- …Sadly, we won’t be getting that luxury. This is, after all, a feel good show about a nobody airhead miraculously becoming a pro at a sport she’d originally had never heard of, despite it being well-known throughout the world. Male MC Masaya will be pushed into coaching the poor sap, and the school will rejoice over how they will beat the other school, who has one of the best teams in the country. As for romance? Well despite this being an eroge adaptation, I honestly don’t think that will even see the light of day in this show…even with the masses of harem girls surrounding this guy.
- It is unfortunate though that none of these characters will be really memorable after this season is over. They make good characters now: the girl getting back into the game, her clingy kouhai, the two original members of the Flying Circus club (one of which who has only been added for comedy reasons), the goth teacher, even the pro girl from the other school. But it’s very clear that both Asuka and Masaya will be taking the lead; she up in the air trying to fly, and him on the ground getting impatient. In this week’s offering, we see that he is extremely hesitant to get back into the game. We get the impression that something happened in the past that scarred him so much that it made him not just hang up his Grav-Shoes, but to put them in the trash instead. Ideally I would like to see some drama from him concerning this. Instead of a “Fine-I’ll-do-it”, I would have liked to have seen him stomp and run away in that atypical anime manner. We’ll get a filler episode on why he gave up halfway through of course; I mean there’d be no reason why there wouldn’t be… A great big hole would be in the story otherwise.
- The actual sport itself is explained in more detail this time, and here I was thinking it was just a racing sport. I’m sure those touches/pushes/whatever they are meant to be look more painful than they actually are. Trying to be technical, they look more like reactions caused by gravity. Well, last week was beginner’s luck for poor Asuka, and she has to crawl a lot now before she can fly. This Flying Circus club of theirs (which is in fact in an abandoned bus outside of school grounds) is seriously a rag-tag bunch, but it’s because they are a rag-tag bunch that they will succeed. With Misaki and Mashiro as initial players, Asuka being a total beginner, and the two original members being support staff, the teacher/advisor already has plans up her sleeve the very second Masaya agrees. I think that she knows more than she lets on concerning him. Was she there at this scarring incident? Was she a coach to him? That’s something I actually don’t know if we’ll be told about. But she’s certainly enjoying the perks of playing the adult to these kids, by looking at all of their mistakes and thinking inside that they really should do better.
- It was the opening episode that sold this show for me, and it was this episode that was just a…carry on. Like a “here’s-a-little-more-without-going-into-any-juicy-detail”. I mean we all knew that Masaya was going to end up coaching Asuka from the start. And we all knew that she was going to get some competition Grav-Shoes to use for the Flying Circus club (just so we weren’t deceived in the preview images). And now that they’re going to all be sent off to some kind of training camp, they will all get good and do some upcoming tournament. Very formulaic, but I’m still enjoying it.
- Despite them being atypical, the characters are rather likeable in their own little ways; each one of them has something that keeps us entertained and doesn’t wholly annoy us. Mashiro’s clinging to her senpai is nothing new whatsoever, but that doesn’t faze me at all. Some very very minor characters have popped up in this second episode already, like the two owners of the Flying Circus store, the surfer wannabe and the super-timid onee-chan. The store itself somehow looks like one of those shops from one of the futuristic Final Fantasy games.
- I will most certainly stick with this show. As Myriad Colors Phantom World and Dagashi Kashi, my other shows for this column, have kind of driven me a little crazy in the space of only 2 episodes, Aokana hasn’t really given off any kind of hype like the others did, and yet while to some it can be seen as a very empty and lifeless show, it’s a grower in my eyes. Aside from this apparent training camp, I don’t really know what to expect next week. Masaya may be pushed to spilling the beans in why he gave up, or Asuka might suddenly get better…no, I just anticipate another filler. Not that I really mind though.
- …at least both Masaya and this girl would have the sense to actually close their curtains after what happened last week!