neko's thinkbox

Such a sweet composition, really. But sadly, I can’t say the same about this anime.

However equivocal the title’s claim might sound to you, I think it makes most sense in the case of Basquash. Not so much for its actual tragic content, but for the painful, epic tragedy my viewing experience of this whole anime has become.
 
Here’s a couple of thoughts I want to share with you.

Ever since I started watching Basquash!, I was torn. Torn between the loudness of the action, the visual, the sounds, and the mediocrity of your average shounen anime displaying endless farfetchedness. At the end of the day, I used to tell myself that I was watching it for the epicness of this particular style of Basketball, played with giant robots. It was not just mecha meets sport, like an unthinkable Gundam / Slam Dunk cocktail or whatever, no, it was quite original by itself. It felt quite refreshing, in fact.

I used to like this anime a lot. It had an interesting premise and seemed to yield quite a lot of potential for a great character development, and the whole interplay between the futuristic setting and the stereotypical US basketball-bound graffiti, hiphop & ghetto influences reflected in artwork and music was fascinating to me. Of course, there were the many obvious fanservice visuals and innuendos mostly referring to boobs or the lack thereof, but it was all in good fun and almost did not distract from the main selling point, which is basketball. So far so good.

While the story often seemed to proceed at a very accelerated speed, it felt mostly satisfying. It was a very satisfactory ride with some ups and downs… until the middle of the series. Everything went straight downwards from episode 16 on.

I have no damned clue how this all came about, but sure, it looks funky!

I have no damned clue how this all came about, but sure, it looks funky!

You see, the premise was, Dunk Mask aka. Dan JD, who used to hate Bigfoots^[1] because they took away his sister’s freedom by crushing her legs, suddenly becomes a prominent Bigfoot Basketball (BFB) player, creates his own style of play – Basquash – and aims to get to Mooneyes in order to find a way to recover his sister’s legs. And the only way to do that would have been to climb up the ladder of every league, to become the best on Earth, and eventually earn a moon passport to defy the local champions. That’s pretty much how I imagined and hoped it would go, with a strong emphasis on the sports element, like in Cross Game for instance.

It all seemed to go so well, and they were almost on Mooneyes, too! …But no. That would have been too easy and boring, it seems. So, it’s a return trip to Earth, coincidentally landing near a huge hole leading to the Underground, Icemans’ past, and suddenly! A random hitman, the Price is right! Cue Navi the giant from the moon, living alone in those godforsaken earthly caves mining Ultinium / Ultimite, is recruited. And then all hell breaks loose.

Suddenly, a dark plot emerges out of the abyss. More and more talk of the rumored Legend and his heroic deeds that he is about to fulfill. Everyone seems to know the information that we don’t know. Eclipse, who seemed to be just your average idol trio, is part of a grand scheme to trigger a Legend. The malign mastermind, Yan Harris, segueing into one keikaku doori after another.

After beating around the bush for a couple of episodes with always shorter matches and speedy individual development tidbits, we finally find out that in fact, both Earthdash and Mooneyes are fated to clash, and that according to a vague legend- whatever, let’s play some Basquash on the moon, they will activate the stones. Of course, everything has been planned from the beginning, and the technology used is of course tailored and perfected for all your altruistic needs. Gauges to measure the epicness of your dunk, the flashier the better? Ding ding ding, 100 points!

This was quite an epic moment indeed, but there was no way for me to enjoy it at all, for my mood was already destroyed.

This was quite an epic moment indeed, but there was no way for me to enjoy it at all, for my mood was already destroyed.

Meanwhile, our main people are goofing around on earth, and Dan is knocked out cold so he- oh wait he unspectacularly regained consciousness while dropping 5 kilometers in free fall. Voices from the Earth? Allright, let’s sing! Bunch of butterflies gushes forth, and a huge, shiny Noah’s Ark transports them without mulling from one planet to another, and they all accept and enjoy the ride without questioning its destination, even manage to undertake Bigfoot repairs mid-flight, in spite of the lack of atmosphere.

Finally, Yan’s last keikaku, shoot down Mooneyes with a 20-feet large Legend Bullet, fails; The End Of The Worlds As We Know Them is impending, and all hope seems lost, but DO NOT FEAR, people still Basquash in these dire moments of mankind, and in a strange outburst of epiphany, Rouge grabs that huge glowing Legend Bullet ball that is orbiting around and babbling erratic crap, tosses it over to Dan and Iceman, and everyone dunks their best Basquashes into the hoops, yes, everyone is Legend.

Congratulations, the world is saved but, woops! We’re running out of time! Quick, cue the credits, and restore the worlds. After an apocalyptic ending scene reminiscent of End of EvangelionWhere’s my “kimochi warui”?, every character is allowed five more seconds to show the results of their quality development: Rouge plays Basketball alone, the other idols do random stuff, Coco tries walking, Dan and Iceman play Basketball, end of the story. Basquashers for eternity!

