Kuroko no Basket

For the last three years, Teikou Middle School has dominated the national basketball scene with its legendary lineup: the "Generation of Miracles." It consisted of five prodigies who excelled at the sport, but a "Phantom Sixth Man" lurked in the shadows and helped earn the team their revered status. Eventually, their monstrous growth jaded them from the sport they loved and made them go their separate ways in high school.

In search of new members, the Seirin High School basketball team recruits Taiga Kagami and Tetsuya Kuroko, two freshmen who seem to have significant differences in abilities. Having returned recently from America, Kagami has both a natural aptitude and relentless love for the sport. Meanwhile, Kuroko lacks presence and exhibits no outstanding athletic talent. However, it is later revealed that he is Teikou's Phantom Sixth Man—the player once part of the Generation of Miracles.

Kuroko wants to prove to the Seirin team that he is strong in his own way. Seeing his conviction, Kagami forms a dynamic partnership with Kuroko, the latter promising to support Kagami's "light" as his "shadow." Alongside their new Seirin teammates, they aim to conquer the upcoming Interhigh championship, but the reappearance of Kuroko's former teammates complicates their plan.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kuroko, Tetsuya Main

Ono, Kensho Japanese

Kagami, Taiga Main

Ono, Yuuki Japanese

Aomine, Daiki Supporting

Suwabe, Junichi Japanese

Akashi, Seijuurou Supporting

Kamiya, Hiroshi Japanese

Kise, Ryouta Supporting

Kimura, Ryouhei Japanese

Midorima, Shintarou Supporting

Ono, Daisuke Japanese

Murasakibara, Atsushi Supporting

Suzumura, Kenichi Japanese

Kiyoshi, Teppei Supporting

Hamada, Kenji Japanese

Takao, Kazunari Supporting

Suzuki, Tatsuhisa Japanese

Momoi, Satsuki Supporting

Orikasa, Fumiko Japanese

Oowada, Tomoyuki Producer

Morihiro, Fumi Producer

Maruyama, Hiroo Producer

Kuroki, Rui Producer

Reviews

Nov 22, 2024

Elyshion

Recommended

Kuroko no Basket is an excellent anime! Starting with the players who are super badass both physically and in their playing styles! Especially for Kuroko:

He is the most discreet player on the team, nicknamed the “Ghost Player”. With a smaller profile, he uses his “Misdirection” technique to distract his opponents. Kuroko considers himself Kagami’s shadow, his light and promises him to become the number one in Japan. It’s an excellent profile because being tall isn’t everything, especially in basketball.

In addition, they evolve over the seasons to perfect their techniques and to always become stronger. This is probably one of the reasons I liked this anime. ... It’s the sports Nekketsu.

The animation and the character design are very beautiful, very fluid and very dynamic. The matches are truly epic, even memorable, and are relatively short, not exceeding three episodes. In terms of the soundtrack, the openings, endings and OSTs are one of the biggest highlights of the anime. With a J-Rock style, they fit well with the atmosphere of the anime.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Sep 6, 2023

vinsmokerlaw

Mixed Feelings

To be straight to the point, I think KNB's biggest faults are its characters and their developments and story pacing.

Characters + Developments:
This part is very crucial in any story for viewers to develop a connection with the characters, and this is something KNB failed at doing. This is also prolly why the fandom is dead. The characters may seem interesting at first glance, but when you dig deeper you realize that there isn't much depth in them. Such as the goals of Kuroko and Kagami, their goals were very generic and just very plain, and even throughout their journey to accomplish that goal, I couldn't ... really see any changes in their personalities. They're just the same all throughout the show and there's nothing really interesting about them besides their "superhuman abilities" that define them. Kagami jumps around and Kuroko passes around. That's about it. Kuroko could've been more interesting if they fleshed out the effects of his past with the GoM and how he could've been transformed after their loss against Aomine. This also goes for every single team in KNB, they don't have any solid dynamic and it's just a repetition of the typical "calm-dumb-energetic-smart" squad in the team. The main teams in KNB aren't that interesting and don't really give us how they are outside or inside the team/school. Take Haikyuu for example, like KNB, they have many teams and you can see or feel a connection to them because you get to see what they're like outside of volleyball. However, in KNB, you only get to see the different teams during games ONLY. THAT'S IT. That also goes for Seirin.

The Generation of Miracles are also no exception from this. They are all defined by their superhuman abilities and are just very shallow. Aomine and Murasakibara are examples of wasted character potential, why? Because they didn't have an evident change after their loss against Seirin. Aomine continued to slack in practice and Murasakibara still saw practicing as a hassle and he was too lazy for it. Like, aren't ya'll supposed to try harder now that you tasted defeat and wanna improve? Midorima and Kise are very shallow too, not much to say about their personalities as Midorima is the tsundere and Kise is that basketball version of Oikawa. Akashi's dual personality was very interesting and how ore-shi and boku-shi would talk to each other internally was also very good, but I really wanted more of his past and personality fleshed out even more since he had the potential to be a great character.

