Anime Review: Kuroko's Basketball (Seasons 1-2)

Kuroko’s Basketball Season 3 is coming out in January! Hooray! Here’s a review of Seasons 1-2 to celebrate. Hope you enjoy! J

I’ve never really been interested in sports-based entertainment, whether it’s reality or fiction. I did play soccer for a good portion of my life, but sitting and watching the sport without participating always bored me. There are some pretty good movies out there focused on sports, like The Bad-News Bears and All The Right Moves, but still, I could never get into the genre personally. So, this lackadaisical attitude towards anything sports-related carried over when I began watching anime. I knew that the sports-anime genre existed, and that their fanbase was incredibly loyal and absolutely loved the genre, but I could never bring myself to sit down and watch one of these shows. That is, until a friend at camp recommended that I watch this show called Kuroko’s Basketball. I had vaguely heard about this show beforehand, but didn’t become truly aware of its popularity until he told me about it. Then, when I got home, a certain anime review that I follow named NinjaMushi had the same anime listed very high on his favorites list, so I became even more interested. It was around the beginning of November that I finally opened Crunchyroll and watched all 50 episodes from beginning to end. Did Kuroko’s Basketball make me considerably more interested in the sports genre, or was it a colossal failure? Sit back, relax, and read on as I review Kuroko’s Basketball (or, as the full title states, The Basketball Which Kuroko Plays).

The Setup:

This section is quite simple, really. A relatively new high school named Seirin is trying to recruit members for the basketball team, as the team is rather small and the onslaught of new students should provide some new players. They do, in fact, manage to glean 5 members, two of which are Taiga Kagami and Tetsuya Kuroko. Both are rather special: Kagami is a naturally talented basketball player that puts most average players to shame, and Kuroko was the “phantom sixth member” of 5 basketball prodigies, called The Generation of Miracles. Kagami’s goal is to defeat every single member of the Generation of Miracles and become the best high school basketball player in Japan. Kuroko decides to help Kagami for reasons that will be explained later in the story. At first, Kagami thinks that Kuroko is a talentless hack, as he played Kuroko and totally crushed him. But then, during practices and actual matches, Kagami begins to recognize Kuroko’s own style of basketball…and that they may actually have the power to overcome the immense challenge. Not too hard to follow, right? And, yeah; it does sound rather clichéd, especially for a sports anime. However, it is what the anime does with this setup that separates it from others of its type.

The Generation of Miracles in Middle School

The Characters:

In a show with a plot as simple as this, it is vital to provide the audience with a reason to care about the events transpiring by incorporating likable and relatable characters. Luckily, Kuroko’s Basketball succeeds in this front, to the point where I’d call this cast one of my favorites period. These characters aren’t the most complex in the entire world, but they still feel human and are hard to dislike, at least for me. The show takes advantage of its long run time to really flesh out the main and even the side characters, which is something that’s rarely done in anime. Firstly, there’s Kagami, the main protagonist (despite not being featured in the title). He originally starts out as cold, standoffish, and angry, but has a passion for basketball. He moved back to Japan from America, as he stayed there for his middle school years, and is unimpressed with everyone’s skills in Serin. Eventually, he grows out of this phase. What I think is especially well done about Kagami is how the show creates a balance between his growing reliance on his teammates and with his development as an individual player. This also isn’t shoved in your face (for the most part), it’s just shown through watching Kagami play and become friends with his teammates. Speaking of, next is the titular character himself, Kuroko. Kuroko is pretty emotionless, and appears to have no presence in any situation. No, seriously; most people don’t notice that he exists. He believes in playing basketball through teamwork and having fun, which means that he has the opposite problem of Kagami; he’s too reliant on other players for his style of basketball to work. So, as the show moves along, he has to learn to rely on himself as well as his teammates. Another aspect that is really well done is the friendship between Kuroko and Kagami. As stated before, they have opposite problems when it comes to basketball, and throughout the show their ideas really seemed to influence each other, making a pretty unstoppable pair. Not to say that they’re the only good characters. Their teammates, like Kyoshi, Hyuga, Izuki, and company all get a fair amount of screen time to get a sense of their personalities and motivations, making it all the more satisfying to see the team win. Then there’s the Generation of Miracles: Kise, Midorima, Aomine, Musakihabara, and Akashi. Kise is easy-going and the nicest out of the group, but is a player to be reckoned with on the court. Midorima is arrogant, rude, has a strange obsession with horoscopes, and never misses the basket. Never. Aomine is completely full of himself. He’s never lost a singular game, and because of this thinks he can never lose. And, to a point, he’s pretty much justified. He’s also my favorite character in the entire show because of how well portrayed he is, transforming from a talented kid who loves basketball to someone who has pretty much lost hope in ever finding a player good enough to challenge him. Musakihabara, strangely enough, couldn’t care less about basketball, or anything else for that matter. But, he’s still incredibly talented, and plays basketball because he has nothing better to do. Akashi, from what little screen time he’s had, is the most frightening out of the five. In fact, if I ever made a Top 10 Scariest Anime Characters countdown, he’s be near the top. He’s completely obsessed with victory and things going his way, and would actually kill if anyone defied him. Even though he has maybe 10 minutes of screen time over the course of two seasons and around the same amount of dialogue, you know he’s scary when he’s able to make an impression in that short span. Then there’re all the teammates of the Generation of Miracles, coaches, other teams, and other Seirin members, but before we wrap this section up I’d like to bring up one more character: Rika, the teenaged coach of the Seirin Basketball team. I don’t know about anyone else, but it’s nice to know that the show respects its female characters enough to put all of them (what little there are) into leadership roles. For this, I just respect the show even more. Overall, the characters are fantastic, and are what really makes the show enjoyable.

