There isn’s a whole lot to say about the first episode of Futsal Boys (all those exclamations are too much trouble to type over and over), to be honest.  It’s a series that broadly came in where I expected.  Modest visuals (though less CGI than I feared), lots of action, an unapologetic appeal to the Haikyuu audience.  It wasn’t bad, it wasn’t great – but it was sports, and one which hasn’t gotten much exposure in anime to boot, and that merits it at least a trial run.

This series is part of a multimedia project, one of the elements of which is going to be the seiyuu playing actual futsal matches against each other representing the schools of their characters.  OK, that’s interesting, and doable no doubt because the cast as far as I can tell is entirely comprised of newcomers.  Also interesting is a deeper dive into futsal, which is an important training ground for young soccer players and very popular in large swathes of the world.  Futsal is 5-on-5 rather than 11 vs. 11 and played on a court, and that obviously necessitates major changes in formation and position.

The plot of the premiere is pretty rote, with the usual angle of first-years beginning their high school careers and a practice match against ne’er do-wells (from an actual delinquent school,ROFL).  This is all pretty silly, as are some of the special moves almost on the Captain Tsubasa level.  But the futsal is interesting enough, especially when we get to full squads and the matter of positions (fixo, alas, pivot, goalkeeper) and formations comes under discussion.  The main school here is Koyo Academy, where one of the members is on the national U-18 futsal team, but one way or another the story is apparently going to cover a bunch of different schools.

Futsal Boys is no Haikyuu – it’s not even a Shakunetsu Kabaddi – but if you’re looking for a low-maintenance sports anime fix to kill 22 minutes it’s a decent option.  It’s always kind of fun hearing a bunch of newbie seiyuu and trying to figure out who has the chops to make it, and there’s not a familiar voice in the bunch so far.  And who knows, maybe once this rather forced opening storyline is out of the way the plot might get more interesting.  In the meantime, it’s strictly a diversion but there’s no shame in that.