English Dub Review: Ahiru no Sora, “The Troublesome Freshman,” “The Duck and the Kite,” “Kite, His Ball, and the Team’s Pain”

 

 

 

 

Overview (Spoilers Below)

The Kuzu High basketball team is on its way to becoming an officially recognized club. Amidst their tribulations, a new face appears to throw a wrench into their progress.   

Our Take

Conveniently, like the previous three episodes, these three episodes connect perfectly together and focus on a single arc. 

We start with some new background information on Sora’s family as Madoka brings the exhausted Sora home. We see that he lives at his grandmother’s barbershop and that he is rather slovenly, focused only on basketball. 

We’re shown a photo of Sora’s mother playing basketball in her prime, prompting one to believe we’ll get to learn more about her past. That might’ve been interesting, but instead, we receive some elaboration on where she is now and how she got there. 

She was struck with a nondescript disease that forced her to go to a hospital near Tokyo. Sora wanted the family to move there to live with his mother, but she refused, saying that tending to her illness would only distract and worry them. This doesn’t sound particularly convincing. I would imagine they would worry regardless of where they live, even more so if they had to live far away. I would also think that her having her family there for support would be beneficial for her as well. 

This is obviously just a plot device to separate Sora and his mother so that the distance between them motivates him to do better at basketball. Convoluted as it may be, the logic works well enough for the drama. However, Sora has entered a high school near his mother’s hospital, living with his grandmother, so that he can eventually surprise her. Unfortunately, his grandmother quickly spills the beans to her. So just as soon as we learn of this element of longing, it is immediately shattered for a quick joke. Regardless, this situation still stands as Sora’s motivation.

I think the biggest shame amidst all of this is how Madoka is delegated to the role of Sora’s begrudging caretaker. It would be one thing for her to show concern for his well-being, like how she assisted him in returning home. But the next day, she happens to see him going for morning exercise and is compelled to follow after him for no real reason. She’s becoming less like a love interest and more like an interim mom. 

Meanwhile, the Kuzu High basketball team is beginning to shape up. The delinquent members are beginning to attend practice and they’re all properly invested in becoming a real team officially recognized by the school. They’ll need more members soon, which brings us to the focal point of these episodes.

The auxiliary members of the club happen upon somebody practicing their basketball skills in the court behind the school. When they invite him, he responds with violence and beats them up. 

This is Tobi, a freshman who was recently suspended for fighting and the person of interest in this saga.  He causes many, many problems for the basketball team, all of which involve him fighting. But contrary to their usual delinquent behavior, in all of these fights, the team never fights him back, drawing from Momoharu’s example of stoicism. 

After their first bout, they ask him again to join the basketball team, to what appears to be no avail. In the following days though, Tobi appears unannounced at the gym during practice and his recklessness causes problems. One day he accidentally injures a girl on another team. The following day, he intentionally injures a group of boys, drawing blood on the court.

Though the damage to his victims is nothing serious, the damage to the basketball team proves dire. The club’s prospective teacher advisor happens upon the scene of the second incident at just the wrong time. He mistakes Tobi as a member of the team and is quick to try to shut down the entire club. Though the other members of the team are eager to point out that they are all uninvolved with Tobi, Momoharu and Sora are much more reluctant to throw Tobi under the bus. They seem him as a strong potential teammate and want to try to preserve this relationship. Though Tobi is violent and aggressive, he is honest and clears up the misunderstanding. However, this does result in his expulsion from the school. 

Tobi is not a pleasant character at all. He is belligerent, temperamental, and childish. He at first appears to be a violent punk, but as the team members later point out, he is just a savage nutjob. 

The only way to justify his behavior is if he had a traumatic past, which he does. His father died when he was little and he couldn’t accept his mother remarrying. The tension with his stepfather manifests in him becoming violent and his stepfather resorts to kicking him out. This would be fine for Tobi, if not for his love for his little sister. He becomes estranged from his family, moving out to Kuzu High, which he got into on a recommendation for his basketball talent. He resolves to enter the inter-high basketball tournament, that he can return to his hometown, where the tourney is being held. 

This simple drama feels sufficient to justify Tobi’s unpalatable character. Though relayed through even more tired flashbacks, the tale is told with enough delicacy that the message gets through successfully. 

However, I feel this does not all come together quite right in the end. They spent far too much time focused on this dilemma and it feels too stretched out. Additionally, this is further compounded by Momoharu and Sora’s reticence in taking action against Tobi’s misdeeds. This is due to them wanting him as a team member, which in turn is because the overall narrative requires that the team acquire more members. The means may be competent, but ultimately they are contrived for an end made compulsory by the genre. 

This is further evidenced by the resolution, which is as cliche as the setup. Sora approaches Tobi, pleading him to join the team once again. Perhaps in recognition of Sora’s persistence, Tobi agrees on the condition that Sora wins a ball-stealing game against him. This confrontation serves to compare the two freshmen, both people who are trying to succeed in basketball so that they can reunite with their loved ones. Tobi then has his myriad flashbacks, which allows Sora to steal the ball and get Tobi on the team.

This then leaves them with the issue of Tobi’s imminent expulsion. Fortunately, unlike the rest of this whole debacle, this is resolved swiftly and humorously. The sheer convenience of it might be a little suspect, but frankly, I’m just glad it’s over. 

As I said, I think this arc got too long in the tooth. This story was worthy of perhaps two dedicated episodes, but certainly not three scattershot ones. I’d rather they spent more time on Sora’s mother if they were going to expound on a character’s motivations. 

It seems the team’s next endeavors may involve recruiting more members. Hopefully, they won’t try our patience as much as they did here.