Story Pacing:
For real, this is KNB's biggest problem and I'm super pissed about it cuz I wanted to fully love this anime, but I think this is the reason why the fandom is practically dead. THE PACING IS SO BAD. Everything felt very rushed, it's like being given a spoon of soup to taste but then it suddenly gets snatched and you're given another spoon with a different flavor, and this is done 100x. When I was introduced to Kuroko and Kagami at the same time, I was slightly overwhelmed because they're suddenly introducing Kagami's goal to defeat the GoM out of the literal blue because why would he wanna do that if he didn't have a solid reason? It would've been plausible if he was defeated by them or whatever. Then Kuroko suddenly wants to help him achieve that goal right off the bat. Then we're introduced to Kise who declares war on Seirin, and then Seirin and Kaijo have a practice match. LIKE WHAT IS THIS? KNB doesn't give me any room to take in every single info that's being shown to me. They could've fleshed out the characters first, then give us the practice match. BUT! They suddenly shove in the Inter-High prelims down my throat.

The sudden introductions of opponents and characters is super rushed that I don't get time to memorize who is who. And the biggest sucker punch are the "training arcs". Sports animes need training arcs in order for the viewers to see the characters' improvements, but KNB doesn't give as much as a drop of it. We only see like 30 mins of training, then they make these sick moves on the fly like why? Let's use Haikyuu again as a reference. In Haikyuu, you can clearly see the changes Hinata, Kageyama and the team made during their countless training moments and you can also see the sick moves they used in practice in their official games. In KNB, I'm not super amazed at how Kagami, Kuroko, or any other character for that matter can use these super moves in their official games, when I didn't see the process of how they arrived at that result. A key factor in sports animes is the process of their transformation. KNB had terrible pacing that those crucial training scenes were as good as nonexistent. Don't get me started on the KNB Last Game movie, that movie had terrible pacing. Like we get moment of them "training", declare war against Jabberwocks, then get straight to the match. Like what? They had 1 hr and 50+ mins to show us their training because Jabberwocks even rivaled NBA players, but no, because their the Generation of Miracles, they'll make the dream work.

Overall:
KNB had so much potential in rising to be one of the best sports animes out there. Personally, I really liked it since I got to learn a bit of basketball from it, the character designs was like Horimiya but in the sports realm, the OST was good to especially the 3rd opening and the 5th ending were absolute bangers. The animation was very good especially the Aomine vs Kagami match, Kise vs Aomine, Seirin vs Akashi, and the Last Game was also very good. The character designs for the GoM was also good, but the non-GoM people looked liked average side characters sadly, it would've been nice if the side characters had crazy hair colors too to not make the GoM look like foreigners. I'd rate this anime a solid 8/10.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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May 6, 2023

Trikkiez

Not Recommended

Funny

Kuroko is supposed to be a sports anime, but it isn't even about the sport. Despite there being basketball games that take place, there is no real portrayal of basketball to be found. It is just a generic rule of cool anime that happens to involve basketball. The concept of superpowers in sports completely takes the point away from the sport in the first place. It makes the side characters irrelevant, and it completely destroys the foundation of the sport. Instead of placing the focus on the intricacies of the sport, we are focused on random superpowers. The characters are bland and uninteresting, and there ... are no stakes present in this anime whatsoever because of this.

Characters:
There is no reason to care for the characters on their journey because there is no reason to like them in the first place. We hardly see them in their personal lives, and we don't see them make relationships with anyone outside of the team. They don't have any real motivations except that Kuroko wants to prove that he is valuable to the other members of the generation of miracles for some reason. This doesn't make sense in the first place because Kuroko is constantly asked by the other members to leave the team he joined to join them, proving that they saw him as valuable the whole time. Even if they didn't, he is already one of the 10 best players in the entire world because he was born with superpowers, so of course, he would be valuable. Kuroko is a shy person who goes unnoticed by most of the people around him. This is literally just what his ability is. He goes unnoticed on the court because of the fact that he doesn't do much, and he uses this to his advantage. Except he actually does do stuff on the court, such as passing, so you would think that the opponents would begin to learn of this cliche and not let it happen over and over again, but yet he still goes unnoticed. When your entire personality can be defined in a simple ability like Kuroko's can, that's the sign of a generic self-insert character.

