My view on just what sort of series Hoshiai no Sora is has definitely evolved more than once over the course of the first 11 episodes.  That sort of thing tends to be more common in shows that amount to personal statements, and that’s definitely what Hoshiai is.  This is Akane Kazuki’s baby, and that complicates things even further because he’s always been a writer who’s inclined to buck traditional narrative rules.  He does what he wants, when he wants, and the final product is only apparent when the credits roll for the last time.

When you think about it, this started out looking like a traditional sports anime (even if Akane veterans never bought into that).  Then it became a serious family drama about the protagonist, before morphing into a true ensemble multi-thread affair.  It seemed to have settled into a sort of survey course in dysfunctional family dynamics, and indeed I think Akane disregarded traditional storytelling in service to the statement he was trying to make with the series.  The idea that boys cut when you bleed them every bit as much as girls do, and are broadly misjudged by society as a whole, was clearly something he very much wanted to convey.

But now I think that even in light of that statement, the dysfunction wasn’t the point (or at least not the sole point) Akane was trying to make.  I spoke a couple of weeks ago about the remarkable ability kids have to compartmentalize their lives – to create a bubble of normalcy even in crisis situations.  The important thing here isn’t the abusive parents of all stripes, it’s the ability of the boys (and girl) to absorb the abuse and survive as functional adolescent humans.  And the titular alignment isn’t a bunch of kids with painful family lives being thrust together – it’s the kids being able to support each and tell the rest of the world to piss off.

Well, that’s a pretty life-affirming and much-needed message.  And indeed the past two episodes have focused on the boys playing a game, so in a sense Hoshiai no Sora turned out to be a sports anime after all.  Nao, Taiyou, Rintarou and Itsuki have grown enough to be able to see their defeat as a positive and root on their teammates.  They certainly still have their external pressures – Nao’s mother is as obsessive and unhinged as ever, and Rintarou’s birth mother has apparently invited herself to watch his match.  Those are stresses that aren’t going anyway, but at least they’re not going to have to face them alone.

As for Maki and Touma, they represent the last, best hope for Shijo Minami to survive as a club.  And while there’s tension between them, it’s all coming from Touma.  And he wants to win even if Maki getting most of the credit rankles him.  In the end it’s not Makai he has a problem with anyway, and he knows that.  Their opponents are Joy and his unnamed (I think) partner, and a 178cm middle schooler certainly is a formidable foe.  But the bigger they are the harder they fall, and for a strategic mind like Maki a one-dimensional player and pair like Joy and Hatanooka are a relatively easy lock to pick.  Cut serves, lobs, and playing on the limitations of the front man – it’s pretty quick work, really.

There’s not a whole lot of drama to this, really, but again this is Akane taking the non-traditional route with Hoshiai.  Shijo Minami winning their first match is a big deal, but Maki never expected anything else, and he performs like it.  He has a way of grabbing onto Touma by using his will like a tractor beam that Touma is helpless to resist.  Certain athletes just have “it”, and Maki is one of them.  And Touma, to his credit, is competitor enough to let the momentum pull him along.  And indeed that’s what it does, through two more pretty routine wins after taking out Joy-boy and his partner.

Things change now, of course, since the inevitable quarter-final opponent is the Itsue Brothers, the reigning national champions.  Not even Okinawa soba is enough to convince Oji that he can or should help against them.  Again though, I expect Akane to go untraditional and have Maki and Touma lose that match, which if we’re honest is perfectly fine – they’ve saved the club and more than proved their point, and they’re only second-years.  Maki doesn’t seem like the type to settle for anything less than the highest level when he sets his mind to something, and he’ll use a loss to the twins as a metric to show himself what he has to do to reach their level.

Of course, whatever interpretation you make, Akane has still left a lot of plot threads dangling for the finale and it’s going to be interesting to see how many he even attempts to tie up.  There’s also the new wrinkle with Touma and Ryouma’s mother, and I don’t quite know what to make of that conversation there at the end.  Is this connected to Rintarou somehow. or was Ryouma referring to Touma and Maki when he said “my little brothers”?  Touma’s situation is unique among the boys in that never mind resolved, it hasn’t even really been explained yet.  That, at a minimum, seems certain to change in the finale.