 
If you managed to read through all of this, congratulations on surviving this trainwreck of a story in a nutshell. I ranted a lot about it on melative already.

I just couldn't stop laughing at this scene. It was most probably the most random stuff I've seen in this entire series.

I just couldn’t stop laughing at this scene. It was most probably the most random stuff I’ve seen in this entire series.

I wonder if I even need say anything after all of this. The list of complaints I accumulated post-episode 16 is endlessly long, and they all boil down to the simple fact that there was too much content, and not enough time to properly develop anything at all. Fine, rushed endings are not new in anime history, and Basquash! is yet another sad addition to this ever growing category, I am fine with that – however, it will also be a prime example of the “how to ruin an anime” category. The fact that the immense potential this series had in the beginning got literally wasted on a shitty and badly organized execution is just infuriating, to say the least.

I knew it was farfetched. I knew its general notion of time and place was flawed. I knew its pacing was incredibly off. Yes. I was even ready to take in the sheer ludicrous and irrational conclusion that those giant, sturdy mechs would save the world just by Basquashing, for all the emotions and goosebumps this anime could have offered me. But what I was served in the last ten episodes was bad, almost insultingly so.
Gaping plot holes everywhere, worse than any Swiss cheese; random, pointless fights, and disconnected dialogue going all over the place^[2] ; dismal samples of incomplete characters – they shall remain WIPs forever, ungratefully tossed around and disposed of randomly.
Imbuing the already simplified characters with sudden flashes of omniscience shows that not even the producers in their frantic rush knew what they were getting at in the last few episodes.

GENTLEMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN

GENTLEMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN

Heck, they didn’t even manage to bring the obvious romance between Dan and Rouge (or between anyone else) to a proper ending. Did they just hope to sweep it under the carpet with a single kiss? There is no place for love on the court. That’s just sad.

There’s also a clear lack of humanity. We were shown images of people fleeing buildings and places from all the Basquashing, ten seconds of despair, back to gaming. What’s the point? To show that playing outside of the court can be dangerous? So why did the protagonists continue playing and destroying everything in their mindless screaming rampage? Or would the poor civilians all obtain compensation for their demolished housings later on, which we were shown? Would their protests ever be heard? Have they ever?
No, these same civilians were just random puppets meant to awake a slight ounce of pity from the spectator, which failed horribly. Because while ten people cried, thousands of others had nothing else to do in the last moments of their lives than to flock to huge stadiums and watch robots play basketball for the kicks. The apocalyptic context is totally omitted, people just go “DJD! DJD!” even if they are bleeding to death on the side of the destroyed roads and rubble. Hello? It’s Armageddon Time, what the fuck do you think you’re doing? That’s just ridiculous.

Also, I found the vain attempts to make the final event sound physically relevantBLABLABLA, we already did that in first grade, can we now move to quantum physics please? with made up theory and shit laughable at best. They don’t even explain half of what’s happening at all, so why would any details about the effects of the very last dunk suddenly be any more plausible to our already confused minds?

It felt like a 4000 word essay that was desperately butchered down to the required 2600 by omitting articles, prepositions, vowels, and meaning altogether. Yes, conciseness is a skill, not a natural occurrence, but especially in companies where they have professional planning and writers, they should be able to do that without problems!

Besides, the designJust what the fuck is that stance supposed to mean?? dwindled a littleWhy is his face displayed so awfully all of a sudden? in the last few episodes as well (not consistently, but quite notably), adding injury to insult. At least the good music prevented me from dropping the last episode in protest, although with so many technical and flagrant fouls, sportsmanship has entirely vanished from this anime, and so did its overall quality in the end.
(By the way, showing the OP in the last ep after 6 minutes? Get a clue!)

Basquashers for eternity? More like epic fail.

Basquashers for eternity? More like epic fail.

Bottom line in layman’s words: promising premise, sloppy plot, execrable execution. They did an unpardonably awful job.
“They”? Who are “they“? I don’t know. Whether the fault lies with the studio (Satelight) and/or Shoji Kawamori (project director), with Romain Thomas’s overly ambitious premise, the many writers, or the change of directors from episode 10 (Itagaki Shin replaced by Eiichi Sato), I don’t know. But in the end, they all successfully ruined the anime for me. And by the way, I don’t like Nike-san, either.

I am sad, disappointed, angry and disgusted that one of my favorite Spring anime kicked the bucket in such a demeaning fashion. I will not give it a rewatch, since the bitter aftertaste will stick around for quite a while yet.
 
Basquash. Dommage.

1. I won’t say Bigfeet. [↩]
2. I mean sure, the end of the world is nigh, but, by all means, please wax some more lyrical on yourselves while we’re waiting for the tip-off scheduled at 21:42 [↩]