I can pretty much say I’m on-board with Ryman’s Club at this point.  Slow and steady wins the race, they say, and there are sometimes series which come out of the gate quietly (and very late in this case) but overtake flashier offerings.  This show has the benefit of not being a mass-produced model where sports anime are concerned.  No high school, no soccer or baseball, no cute girls or soft BL overtones.  Just a sport we don’t see that much of in anime, in a setting we see even less of.

None of that would matter, of course, if Ryman’s Club wasn’t any good.  But it is rather good happily enough, at least so far.  The Sunshine boys are quite a winning cast of characters, with a very believable chemistry between themselves.  Dudes being dudes, pretty much – anime does go for that vibe sometimes, but usually with too much posturing to really be authentic.  Watching these guys interact has a very unforced quality about it, and having a bit of experience with corporate culture I recognize a lot of what I see here from my own experience.

I’m also pleased that the series isn’t skimping on the details.  Not even where the beverage side of the ledger is concerned, which I have to say is kind of surprising.  Mikoto may bitch and moan about it (like everything else) but this is these guys’ job – it’s important.  They’re not baseball stars or soccer heroes – they have to earn their keep in suits for the privilege of doing so in sneakers and shorts (at least at Sunshine).  And they take it pretty seriously too – apart from Mikoto, of course.

That doesn’t stop Mikoto from (surprisingly) having his new beverage idea graduated to proposal status.  I like green onions and ginger ale.  Together?  Woof.  But then it does sound better than Mikoto’s favorite, natto cola.  Mikoto of course knows bupkis about writing a proposal, so Tatsuru manages to convince the boss to let the boys join him on a brainstorming strip.  Sure, the motivation here is partly getting a paid night at an onsen hotel and a day away from the office.  But Tatsuru is doing Mikoto a favor here too – this is an education he sorely needs.

Mikoto is annoying.  But I think the context in which to view him is that he’s basically a child.  He’s never had to do a real job before, clearly.  He’d prefer being alone to the company of others.  This story is in effect his socialization, and Tatsuru is the guy in charge of it.  Part of it is the actual mechanics of business, like the whole SWOT thing (a core tenet of Japanese life is to never do anything that can be delayed in order to have a meeting, and never make any decision alone that could be debated by a committee).  But part of it is just becoming comfortable being interdependent.  In both areas Mikoto clearly has a long way to go.

Tatsuru is basically a kid at 32, but to these other guys he’s the old man, and he wears the leadership mantle as comfortably as his own skin.  He’s smarter than people think but feels no need to prove it, and the others naturally defer to him.  He finally manages to get Mikoto to open up about his PTSD (being nude in a bath together naturally causing barriers to come down).  And he throws Mikoto a birthday party when the latter was prepared to let it slide, thinking no one cared.  Mikoto’s first drinking experience doesn’t go well (they rarely do), but a dude does come out the other side of a night like that feeling closer to the guys he shared it with.

There was almost no badminton in this episode, and I’m fine with that.  I like the fact that Ryman’s Club was confident enough in its characters to offer an ep like this so early in the proceedings (and it doesn’t hurt in the budget department, either).  But now the sport does come back into focus – indeed, the corporate tournament hits way earlier than I expected it to.  And Mikoto’s old doubles partner and the unwitting cause of his trauma, Azuma, is playing (though for the next opponent I’m not sure).  Considering Mikoto thought he’d ended Azuma’s career that ought to make him feel better, but I suspect things won’t be quite so simple…