Hanebad!

At the beginning, I liked this show a lot, I thought it had the necessary amount of suspense, and the sport itself was very well portrayed. Every badminton match and training session looked really good because of the well-animated movements of the characters and the shots of the shuttlecock flying through the air. If there had only been the drama on the court, or if they had managed to make the off-court narrative interesting, I would have probably given this a much higher rating. However, as it is, this show is just an ordinary "MAMA drama", even though only the main female protagonist experiences it to the fullest. She was suddenly like a total psychopath, going from cheerful schoolgirl mode to serial killer mode in a matter of seconds, if only she could have just had a nice talk with her mom... Unfortunately, that is not how shit goes down at Ayano's house, and even the mom did not attract any great sympathy from me, and, rather the opposite. Unfortunately, this dramatic element somehow makes not only the much more interesting character of Nagisa but also the game of badminton itself get overlooked, and even the ending, while offering them a way to resolve the problem, does not provide the audience with any great sense of relief. Actually, I am kidding, it does - relief that this is all finally over... All that is left now is to explain to the neighbors that what I have just been watching was not pornography, even though it might have seemed like it was, due to an insanely long (and utterly stupid) sequence filled with nothing but the tired sighs and moans of the two main protagonists. 5.5/10. (2018.09.30)