Cue the endgame. As I type this, the clock is ticking down towards what should be one of the best matches men’s tennis has seen in years – Djokovic and Federer in the U.S. Open final.  These two have clearly been the best players not just this tournament but this […] Read more

Every time we’re tempted to forget the title of this series, Baby Steps reminds us. Curses to three-minute recaps.  They’re the bane of the existence of sports anime fans, though Baby Steps has generally been good about avoiding them (unlike, say, Diamond no Ace).  I guess they give us something […] Read more

If there were a school for aspiring sports mangaka, Baby Steps should be a required course. It’s never been harder to write about this show knowing what’s coming than it is right now, because we’re being reminded of just how good it is as building up the moment.  There are […] Read more

Maruo Eichirou – the coaches’ best friend. It’s a funny thing about Ei-chan – he’s a perfect mirror for any player who wants to improve to hold himself up against.  He so relentlessly and unerringly finds the flaw, the defect – sometimes ones the opponent himself doesn’t know he has […] Read more

If nice guys finish last, Takagi Sakuya has nothing to worry about. Watching this match play out, all of the incredible frustration I felt while reading it in the manga comes flooding back to me.  And it’s a totally different kind of frustration than I felt during the Ide match, […] Read more

Poor Sasaki-chan – she’s definitely been broken at love. How do you follow up an emotional blockbuster like last week’s episode of Baby Steps?  Well, the answer of course is that you can’t.  It’s tough enough to do so in any type of series, but with a sports anime especially […] Read more

Like its hero, Baby Steps is almost unbeatable in the big moments. I can’t really say much in reaction to that episode, except that it was just about as perfect as it’s possible for a sports anime to be.  The number of levels on which it worked is pretty staggering […] Read more

Kid must be in an HMO… To start with, since I know you’re all thinking it I’ll stipulate to the fact that there’s no way that kid could have gotten out of the hospital so quickly and come to the match, even if it was just a temporary release.  It […] Read more