Xebek’s Blog

A girl’s basketball team is formed and Tenma joins after her fascination for basketball is sparked by a cheesy manga.

Summary:

We start off seeing a cheesy manga being red. It is about someone playing basketball. There is only one guy left on a team as his teammates are all knocked unconscious by the evil looking team. His team mates pull though however and the one who was left pulls off some super move and wins the game. We then see it was Tenma who was reading it, now saying how cool basketball is. We then eventually go to a young girl at school who is talking to the nurse. She asks her if she would sponsor a girl’s basketball team and she gives the go ahead if they get a good coach. She gets the adviser of the boy’s basketball team to make Souu who is a member of the team coach this new girl’s, Satsuki, basketball team. They try to gather members and eventually she gets herself, Sagano the super good basketball player, Mikoto, Tenma, Lala, and Ichijou. The nurse gives them all nicknames and their team is formed.

The team is practicing and Satsuki who seems to be very good despite her height is talking with Souu. We get the impression that she likes him and when Souu leaves we see the nurse lurking there saying how she can tell she likes him. Tenma overhears this and tells her friends including Mikoto who is on the team as well. We see them practice quite a few times and when Souu is coaching Mikoto it seems that Satsuki gets jealous and challenges Mikoto to a one on one and easily beats her. After practice they all go out to eat at the restraint Souu’s family owns, although his family owns it he works at a different one for some reason. Satsuki overstuffs herself trying to impress him or something and passes out so Mikoto takes her home.

The next day at practice, when Tenma arrives it turns out there is already a practice game going on against the boys she joins in but the nurse calls her over saying it turns out basketball is a five person sport, not a six person sport so she lies to Tenma saying she is sending her out on special solo training. Meanwhile while Souu is coaching them Imadori tries to but in saying he wants to be a coach so he can be close to all those girls. Souu basically kicks him out however. Day after day Yakumo fixes Tenma lunches for her practice and to share with her teammates so Tenma is unable to tell her that she has her own training although Tenma still doesn’t seem to quite get it she was kicked off because she was always late and not very good and such. Late one night she is sitting on a sing asking when this solo training will help her when one of Lala’s friends who seemed to try and help with the basketball team tells her she has been lied to, like the rest of these rejects and we see Imadori and Harima in the dark. He says as long as you have teammates you can win.

Impressions:

This episode was surprising focused. Most episodes in this series are kind of scattered with three or so stories but this one all of the separate stores really had the same focus and flow which was the creation of the basketball team. From the looks of it I think it will continue onto next episode with the first basketball team and then a new team made up of the rejects such as Tenma, Harima and Imadori. There was a good set up of the story but it just seemed like it was lacking in the comedy. It focused on the young girl and liking Souu which was ok and everything but they didn’t really bring out the comedy in that except for the small incident at the restraint.

Although this episode seemed to be lacking in overall comedy there were still some very funny parts such as when the nurse was giving them all nicknames and was about to give Mikoto the nickname of “D” because of her breasts but then changed it and Mikoto got all embarrassed and angry asking what she was about to call her. The beginning part was rather odd and just cheesy and stupid but I think it was supposed to be like that really. Tenma being unable to tell Yakumo time and time again that she basically isn’t on the team anymore was also one of the funnier parts of this episode, but all together I found this episode rather lacking.