#152: Hanebado! (2018)

Director: Shinpei Ezaki

Series Composition: Taku Kishimoto

Based on a manga by Kōsuke Hamada

Voice Cast: Hitomi Ohwada as Ayano Hanesaki; Miyuri Shimabukuro as Nagisa Aragaki; Ai Kayano as Yuika Shiwahime; Arisa Sakuraba as Nozomi Ishizawa; Asami Shimoda as Kaoruko Serigaya; Konomi Kohara as Erena Fujisawa; Mariya Ise as Conny Christensen; Mikako Komatsu as Miyako Tarōmaru; Nobuhiko Okamoto as Kentarō Tachibana; Sayaka Ohara as Uchika Hanesaki; Yuuna Mimura as Riko Izumi

Viewed in Japanese with Subtitles

 

With this, I begin my first foray into sports anime, a genre I had never really dived into at all until now. Sports shows in Japanese animation are numerous, and with cases like Star of the Giants (1968-71), a baseball series, they are important parts of the medium which have been neglected as in that particular case, that was a major mainstream success but has never been a title talked of in the West. In the West, few if any were imported into the United Kingdom, whilst they were never really financial successes for DVD runs in the United States. Now streaming exists this has opened the doors for them, and a title like Yuri on Ice (2016)¸ an ice skating series that also happened to be an LGBT drama, which managed to even gain recognition from professional ice skaters and be a cross-over hit, has helped considerably. I can see how sports titles can be sold to a Western audience, particularly now we do not have single disc releases of a couple of episodes like in the 2000s, but streaming and box sets.

Note the word "drama". That is the secret little detail, and that is where I am enticed now by this genre. I come to Hanebado, for example, expecting a badminton story about teen female players. Hanebado is actually a melodrama which drips with dark psychodrama, merely set in a world of girls' badminton, and it is compelling when this pulled the rug out from under me only a few episodes in. Premise wise, it sticks to two female leads Nagisa and Ayano. Both are traditional archetypes. Nagisa is the super tall and muscular tomboy, the powerful striking player who can hit the shuttlecock hard and would normally be the boss or minor boss in any other premise who joins the good guys, whilst Ayano is a quiet and meek girl who has to be dragged back into playing badminton by her best friend, quitting in spite of the fact she is insanely talented.  

Nagisa does at first have a withdrawn, cruel attitude to her fellow players in their badminton club, unresolved collateral damage to how Ayano beat her soundly, which she eventually overcomes to became a better person. Ayano, when returned to the game, turns out to be a monster, as seen in the first episodes, and psychologically damaged. Her mother, an international badminton champion, left her as a young girl, even currently in the story raising a protégée named Connie instead in another place, causing a huge psychological shock on Ayano where, when she fully absorbs herself into badminton again, she is remorseless and egotistical to even members of her own team. The show's hugest issue is that even at thirteen episodes, there is a lot that could have been fleshed out as well as it could have, particularly her relationship with her mother, but it is a surprise to find Hanebado is as it is. A huge factor to consider is that this anime takes drastic artistic license with the original source material, which is also liable to provoke controversy. Even without this detail, much to the horror of the Crunchyroll users following the comments section, this shows gets far more anguished then its light and artistically vibrant opening and ending credits suggests.

Inherently sports as a narrative, just seeing this, allows for stories of psychological growth. Nagisa, shaken by her defeat, is confronted for her selfishness early on by her best friend Riko, growing and preparing for a tournament in hope for facing Ayano again, also part of the same badminton club. Despite her size and prescience, Nagisa is an outsider, everyone from childhood presuming she had an innate advantage in games rather than from skill, significant as she has to overcome speed disadvantage and that using her power to win would not work against trickier opponents. Ayano is so insanely good, and having suffered emotional damage, that she almost has a split personality, the shy and almost childlike innocent who yet in wanting to symbolically abandon her own mother turns into a figure from Gothic literature plonked into a badminton story. She is still capable of being sweet and thoughtful, a simply signifier the cute whale keychain found on her sports bag, but like a succumbing poison, whenever she has a racket in her hands she gets intense and antisocial, even the production using creepy faces normally found in a horror anime. Whilst, again, the show does rush, this even gets to her best friend realising when it is too late how her own decision, playfully forcing Ayano's hand to join the club, has caused this to happen.

Ayano in particular, in my research, is one of the biggest changes from the source material. In taking a very big risk, turning a potential fan favourite into an at-times unlikable character, the production clearly wanted to take on the idea of how one's talent, and how one strives to win as is common sports drama, can actually turn one into a villain. A comment asked a few times between characters is why they actually play badminton, and whilst this is likeably to be even a cliché in the sports anime genre, it is already fascinating that this show tackles something arguably existential. One character, in the position of the ends justifying the means, becomes an innately sweet figure who yet when pushed turned into a demon, worse as Ayano, this aforementioned demon, is tragically a lost child, not that different from the young girl who kept wanting to play badminton even when her mother got tired and wanted to stop, seeking attention and ultimately love from another person. The gothic literature reference is not a joke in the slightest, as this kind of character whose fear of being isolated has added a toxic side to her personality, is a figure that has yet ended up in badminton, where it does make sense and not feel out of place. The character is likely controversial to fans of the manga this way - a depressed and emotionally broken one now - but as an outsider, her characterisation even if over-egged at times in the creepy faces is inspired.

