It's been a while since I've finished off an anime series that wasn't a movie or OVA. Basquash! is a 26 episode series from the previous season which I was finally able to finish this weekend. One thing you should know I hate sports themed anime series and wouldn't touch them with a ten foot pole and I wasn't originally going to watch this series since it was a Basketball oriented series and I couldn't care less about that crap. However...
The anime boards alighted with the fanservice that the first couple episodes had in them and discussion ensued so I was just a bit interested in that and people were saying that while it was about basketball very little of the anime was actual game play so I thought I'd give it a try anyway.
It only took me a handful of episodes to get hooked, basketball took a back seat to the sci-fi mecha story. Basquash! is a story of Dan JD who wants to win the Bigfoot League (that's the basketball championship played with large mecha robots designed to play basketball) so that he can take his sister to the moon so that she can get her legs fixed. When Dan and his sister were younger they were playing basketball and his sister was stepped on by a bigfoot and since then Dan has had a dislike for them until his childhood friend comes back and gives him the chance to play in bigfoot himself. The story progresses from there as Dan and his friends gather a team of renegade Basquashers as they take on the Bigfoot League.
The story takes a decidedly strange change in direction midway though the series and turns into a series about saving the planet and the moon from total destruction. Apparenetly the world was created by giants who played basketball and created the world that way and in doing so they created the planet and the moon as a connected system with two powerful rocks keeping each other way and over time those rocks have lost power and so the people who knew about that set out to create the Bigfoot League in order to find the LEGEND. Dan and his team face several challenges and finally find their way to the moon in order to save the two worlds while the military group back on earth is trying to destroy the moon to save it self. In all this time the fanservice happens less and less and the basketball play happens more and more thankfully it's done in a way that it's not your typical game play and that's what keeps it interesting. Every thing gets worked out the find out the LEGEND isn't just one person but everyone working together.
Overall I think the series suffered a bit from the change in direction and jumping around from story line to story line without ever finishing the fist story line. You end up loosing a little in the continuity but after it's all said and done you don't feel like you really got shafted in the end.
The nitty gritty is that the animation is good the music track is good the story is OK as long as you don't mind a complete change in direction half way though. So I'd say it was watchable and interesting enough to enjoy whether or not you like sports themed anime. I'd say it's worth a rent if anyone licensed it but I really highly doubt that anyone will at the moment.
Check out the trailer for Basquash! below:
