English Dub Review: Hanebado! “Incredible Talent!”

Do you like your badminton anime served with plenty of visual flair and character drama?

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Our Take:

Hanebado! is a show that aims to be taken seriously. There’s still a little time for jokes, gags, and the usually animated levity, but this series is clearly focused on showing serious girls playing series sports. For the most part, I enjoyed this first episode, even if I am still not entirely hooked on the show as a whole.

The fluid animation gives Hanebado! an energetic visual style for sure. In an intense sports show like this, it’s definitely preferable to a more static style, but I couldn’t help but feel a tiny bit overwhelmed by it all.  It’s like, if everything is animated with 110%, then nothing is, y’know? There’s got to be a balance, and you’ve got to have lows in order to accentuate the highs.

Nagisa, the president of the badminton club, is hell-bent on whipping the high school team into proper shape. She’s an ultra-competitive girl who spends most of her free time practicing badminton. From what backstory we’ve gleaned so far, it appears that she lost a close match in the past that caused her to question the reason she played the sport in the first place. And as things would go, a new student, Ayano is the girl that Nagisa was bested by.

Ayano and her past experience with the sport seem interesting to me, and with so many characters already introduced, I’m looking forward to getting to know everyone and seeing how they integrate into the series and play off each other. I’m less of a fan of the way we find out about Ayano and her badminton history. Maybe I’m just conflicted, but it seems so coincidental the way it all plays out. For a series so rooted in making every action dramatic, I suppose it is fitting, though, that she literally reveals her mad skills by saving her friend’s face from a flying projectile.

Visually, the show is pretty consistently excellent in this premiere episode. The sweat drips, the faces contort, and yes, the boobs do bounce in a complete dismissal of actual physics. Some of the shot compositions were very nicely done, like the wide-angle shot of the group in the school building. The music, too, had some pieces that I can see becoming potential staples on my playlist of OSTs.

The dub seems very competent for an initial episode, with actors who already feel at home as their respective characters. In particular, Dawn M. Bennett does a great job embodying club president Nagisa, giving her an ultra-competitive edge without taking away her humanity. The script itself had moments of clunkiness, like the line that referenced the “suppleness of your wrists”, but on the whole, the adaption was very solid and spot-on to the original.

As it stands, Hanebado! seems to be setting up an epic rematch between Nagisa and Ayano, and is poised to deliver a full season of high tension sports matches combined with interesting characters and plenty of inner turmoil and emotional journeys. Can it balance these elements and make them all engaging to watch? That’s another question entirely, but it’s one we English dub viewers will know the answer to in just a few weeks.