(25 episodes)
What’s it about ?
Adaptation of a tennis manga series.
Characters
Eiichirou, our protagonist. Nicknamed “A-chan” for his consistently perfect grades. He has high-level OCD, and his cleanly-written, perfectly-designed notes are admired by the whole class. He’s perfectly okay with lending them out freely (he has spares !), too. See, making all those is integral to his learning process ; that’s the way he can cope with his studies.
Until a year ago, he had no interest whatsoever in tennis ; cue several-episode-long flashback. See, he was aware he needed to practice some sort of physical activity. Most sports clubs were out, as he has only little time available in his busy studying schedule, but that “free tryout!” pamphlet for the tennis club looked interesting.
Natsu, a girl in the next class over, happens to be in that club. Now, he’s no good at dealing with girls, but her dedication to tennis (she secretly wants to become pro) has peeked his interest. She seems to like him too ; she does call him a weirdo all the time, but it’s not mean-spirited.
The idea here (layed out in the flashforward prologue) is that Eiichirou is going to apply his meticulous approach to tennis, apparently with some success.
Production Values
Most of it is okay ; there’s some good animation for the tennis bits… but the character designs are very awkward, obviously lifted from the page without too much care on how they’ll look animated. In particular, the episode ends on a close shot of Natsu where I’m completely unable to discern what expression her face is supposed to be displaying.
Overall Impression
Now, that’s a semi-interesting premise for a sports show : the nerd who uses maths to supplement his play. I’m sure it’s been done before, but the characters are likeable enough, there’s some decent comedic timing, and I’m intrigued enough not to drop it immediately.
I’ll give it one more episode to feel out where it’s going.
