English Dub Season Review: Blue Box Season One

I’m sorry, you just can’t make Badminton look cool.
We’ve got another Weekly Shonen Jump manga finally getting the anime adaptation treatment, this time being one of Jump’s oldest currently ongoing stories: Blue Box. And if you know much about romance anime, you’re probably not gonna be super surprised by this one, as it does a lot of expected choices and pulls from familiar tropes and cliches, so it pretty much sticks to the standard formula for these types of stories. Bright eyed and innocent high school Badminton player male protagonist, Taiki Inomata, has a crush on his upperclassman, basketball prodigy Chinatsu Kano, but even though they practice their respective sports separately but in the same gym, he’s never worked up the courage to talk to her. Well, that becomes a lot easier very quickly when it turns out their parents are friends and Chinatsu is going to stay with Taiki’s family while her parents are away on business and Chinatsu wants to stay in Japan for an upcoming basketball competition, allowing the two to get close rather quickly. But oh no, Taiki’s childhood friend and talented gymnast Hina Chono sees this developing romance and realizes her constant teasing was actually feelings for Taiki this whole time! What’s gonna happen now?!

Well, again, if you have even the slightest familiarity with this subgenre of anime romcom, it’s kinda blindingly obvious. There are moments of bonding followed by misunderstandings that could be easily solved by a single conversation, and since this also takes place in a high school, rumors spread fast over the slightest thing and some characters benefit more from the rumors than others. And naturally, since watching two people just slowly form a romantic connection would apparently be too boring, we have to throw in a third person to have a love triangle. Or rather, kinda vaguely hint at one for the sake of artificially creating tension before ultimately deciding against it and making it clear that said third person was never really any competition in the first place. At the very least it works to bolster said third person’s character arc in how they explore their feelings and make decisions for themselves, but we don’t really get a good sense of how they grow as a person after being decisively rejected. And aside from these three main participants in the romance game, there are plenty of minor characters who give their own takes and perspective on romance that act as foils for the main one, though they don’t often get a bunch of focus.

However, if there are qualities of Blue Box that I can absolutely say in its favor, it’s that the animation is gorgeous and the story is…earnest. It truly taps into the feelings of youth, both its exhilarating highs and crashing lows, all while looking quite aesthetically pleasing. It is, however, ultimately a pretty narrow view of that period of life and using a very well trodden way of portraying it. Also, while anime has proven time and again that many sports can look cool if given the right amount of love on the screen…you really can’t make that work for Badminton. I’ve seen anime about Ping Pong and gymnastics and ice skating that all got me invested…but I cannot say I ever felt like that watching Taiki hit the shuttlecock. But hey, what do I know, this manga has been going on for years for a damn good reason and the anime already has a second season on the way, so whoever is going to enjoy this series will most certainly find it on their own. And until then, I’ll try looking up what the heck the Blue Box it’s referring to actually is. Apparently there is some debate about that.