is, thank goodness for that epilogue (as soon as the credits started I checked the progress bar, hoping to see what I did – 4 minutes or so left).  “That was rather poetic” – indeed Masa-san, it was.  What a wonderful thing it is to be able to help someone, to guide them through the worst of their pain using the lessons of your own as a map.  As I said, there’s something really pure about this bond, something noble – yes, even poetic.  Two good people, both trying to figure it out, both hurting inside but a little less because the other is around.  Thematically speaking you don’t get a whole lot purer than that.

It’s kind of a shame that Tsurune has been probably the least hyped KyoAni show ever, but for my part it’s no coincidence that it’s also one of my favorite of their recent works.  That’s a recurring trend with me and studios I tend to struggle with, and it’s the very qualities Tsurune brings – honesty, restraint, dignity – that both sunk it commercially and made it stand out in the 2010’s KyoAni catalogue.  Like all of the studio’s works it was often beautiful visually, but it delivered a different sort of beauty too, one I rarely see in Kyoto Animation’s more over-produced and calculated offerings.  For all its flaws I’m very glad I came back to Tsurune in the end – what it did well it did exceptionally, and the statement it makes is ultimately a positive and uplifting one.