English Dub Review: Stars Align “Episode 3”

 

 

 

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Maki’s success in the practices matches spurs the anger of other team members, resulting in self-reflection as well as some violence. 

Our Take

The tennis club activities continue in full force as Toma puts Maki through a series of doubles practice matches against the rest of the team. Maki gets off to a great start as he is able to single-handedly trounce his first opponents. The rest of the team scowls at how easily Maki is handling them and they begin to come at him with more effort. Further to their chagrin, Maki starts adapting and improving at an incredible pace and he quickly outplays them. 

This skill gap has been the primary source of animosity between Maki and the rest of the team thus far, and this episode starts by widening it even further. At the end of the episode though, Maki begins to earnestly alleviate both the gap and the tension it has created. But before that happens, the tension sets off two members of the tennis team who each serve as the emotional focus for this episode. 

The first is Toma who is Maki’s partner in the doubles practice matches. His frustration here is twofold. On the one hand, Maki being able to handle both opponents by himself makes him feel useless as a player. And on the other, seeing all the members of the team he is captain of getting stomped by one person makes him feel useless as a leader. All of this culminates in him blowing his fuse, yelling at everyone else about how useless they all are, and leaving practice early. 

He storms home and is greeted by his mother who clearly sees that he abandoned his team and immediately gets cross with him. Here Toma’s mother’s feelings towards Toma are revealed. She seems to be disappointed in him as a person as he has a temper that often results in him leaving things half-done. This disappointment is probably in light of her comparing him to his more successful older brother, Ryoma. For Toma, in addition to all of the pressure he puts on himself as a result of his personality, the unfairly high expectations his mother sets for him all come together to crush him.

Though Toma has obviously dug most of this grave himself, we begin to feel some empathy for him as not all of the pressure placed on him is completely his fault. In this situation, one would feel he needs a few words of encouragement and that’s exactly what he receives. The aforementioned favorite child and older brother Ryoma steps in to tell Toma that parents don’t always get along with their children and how his mother feels about him isn’t Toma’s fault. This along with a conversation with Maki, who is now actively trying to get everyone’s act together, gets Toma out of his rut. 

The second team member who gets enraged by the one-sided practice matches is Itsuki, and his reaction is much more volatile. His immediate response to Maki constantly one-upping him is to start directing some of the balls that come his way towards Maki himself, intending to hit his body rather than score. This results in a couple of nasty welts for Maki, though he soon powers through these deliberate body blows.   

This is not the only toxic behavior Itsuki displays. A couple of bullies come up to the tennis club to heckle them and they soon single out Itsuki. They make fun of him for performing worse than his sister and pick at his family situation, highlighting how he lives with his single mother. Itsuki responds to this by walking up to one of the bullies and attacking him with his tennis racket, delivering a large gash to his head. While everyone is dealing with the panic and blood, Itsuki is smiling amidst all of this, seemingly pleased with himself. He had a similar expression when hurting Maki earlier, which seems to paint him as antisocial and perhaps a bit sadistic. 

The entire situation with Itsuki begins to unravel as Maki steps in. He calms Itsuki down and tries to relate with him, saying how he also felt frustrated by the bullies and explaining how he also lives with his single mother. Later, the rest of the team reveals the root of Itsuki’s antisocial tendencies and why he doesn’t change into his uniform in front of others. When Itsuki was an infant his mother could not tolerate his constant crying and responded to this by pouring a kettle full of boiling water onto the back of a one-year-old, resulting in traumatic burn scars. The issue is then quickly resolved, Itsuki’s potentially twisted personality and the unstable living situation left alone.

Amidst all of these personal revelations, Stars Aligns itself seems to be revealing something of a pattern, with every character they turn the spotlight on conveniently having a dark and troubled past. It utilizes dramatic interpersonal conflicts as a means to expose a person’s traumatic past as a reason for why they would become involved in these conflicts in the first place. So far this has been acceptable, if a bit rote, method of establishing and developing character arcs. However, thus far we have seen plenty of establishment but not a whole lot of development. While it’s only the third episode and there seem to be plenty of other characters they might want to address, the speed at which these conflicts appear and disappear wears the entire routine a bit thin prematurely. 

That said, the balance between the progression of the tennis team and the drama is maintained very well. Each aspect of the show serves to drive the other without one being overshadowed. If they can maintain this balance and start focusing more on developing characters by actually resolving all of these conflicts, this could be the start of a competent sports drama.