It’s about soft tennis… But it’s not.

If watching  an anime episode on an iPad at a coffee shop is less than ideal, then writing about it on one is even worse.  But I’ll need to grab my chances where I find them this weekend, and Hoshiai no Sora is a series I’ve been looking forward to with tremendous anticipation since the moment it was announced.  So here we are.

I have to admit it galls me a little when I see Kazuki Akane described as “the director of Escaflowne” – which he is in pretty much every preview of this show.  Kazuki did direct Escaflowne of course, but to me his bio should always leads with “creator of Noein”, because of all Kazuki’s works that one is so clearly the most personal.  He didn’t just direct it, he owned it – and the same is very much true with Hoshiai no Sora, a series he says he’s been wanting to make for over a decade.

Noein was – and is – a largely misunderstood and under-appreciated series, a flawed masterpiece that does more even where it fails than most anime does when it succeeds.  On the surface Hoshiai strikes you as a fairly mundane premise by Kazuki’s standard – there doesn’t appear to be any sci-if or supernatural element to it.  It’s the story of a misfit junior high soft tennis club, plain and simple.  Except with Kazuki nothing is ever plain and simple.

Since Hoshiai no Sora is, like Noein, an original series I have mostly guesswork as to where it’s going to go.  But it seems safe to say that’s it will use the sports club format in the same way Noein used the sci-fi, as a mirror to the soul of adolescent trauma (Kazuki’s favorite theme).  It starts out in very familiar fashion, as we see the indignities of a boys soft tennis team that’s hopelessly outgunned by the National champ girls team.  It’s a bit of a laughingstock, much to the chagrin of its intense captain, Shinjou Touma (Hatanaka Tasaku).

In fact, the boys team is staring at disbandment, as the hard-ass seitoukai president is changing the rules so that club funds are allocated based on “effort”.  That’s where transfer student Maki Katsuragi (Natsuki Hanae) comes in.  He’s coordinated and seemingly confident, and an old associate (I don’t think we can say “friend”) of Shinjou.  With the club needing to product a win at the summer tournament to survive the student council edict, Shinjou latches onto Maki as his savior-to-be.  It’s an off-the-shelf sports anime scenario if I’ve ever seen one.

Except… this is Kazuki.  Maki’s reticence runs deeper than the superficial reasons – money and time.  We know that Maki’s parents are divorced, and that he does all the chores around the house.  We know money is tight.  This is the approach Shinjou takes – he initially tries to win Maki over with promises of help shopping and a free racket.  But Maki ups the ante – he demands to be paid for his time.  And to his seeming surprise, Shinjou agrees – 30000¥ for three months work, another 10K if they win as a doubles team at the tournament.

Thats where the average sports series’ first episode would end, but with Hoshiai no Sora that’s basically the end of the prologue.  For now a lot is left to speculation.  We can see there’s more to Maki’s relationship with Shinjou and his older brother Ryouma (who he admires) than meets the eye.  The Touma family seems well off financially, but the father is nowhere to be seen and what’s more, the mother is aghast at the idea of being alone with Shinjou and obviously favors Ryouma.  Might they be step-brothers, or is she just an awful parent?

What’s not left to the imagination is that Maki’s father is a total scumbag (my God, he doesn’t even take his shoes off in the house), and probably the reason he and his mom fled this town in the first place.  He physically assaults Maki brutally and then steals the money he’s hiding (presumably for rent and essentials).  Physical violence against children is a common theme in Kazuki’s work, like it or not, but if you watched Noein you know it’s definitionally not gratuitous – he uses it to tell his story in all its raw and painful form.  While there was a bit of a bait and switch quality to this premiere, Kazuki veterans were surely not surprised.  The last five minutes is probably a better indicator of  series is headed, and you can expect it to be deep, subtle and unsparing.  It’s not going to be an easy ride, but sign me up.