More Birds than Baskets Scored: An Ahiru no Sora Review
SPOILER ALERT!! This review is mostly spoiler-free. Scroll to the end for the TL;DR.
By Upaasana Kartik
As someone who is not AT ALL sporty, I really enjoy sports animes. Ahiru no Sora is the second basketball anime I have watched and in all, it does a really good job at getting the viewer excited not just for the plot, but also for the matches themselves. With a healthy mix of gameplay and character development, there is a very natural growth in personality and skill for each character.
Ahiru no Sora is about a 1st-year student called Kurumatani Sora who (and we can’t seem to escape this trope) is short and is, hence, disadvantaged in the sport he loves. He promises his sick mother that he would meet her after he wins at the inter-high tournament, and subsequently joins Kuzuryuu High School. As is expected of any self-respecting protagonist, he brings about a life-altering change in the school and revives the almost dead basketball club.
In the spirit of keeping things as spoiler-free as possible, I will talk less about the plot so everyone who just took a deep breath: you can sigh in relief or huff in frustration.
A good thing about this anime is that, unlike many other sports animes, it allows for mess-ups and realness. Its characters are only slight exaggerations of humans instead of being unrealistically superhuman (You know which animes I’m talking about, I won’t spell it out for you). That being said, you don’t miss out on the endearing melodrama of anime either; with the sentimental music when things get emotional, and the high-bpm chase-scene-esque music when the match gets intense.
Another fun thing about this anime is that it has a ridiculously beautiful voice cast! As someone interested in anime voice actors, this show was a delight to watch. Some of my all-time favourite voice actors such as Kaji Yuki, Miyano Mamoru, Saito Soma, Fukuyama Jun, and other brilliant actors such as Uchida Yuuma, KENN, Namikawa Daisuke, Sakurai Takahiro, and Matsuoka Yoshitsugu make up this brilliant cast.
In the fifty episodes that went slightly slower than I expected, the story seems far from complete. Before writing this, I spent a long time googling whether there was any hope for the show to continue beyond what it is now, but to no avail. So if incomplete stories or seemingly incomplete endings are not something you can come back from, you might want to skip out on this anime.
MILD SPOILERS AHEAD! SKIP TILL THE NEXT LINE BREAK IF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS
The last episode feels like the beginning of the end. Like this is where the actual story begins. With the way the 50th episode ended, it seems like the show has a lot more left to tell. The show has only just managed to tie a few loose ends. Further, the team has only just overcome some of its greatest challenges. For the show to end on such a note feels like it has been abruptly discontinued. If absolutely necessary, I can maybe bring myself to see the artistic intention behind a seemingly unfinished ending, talking about how not everything has an end and how something can exist as an incomplete piece and doesn’t nee- wait. Were you buying any of that nonsense? No? Yeah me neither.
END OF SPOILERS! YOU MAY CONTINUE READING FROM HERE ON!!!
If you didn’t read the whole thing and smartly came here for the TLDR, good. You know how to manage your time.
TL;DR - Good show, 7.5/10 would have given it a higher score if it had a proper ending!
If you want to watch guys with terrible haircuts (mullets… eugh!) make weird faces while failing at basketball AND watch women dominate at the same, this is the anime for you.
