As you probably know if you’re reading this post, I had certain reservations about this season of Ooi! Tonbo. And getting a recap episode to start the season (with a split cour? Thats a shank) didn’t improve my mood. But – while I still have some reservations based on the sheer volume of unknowns with this change of venue – the real premiere showed that this series hasn’t lost any of its considerable charm. This was excellent on all fronts, and irresistible in the same way the first season almost always was.

First things first – the new setting is indeed Kumamoto. And Udou is the name of the family at whose house Tonbo is going to be staying. It happens to be at a driving range, which is certainly convenient. And of course, how Igaiga knows them. Tonbo is all agog over “big city” Kumamoto, her only previous visit having been a timid trip to see the dentist as a little girl. The family is the patriarch and golf nut and his sharp-tongued wife. But the real golf expert is the son, Hajime (Hanawa Eiji), the teaching pro at the range. He’s the one who Igaiga entrusts with Tonbo’s education as a golfer.

I’ll admit, more than most sports anime I think Ooi Tonbo really does work better if you have an interest in the sport (though the comments section for the first season suggests otherwise). I really do enjoy the golf minutiae here. Tonbo is embarking on her golf journey as someone who never owned a set of clubs, never set foot on a driving range or a golf course – never even hit a driver. And when Udou-san hands her a modern one (overlong with a huge head) she finds she can’t make the ball do what she wants it to do. Igaiga sees through the reasons, and Hajime too – but they let her try and work through them herself.

Tonbo is a self-taught natural, a freak of nature. She learned to play on a windswept island in the middle of the Pacific ocean using one club (and one of the hardest to hit at that). She’s 100% what we’d call a “feel” player. She uses her stance and her hands and manipulation of the clubface at impact to make the ball dance in all directions. It’s a remarkable talent – probably the closest you’d come to it in the world of professional golf is Seve Ballesteros, whose origin story has a sliver of commonality with Tonbo’s. But it’s not how kids are taught to play golf. How those who teach it will adapt to her quirks – and how she adapts to conventional instruction and proper clubs – are very much open questions at this point.

That’s not the only question. How will Igaiga fit into this new world? He tells Hajime he’s going back to Hinoshima in two days (he has a job after all). It seems his parting gift (the title of the next episode) is going to be a set of clubs for Tonbo to use – a necessity, as much as she loves playing with four (fore?). But “parting gift” of course implies we won’t be seeing much of Igaiga, and that is a bit of a worry. His relationship with Tonbo was the spine of the first season and as encouraging as this premiere was, it’s still uncertain how the series will fare without it.

When Hajime invites Tonbo to tag along for nine holes with his group of teen students, she has her first trip to a real course. And she’s like nothing these kids have seen before. With the wind up she tees off with her 3-iron, without a tee. And then intentionally tamps the ball into the turf so she can hit a flyer (no backspin because grass gets between the clubface and the ball at impact). A triple whammy of weirdness! And the kids are flabbergasted. She then proceeds to intentionally hit a pull-hook over a cherry tree to avoid interference from the acorn resting against her ball. Imagination is one of the most valuable tools a golfer can have, but it’s when it’s paired with the talent to bring it to fruition that it becomes truly special.

Even if Igaiga does drop out of the main storyline, there’s another S1 character who figures to play a bigger role – Tsubura-san, who’s aiming to be the top junior golfer in the prefecture. But here we meet the girl who currently holds that title – Otoha Hinoki (Ishikawa Yui). She’s the lead dog in Hajime’s pack of students, and she seems nice enough – she loans Tonbo a cap (then a visor when that ends badly) when they reach the course (I had no idea you had to wear a hat playing golf in Japan). But even she’s mystified by Tonbo’s exotic shotmaking. I sense there’s an edgier side hidden under that politeness, and that Hinoki is going to be a major player this season. For all the unknowns still out there, it’s great to see Ooi Tonbo hit the ground running again.