Let’s start at the beginning. Bakuten!! was quite good – a very well-made premiere. That’s not surprising when you consider it has a very experienced and capable director-writer team in Kuroyanagi Toshimasa and Nemoto Toshizou. It’s interesting to see NoitaminA going back to the sports well so often in recent years, though I must say the results haven’t impressed me hugely most of the time. That’s not surprising either, given how commercially powerful sports anime of a certain variety have been in recent years.
Therein lies the source of most of my hesitancy in embracing Bakuten!!, for all the good things it does in the first episode. It’s very clear what series this one is trying to piggyback on, right down to the two exclamation points. That’s all well and good, but most shows can’t do what Haikyuu!! does. Sometimes it’s because they’re not as well-written, sometimes because their episode count is too low, sometimes because they don’t have the budget for Haikyuu’s superb production values. Generally it’s some combination of all three.
We know the episode count – only 12 episodes – and as the experience of a series like 2.43 shows us, even with originals you can’t try to use Haikyuu-like narrative strategy in one cour. We know that for one episode at least, Bakuten delivers very handsomely in terms of the production. Sure a lot of the gymnastics scenes are CGI, but it’s really good CGI, quite fluid and superbly choreographed. I’m skeptical that level can be maintained, but we only have the premiere to go on and while it’s not Haikyuu, it looks damn good. As to the writing, only time will tell on that but so far, it’s pretty good.
There’s one other area that concerns me, and that’s the fact that the casting is extremely on the nose. Even Tsuchiya Shimba as protagonist Shoutarou – although he’s not a huge name his big roles have both been as mild-mannered boys entranced by non-conventionally masculine sports. He’s fine, but the usual suspects cast list of 40 year-old teenagers on the rest of the team is a whiff for me – it’s all so cliche you’ve even got Sakurai Takahiro as the coach (yes, half of the sextuplets are here). And Ishikawa Kaito as the dour, super-talented foil for the lead – how much more blatant can you get than that? It’s not that these aren’t good actors (though I tend to dislike Kamiya Hiroshi in these kinds of roles) but these choices feel very lazy and obvious to me.
I don’t really care about rhythmic gymnastics (OK, I admit it, I always thought it looked kinda dumb), but I didn’t much care about karuta or rakugo or koto once upon a time either – that’s fine. That part is all in the presentation, and so far that’s good. Stories like these are all about the joy of being a kid obsessed with something, and Bakuten does a good job portraying Shoutarou transforming when he discovers this weird new sport by accident. A bench-warmer as a baseball player, soccerist, and (presumably) an also-ran as a swimmer, Shoutarou has decided he wants to actually be good at something, and that rhythmic gymnastics is that something. Good for him, and it comes off nicely here.
I don’t know where we are with any of the supporting characters yet, as they’re all pretty much archetypes at this point, but Shoutarou is a likably earnest lead. I definitely appreciated that we didn’t get a bushel of clumsy explanation despite the fact that most viewers probably don’t know much about this sport – just a bit about the penalties for having less than six team members, which was handled in an impressively natural manner. There’s potential in Bakuten!! to be sure, but danger as well. I think it will rise or fall on its ability to move beyond the derivative and offers some sort of new perspective on what at this point is a very well-worn premise.
Snowball
April 10, 2021 at 4:20 amI’m no expert in rhythmic gymnastics, but doesn’t this require the participants to use props?
I thought this premiere was pretty engaging and the CGI sequence did look good, but I do worry whether the show could hold up the quality. It treated the idea of having males partake in a conventionally female sport respectfully.
Riv
April 10, 2021 at 5:01 amA sport I’m totally unfamiliar with, but watching this first ep inspired me to go watch some videos of actual men’s RG teams. I quite like the routines, especially when the team is really in sync. I’m also impressed by the relatively long length of the performances.
As for the show itself, I liked the premiere but it will all depend on how it develops. I feel like with a really excellent sports anime, you not only have a lot of excitement in the actual competition but also strong characters and character development. A show can also be decent if they hit one of those marks. Either really good characters and an interesting plot that is somewhat less invested in the competition aspect. Or less compelling characters but the competitions are so exciting you’re still into it. But if they can’t hit one of those, then it’s over. Last season, 2.43 didn’t hit either of them for me, and I dropped it. So I hope this one does better and ideally presents strong characters and also a competition arc that is really exciting.
Oh, one other thing I liked was that Shoutarou’s parents were (a) present and (b) seemed like reasonable adults who were actually involved in their kids’ lives. I don’t expect they’ll play a large role in the series, but at least they were there.
Princess Usagi
April 10, 2021 at 5:28 amI also noticed the Haikyuu!! similarities with Shoutarou as the Hinata-ish sunny boy and Ryouya as the Kageyama-ish curmudgeonly boy. I am a bit hesitant about the series because the premise reminds me a little of the “Skate-Leading Stars” anime (which I lost interest in and dropped after a few episodes), with the all-male sparkly performance/sports ensemble. I don’t mind the sparkly all male-ensemble aspect, I just like there to be more depth than “watch us do tricks with a little superficial drama”. On the positive side, the animation was absolutely mesmerizing in the delicate, gradual movements of the characters’ expressions and movements-that alone had me glued to the screen the whole time.
Guardian Enzo
April 10, 2021 at 9:31 amHinata was here too, if you were listening closely!
Yukie
April 10, 2021 at 8:37 pmThe similarities are quite on the nose, even down to the bird motif…but what kind of bird is it? I didn’t watch 2.43 and was honestly going to skip this one as well (another sports series filled with a cast of boys with hair of every color of the rainbow) if it wasn’t for your review of the premiere. I also thought this series was about a made-up sport like skate-leading but turns out male rhythmic gymnastics is a real thing (color me ignorant and sexist). It was better animated than I expected, and I quite enjoyed the small details like Shoutaro fumbling with his necktie and the family scenes (they really have a Noitamina-feel to them).
Completely agree with you on the side characters (so far so very bland). Still, that’s another series that I’ve tried this season thanks to your blog (the other two being Shakunetsu Kabbadi and Mars Red), and it gives me hope that I’ll have more to watch than just BnHA and Kingdom for the next few months.
Guardian Enzo
April 10, 2021 at 10:14 pmI’m no fan of rhythmic gymnastics but I’m been surprised to hear how many people seem not to even have known that male rhythmic gymnastics is even a real sport. That’s obscurity for you.
Haru
September 6, 2021 at 11:02 amoop really late reply, but I think it’s an asian azure-winged magpie (Cyanopica cyanus).
Kim
April 10, 2021 at 11:12 pmSomething about 2:43 turned me off. But this feels entirely earnest in a way I liked in its first episode. It certainly shares tropes with Haikyuu but the main character isn’t exactly like Hinata & Kageyama (at least not yet) that it’s not exactly the same either
The 12 episode count is the biggest worry for me but hopefully they can turn in something competent that feels complete in that episode count.