The Seirin Basketball Team 

The Generation of Miracles

The Story:

I don’t think I’m spoiling anything when I say that the story pretty much goes how you’d expect it to: Kagami and Kuroko beat the members of the Generation of Miracles one by one to become the greatest in Japan. Is anyone surprised? However, despite this type of story being highly predictable, the anime doesn’t really focus on whether Seirin will win, but rather on how they’ll win. More attention is drawn to the skills of the players and the impossible odds, so instead of just waiting for the team to win, you sit there wondering, “How will Kagami overcome this challenge?” or “Will Kuroko’s pass work?” or “What will Aomine do next?” and so on. In other words, Kuroko’s Basketball focuses more on the journey than the actual destination, trying to make the journey as awesome and epic as humanly possible. And, you know what, it works. Yeah, who would’ve though that an anime about basketball, a sport that I’ve never shown any interest in, could be considered epic? Kuroko’s Basketball also subverts the usual cliché of having unskilled characters become skilled over time by featuring rather talented players as the main characters, and shows how even talented players can improve, which I rather liked. However, this is also where my main problem with the show lies, and that is the sports clichés that the show does contain. I know that corniness and clichéd dialogue is par for the course with entertainment like this, but sometimes the dialogue was so over-the-top that it took me out of the experience. In a way, the epicness of the show actually works against itself by featuring the poorly written dialogue, as I was constantly thinking, “Come on, Kuroko, you’re better than this!” Though, this is more a personal issue than one that people may find a problem with. Despite this, the story really doesn’t have many problems. If anything, it’s one of the most enjoyable stories in anime, and is really easy to follow. Some may complain that the matches go on for too long, but personally I thought they were perfectly paced. Despite the corniness, there’s not too much to complain about.

The story, while clichéd, is incredibly well-executed

The Animation and Sound:

Produced by Production IG, I was a little surprised by how they handled this anime. That is, the show’s animation isn’t bad by any stretch, but does look a little low budget compared to Psycho-Pass and Guilty Crown (which are both giant wastes of time in my opinion). Though, low budget for Production IG means that on normal standards, the animation is above average. There are some still-frames and sometimes the animation looks a little clunky, but when it needs to look good, it blows most other anime out of the water. The matches all look glorious, and the animation of the third opening is mind blowing. The characters also all look very three dimensional, and I really love the character designs. Something that I also picked up on was the deliberate hair coloring. Notice how it’s only the characters with some inhuman ability (i.e. Kagami, Kuroko, Generation of Miracles) that has a strange hair color, while all the normal players have regular hair color? I may be reading too deeply into this, but it’s some food for thought. The music is awesome. All the opening and ending songs are memorable, with the third opening being my favorite, and the OST is very good at getting you excited. My personal favorite song is Touou Match Epilogue, which is more of a closure song, but I love it to pieces. There’s no English dub, but this is one of the few anime where I would actually oppose re-releasing it in a different language. The Japanese version is practically flawless, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Opening 3: