I'm like halfway through writing another post right now as well, but I'm feeling absolutely zero inspiration on that one, so instead I'll uh...write this one?
The Basics
Episodes: 25
Genre: Shonen, Sports
Aired: April 8, 2012 to September 22, 2012
Directed by: Shunsuke Tada
Producers: Production I.G, Bandai Visual, Lantis, NAS, Mainichi Broadcasting
Opening Theme: Can Do by Granrodeo / Rimfire by Granrodeo
Closing Theme: Start It Right Away by Hyadain / Catal Rhythm by Oldcodex
Review
The Story: So you have this high school, Seirin. This high school has a basketball team. This basketball team is in its second year of existence but apparently they did pretty well in their first year. I don't ask questions. Being new doesn't translate to being bad. So now it's the new school year and just like every other club they're out to get some new people. They get two Really Important Characters and some others You Don't Really Have to Think About.
One of these characters is Taiga Kagami, who lived in America (why dude? WHY would you want to come live HERE?) and is really strong and tall and all that fun stuff. The other one is Tetsuya Kuroko (behold! the titular character!) who is the exact opposite of Kagami, in that he's tiny and no one ever knows he's there. So they both join the basketball team. Except it turns out Kuroko is from this other middle school team which was apparently comprised of Super Speshul Badasses With Magical Powers.
And then you just kind of sit and watch people play basketball, using their Magical Powers.
The Characters: So...here's the thing on the characters. And the thing is...I cannot motivate myself to care about them at all. Something bad happens? Boy, that sucks. Suck it up ya big baby. But uhm. I guess I usually say more than that, don't I? It's been awhile since I've written one of these. Siiiigh.
Well. Kuroko, first of all, is uhm...odd? Not very interesting? He doesn't show emotions very often. Instead you get this blank face, even when he's saying something with meaning, and that made it really hard for me to be interested in him. The other main guy, Kagami, needs to learn to calm the hell down. He's one of those hot-headed types you always see, except instead of a sword he's got a basketball and his battlefield is a basketball court. I really don't care about either of them.
The rest of the main team is okay, but they're sort of...okay? There's one who is obsessed with puns and he's the one I actually like because I, too, enjoy puns.
Then you have the Generation of Miracles. These are the ones who mostly have the Magical Powers. Kuroko was technically one of them, the “phantom member”, because, y'know, no one ever knows he's freaking there. In the course of this, we meet three out of the other five. You see the other two really briefly but they're not important because of the “only see them for like ten seconds” thing.
First, there's Kise. He's a model and he has a weird thing for Kuroko and he's hyper and I do not like him. I dislike hyper people. Nobody has time for your nonsense. He's a bit better in the last few episodes, but again, we have the millionth character of this series that I just do not care about. After Kise we meet Midorima, who is an asshole. But not as much of an asshole as some other people. He's also really weird...like...obsessed with zodiac-related things, to the point where his life revolves around if it'll be a good day for his sign or not. Personally I grew out of that when I was like twelve and I also only like assholes when they're villains, so add this guy to the I Don't Care list. The other one we meet is Aomine, who is seriously an enormous jackass and given the option I would have leaped into my screen to strangle him. Except he's like a million feet taller than me so I probably couldn't reach. But he's got this “nobody can beat me but me” attitude and there wasn't a single word out of his mouth that didn't make me want to pummel him. I hate egotistical people like him. GET OVER YOURSELF AOMINE.
So the characters? I don't like any of them. Glad we have that established.
The...I Can't...: What does that even mean? Oh I'll tell you what it means. So let's say I came into this series and the description was like... “High school students with magical abilities play basketball” except with more detail because that says nothing. I would know, from that, that these are going to be high schoolers with magical abilities. Therefore I would accept these abilities as normal and totally be able to take it seriously, because that's part of the world. Instead, I was just expecting high schoolers with basketballs...playing basketball...like normal people, who albeit may be very good. Which means when they introduced these magical abilities (he can learn how to do things from seeing them once, in like five seconds! he never ever misses a shot even when he's a million feet away! he's just downright unbeatable because fuck you, that's why!) I could NOT take it seriously and instead found myself laughing my arse off because...no. I could accept Kuroko being kind of invisible by just getting other people to pay attention to other things because HELLO that's how magicians work half the time, but the rest of you? Nope. Get out. Right now.
Conclusion?: Here's the thing. I had a serious love-hate relationship with this anime. Actually it was more like a tolerate-hate relationship. I watched the first few episodes and thought it was okay. Then my boyfriend got into it and became obsessed with it and would never shut up about it and quite frankly it got to the point that even hearing it MENTIONED made me suddenly furious. So finally I made him stop talking about it. Period. And I waited a few weeks of that out and then started the series over from the beginning so I could watch it without being prejudiced against it.
Apparently—going off of my Facebook news feed, at least—I am the only person who does not think this series is wonderful. I find it rather average. The storyline is pretty freaking basic of a shonen series, except instead of “monster of the week/enemy of the week” it's more like...basketball game of the week. The characters certainly aren't anything special. They moved about two inches each in terms of character development. The music caught my attention at one point, so I guess that must not have been terrible, but I'm not interested enough to track down the OST. I mean all in all, I don't see anything special here. I don't see anything TERRIBLE, but...average. I guess if you're into sports series you should give it a shot, or if you're looking for yaoi fodder because apparently it works for that. I'm not interested.
My rating: Did I not just express how average I found this? Well the most average series acquire a 7 from me. So 7/10.
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