English Dub Review: Salaryman’s Club “Breakthrough”

Overview

Doubles teams are reassigned when a new member joins the badminton team, and former singles player Saeki Sota is assigned to play doubles with his brother Toya. Toya is excited to play doubles with his brother, but Sota’s feelings about the change are complicated, and a fight between the two threatens to dissolve their doubles team entirely. Meanwhile, Toya finds himself in a bind at work, too…

Our Take

I like we got some development on the brothers since they were especially Touya were kinda just there for a while. But the real issue hanging out there is in regards to the character Tatsuru? We got the hint of a possible serious leg problem, and rumors of marriage and/or accepting a promotion. But no movement of this issue until the last fraction of a second. Not just a cliffhanger, but a bit of a tease.

Also since they made it a bit of a running joke last time, Drunk Mikoto returns! With him getting drunk off his ass and just saying whatever is on his mind may seem like comedy gold, but Mikoto arguing with the Executive Director raises concern since he’s already thinking about cutting the Badminton team, at least nothing has been said just yet but I’m sure he’ll bring that up soon…

Delving into the topic of having less time as you get older and the responsibilities in your life that increase is something that is rarely done in sports anime that much, mainly because of most of those stories take place in high school and it’s something grown adults can easily connect with, however that Tatsuru injury subplot can be a bit annoying. The dude is supposed to be around his 30s and he suddenly shuts down and does a 180? And after everything that happened in the first 7 episodes, it kinda feels like a step backward…