When I first heard about Basquash! my immediate thought was that it was either going to be mind-blowingly stupid or completely awesome; there’s just not much room for middle ground when the premise is giant robots playing basketball. However I may have been wrong. I forget to consider the possibility that it might be both incredibly stupid and awesome all at the same time.
Let’s start with the stupid part. Our protagonist is a spiky orange and scarlet haired kid named Dan JD who lives on the planet Earthdash. He hates the popular sport Bigfoot Basketball because one of the Bigfoots (they look like car frames with legs and arms) somehow injured his kid sister, reducing her from a great b-ball player into a cold computer nerd in a wheelchair. Then there’s the childhood friend Miyuki whose character design allows the animators to completely outdo the Gainax bounce by focusing the camera on her enormous jiggling breasts for a full 10 seconds. She also shows Dan how to pilot a Bigfoot… all while making it sound as much like having sex for the first time as possible. Oh and did I mention that Dan, using the alias Dunk Mask, regularly goes out and ruins Bigfoot basketball games while wearing a mask made out of a small blue monster voiced by Aya Endo (Sheryl Nome)? I swear I’m not making this stuff up.
On the good side of things, if you can get over the silly premise the mecha actually looks pretty cool in action due to mecha designer/co-creator Thomas Romain (who was a director of Oban Star-Racers, a 2D/3D co-production between France and Japan) and Shoji Kawamori of Macross fame. The CG is seamlessly integrated and the overall production values are great. I love the vibrant city too, which reminds me very much of Tekkon Kinkreet’s Treasure Town in how it feels both futuristic and run-down. There’s even a huge moon hanging overhead which is lit up at night by the lights from the city on its surface and, strangely enough, images of pop singers that are broadcast across it.
If you take away the robots and the unique setting all you’re really left with is a handful of awful character designs and a whole bunch of anime clichés, but here’s the thing – you can’t separate Basquash! from its unique premise and style. This is the lifeblood of the show and it did its job well enough to make me forget how stupid this whole thing was and actually start enjoying it. I’m definitely not expecting greatness from Basquash! but if the first episode was anything to go by it could be pretty damn entertaining.
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Too early to say. It may be one of those shows that can’t possibly lend itself to a fair evaluation on one episode. I’ll be watching it in a few hours and will check back with you if my current opinion holds.
“a handful of awful character designs and a whole bunch of anime clichés we’ve seen before”
That sounds a lot like Macross Frontier!
I’m giving the benefit, if only because it’s pretty and there’s a non-Japanese guy behind it. I’d also be very surprised if it just turned into a regular sports anime.
I finally saw it. The premise is quite lame though the visuals are staggering (in a good way).
Too early to say if this will suck throughout, but I’ll finish this because I do like Kawamori Shoji.
I liked how Dunk Mask actually served his sentence which led to a time skip. That was refreshing.
Elaborated on what I thought here:
http://omisyth.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/where-the-cliched-and-simple-is-still-awesome-basquash/
I just don’t care about the cliches, which is strange as most of the time those types of things at least bother me. At eh very least, it’s entertaining so I have nothing but LOOOOOOOOOVE for Basquash!
While I agree that you can’t separate the premise, I don’t think said premise is particularly amazing. Innovative? Yes. Unusual? Absolutely. But that doesn’t make it amazing. Though let it be said, I’m strongly biased against sports shows.
Defiantly a good writer, you made me chuckle and I learnt something new. I want to give this a watch now just to see what you are talking about. Sounds interesting.
havent see it yet, but sounds promising
lol. The anime sounds so dumb. It’s a Mecha-Basketball Anime? bah.
Animepalm – hundreds of Anime English Dubbed
Though its too early to decide bout this anime. There are a few characteristics that makes it favorable, well I dont have much care for the character design, the mecha design is humorous(its like a chibi Megas) the plot is pretty vast and certainly interesting compared to other sports anime.
i’ve always been meaning to watch this but never got around to