Whilst badminton is still front and centre, there is a lot of drama alongside the doldrums of the activity. Here, when people loss they have to hold back tears. That there are members soon the graduate, with only one last chance to play the central narrative's tournament, comes to mind, alongside there still being practice and that, whilst the focus is on the female players, their club does have two male members who have to compete and ask whether they would want to keep on playing the game to a greater skill. There is one character who does stick out like a sore thumb, though I do like her, just because the figure of Kaoruko, with bright long pink hair and the demeanour of a cartoonish villain as Ayano's childhood rival, does suggest a figure from a more light hearted show (again) plonked into a more serious badminton show. Particularly as, alongside this show likely to enrage real sports players with a lot of the bad sportsmanship on play, the drama is central, so this figure who gets a little bit of time onscreen in the centre is a curiously flamboyant figure to even cross in real life if she ever was to exist.

Production wise, it is slick. A high bar has been reached in anime for me arguably, where unless you witness something really stumble, (cough, My Sister the Writer (2018)), there is not a chance of anything particularly dreadful appearing for the most part in the streaming era. It does mean that, if there is one potential issue for Hanebado entirely out of its hand, it is that, unlike Maasaki Yuasa's Ping Pong The Animation (2014), also a drama from the lens of male ping pong players but also wildly idiosyncratic in aesthetic, it does have to compete against other shows with similar character designs and high quality production even outside the sports genre, an annoyance as this does a lot of good things. I do have to admire the work Liden Films put into this project as an animation studio, and as they have only existed since 2012, they have a lot of potential in the future. I have to admire in particular the work they put into the actual scenes of badminton as, thankfully, there are no egregious attempts to work around movements, just a lot of hard work which was clearly put in. Those opening and ending animations are actually sumptuous too, the opening especially, more so as I have not really seen a lot of shows in my fandom where they have been really elaborate, a case of where even by itself as a mere music video, it looked like it had to be extensively constructed. It also works even in terms of drama, especially as even for all its lightness it does play to the psychodrama. I mean, with Ayano facing a figure on the other side of the net who is fragments of various characters' faces, including her own, before it turns into Nagisa, the badminton show is already getting in psychological metaphors 101 before it even started.

 Beyond this, the show baring Kaoruko's pink hair is fully grounded in naturalism, certainly staying to its drama and the excitement of the games contrasting each other. The only real aesthetic risk takes place in the last episode, when Nagisa and Ayano are playing each other finally over a three episode game, suddenly switching everything in terms of how the show has been presented as. Barring the requisite if absurd scenes of the cast at the sides, watching, explaining each person' special badminton techniques like fighting styles, the finale does escalate with their strain and anguish, going for everything and at their breaking points in the match, before suddenly everything shifts. Flashes of etched animation on white instead appear onscreen, the soundtrack entirely replaced by their breathing instead until the resolution abruptly happens. It is exceptional artistry pulled off fully, and it became the show's high point as a result.

[Major Plot Spoilers]

Those issues with the rushing of the plot do not help, but they could have been worse, and knowing this show actually took the risk to rewrite the source material, I suspect half of the issue is them having to adapt a long form manga, and also having to work with new ideas over only thirteen episodes, which for me is still not that many depending on the show. It is nice that, whilst she is still cocky at the end of the show, Ayano has her demons exorcised by losing the final game and is not just a bad person, just one needing a healthier environment, whilst Nagisa gets to prove herself with the drama around an injured knee meaning she has also had to overcome real adversity. Nagisa and Ayano softening can be seen for some as a cop-out happy ending, but it is established Ayano is a gentle figure, frankly a shy and damaged girl, the demonic personality only stemming when badminton became no longer a game but a psychological prison, both fed on a sense of superiority but mingled with fears of abandonment.

Her mother is the plot thread which could have done with more time - I can see where people are mortified when Ayano effectively forgives here, though it is not really forgiveness, just Ayano declining going out of Japan with her mother to stay with her team, arguably a subtle and more psychologically healthy form of distancing herself from her mother as she now has friends there for her. Her mother is also explicitly single, the father never seen, Ayano raised presumably by the grandparents, and admitting her failure, done to try to help Ayano become a better player but felt as a misguided action from an imperfect figure. She can still be seen as the most matter of fact of worst parents possible, a villain whose motivation is merely really bad parenting, but it is leading to the attempt by Hanebado to be psychologically complex. The commonts on Crunchyroll wishing Aynao had symbolically (or literally) slain her "evil" mother, enraged by the plotting, would have been childish and not fulfilling. Whilst I feel the show needed more time, it at least tried complexity and succeed for the most part. More so because the studio behind this show decided to write off the page, which was a bold risk and made the more darker, psychological melodrama actually more rewarding for me learning of it.

[Major Plot Spoilers Ended]

There could have been more episodes, to extrapolate and fill in potential narrative gaps especially for all the psychological wounds exposed. Hanebado as an anime was adapted considerably different from the source material which does actually bring a new question mind to how it could have extended the series without compromising its virtues. All this enticing drama is, by all accounts, not in the manga, so an extra episode or two from a source originally a sixteen volume manga could have scuppered the best aspects of the show. It also does the inspired decision of making Nagisa eventually the true protagonist and the most likable person once she grows, despite her appearance and demeanour a noble figure having to struggle through an existential crisis to becoming a better person and player. If Ayano was a more optimistic poster girl and a bigger central character in the manga, that could have lost me as a fan the way the show does make Nagisa earn that true protagonist moniker with a great final episode. So, I can live with what we got. What I got thankfully was a great introduction to the sports genre. Even next to giant robots, with all the sports (including made up ones) you could depict, this is a genre now that has a lot of common plotting tropes clearly visible, but a lot of ways you can tell them which is going to excite me, especially when one like this can improvise with its material and take a few risks. It has taken some knocks of derision, but those risks I have to admire.