Oh look, another “read the manga” ending – stop me if you’ve heard this one before.  I’ve mused openly in the past about whether it’s even worth it, emotionally bonding with these one-and-done manga commercials.  There aren’t enough hours in the day to follow all of them, even if they do happen to be licensed (or at least scanlated) into English.  Wouldn’t it be easier if these shows never existed in the first place?  Probably – but then, I would be missing out on a lot of series that have genuinely connected with me during their brief existences.  It’s a real conundrum.

Sports anime especially are so ill-served by this one-cour curse, as the last couple of years have proved conclusively.  Considering that Shakunetsu Kabaddi has to use a practice match as its “climax” and that three team members basically never got onto the court, I think it did remarkably well for itself.  To the extent that one can become emotionally involved with a match which holds no real importance, this Kouyou tussle was almost riveting – especially the final few moments of it.

Yeah, this was good.  A very solid depiction of a hard-fought kabaddi match, complete with some tastefully done explanation (like the “lobbies”, basically doubles alleys in kabaddi), and some interesting turns of strategy.  Misumi finally got a moment in the sun, managing to stop Sakura on his final raid and give Tatsuya one last precious chance to steal the match.  But this was really all about Tatsuya, the indisputable heart and core of Burning Kabaddi and the reason it managed to be as good as it was.  Especially with Ojou off the court and unable to contribute.

Tatsuya is a really good sports anime protagonist to me, and I’ve seen a few of them.  He’s intensely talented, has self-doubt without being in denial of his own talent, and a relentless drive to be great.  He has self-awareness too, to a degree that only becomes apparent over the course of the series.  The prospect of watching him evolve into a kabaddi beast (which we’ll never get the chance to do, of course) is enticing.  His idiosyncrasies were trip wires in soccer, but in kabaddi he might have found the sport that best suits his mercurial personality.  Kabaddi, as they say, is an individual sport played on teams, and I think that suits Tatsuya to a “T”.

One thing this series had to do, of course, was make a game most of us outside of India had barely heard of an interesting canvas for a story.  And I think it was mission accomplished there, too.  I won’t say I’m going to be subscribing to the Kabaddi Channel (I suppose there probably is one) but this is an appealing weird and complicated sport.  I understand it well enough to follow a match now, and Shakunetsu Kabaddi got me there without resorting to clumsy infodumps which brought the narrative flow to a halt.  That wasn’t an easy challenge and it’s impressive that it was met as successfully as it was.

Meaningless practice match it was, I’m glad Noukin – and Tatsuya – got their win.  I feel like this was really important psychologically for them, in part because losing habitually can be a hard cycle to break out of, but also because Tatsuya is a somewhat fragile figure.  He needs to win, to taste that thrill – that motivation to taste it more and more is what will drive him forward.  It’d be a lot of fun to watch that play out, but because this is anime and 2021, we’ll just have to imagine it.  Oh well – it’s job well done for Shakunetsu Kabaddi anyway, and that in itself is something to be glad of.