Kagami is just along for the ride and doesn't have many real motivations outside of the generic wanting to be number one by surpassing the generation of miracles. This is literally impossible due to his ability being almost completely useless, if not the most useless in the anime. This would be a fine underdog story normally, but in this anime, the concept of getting better through training is completely nonexistent. This means there is no point in watching this anime because the main character will either achieve his goals through plot armor and bad writing, or he will never achieve them at all since he was born unlucky.
The side characters pretty much have no involvement in the games since all of the main characters have superpowers. This is a terrible way of nullifying all side characters since they were born unlucky, and they are only there as filler players. The games might as well be 2v2 games instead of 5v5. Outside of that, they only serve as comedy and fan service.

The rest of the generation of miracles are just stereotypes with broken abilities with different hair colors. When you pick a favorite character in this anime, you don't pick them because you like their character more; you pick them for their hair color and their abilities. All of the main characters who have abilities are defined by simply having a different hair color from one another, and that's it. Aomine is a poorly written-character as well. He was growing tired of competing since he was better than everyone else around him, so why didn't he just move on and play against bigger competetion? This happens all the time in real life, where younger people play up. It was Aomines choice to play against worse competetion, so why does he still play in the lower leagues? I found myself not caring about a single character because nobody is playing for anything meaningful. The main 2 characters are trying to get attention for how lucky they were for being born with basketball abilities; Kise doesn't even like basketball and also just wants to be cool like Aomine. Aomine thinks he is better than everyone and also doesn't want to play the sport, and we don't even know what Midorima is playing for. The only characters with some sort of actual motivations happen to be the side characters, who will never even be useful on a team no matter how hard they train.

Powers:
The generation of miracles is a poor concept, to begin with. These people all happened to go to the same school at the same time, and all happen to have superpowers? It doesn't make sense that they all go to the same school, and nobody else outside of this school had any superpowers, except Kagami, of course, because of plot convenience. Why are these people even competing at the high school level at this point? Midorima can literally shoot 100% from 3. This is not only impossible but Steph Curry, who is the best 3-point shooter of all time, only shoots 42.8% from 3, so why isn't he playing at a much higher level already? This concept is so poorly thought out, and if the writer wanted to force abilities in this badly, they should've made them less overpowered and more subtle, so it would at least be fair. The players and coaches seem to be self-aware of these abilities, yet they aren't at the same time. They are never implemented into the game plan at all. The abilities are often inconsistent, to the point where even the author doesn't know how they work. There is no consistency or use of strategy integrated within the abilities that add to the sport. You would think that, at least with the power system, the author would include this as a strategic way of playing through the basketball game, but even with these powers, there is still no strategy involved, and it is just random dunks with barely any planning or teamwork.
The author was attempting to mix normal basketball play with overpowered abilities, but this creates an infinite number of problems such as: If Midorima can shoot 100% from anywhere on the court (even full-court shots somehow, which is physically impossible), why don't they just set screens or create ball movement in order to get him more open? Why doesn't Kise just copy whatever ability he needs at any moment in time whenever he needs that exact ability? Why does Kuroko go unnoticed still even though people know that his quirk is going unnoticed? Why does Kagami's ability defy the laws of physics? Why is Aomine so overpowered to the point where he can seemingly do anything he wants? The author was attempting to still have the characters play normal basketball even with these broken abilities, but the author didn't realize just how much these abilities change the core function of how the sport is played. Instead of going all the way and changing it fully, he mixes it with traditional basketball, and he uses the abilities as a cheap way to let us know who the important characters are instead of being able to come up with actual crafty basketball skills that normal people have in real life.
Even the Coach has a random inhuman ability for no reason, which normally serves as plot convenience to use it as an excuse for her to know when Kagami should play or not whenever he gets injured. Instead of having a medical team like in real life and having to make a life-altering decision such as deciding whether to risk it all and play for the current time and risk making your injury career-ending or to suck it up and let it heal by ending the current season. Instead of being faced with tough decisions, the coach just magically knows exactly what Kagami's health status is and if he should continue playing or not. Why doesn't she become a doctor or something and actually do something more important than being a basketball coach with an ability like this? Could you imagine how helpful she would be? But no, she is just a basketball coach for a random school for some reason. The powers create infinite problems, and this was one of the biggest downfalls of the anime.

Games:
The games do a good job of building suspense, and it captures the intensity of the games really well at times. The soundtrack also does a great job at keeping the viewer interested along with the overall competitive environment. On the first watch, Kuroko can be thrilling and intense for anyone who manages to care about the characters. However, the games themselves are very uninteresting if you take the emotions out. Rewatching a game in Kuroko is almost completely pointless, and it's just plaing boring unless you're watching out of pure nostalgia. Rewatching a real NBA game, even when you know the outcome is very rewarding because you can dissect so many little things all of the players do and the strategies involved within the game to learn more about the sport and to learn how to get better at it yourself. You can really see everyones intent and purpose in the game. In Kuroko, there is no real strategy. It's just a rule of cool, with random shooting, running around, dunking, and overpowered abilities. This is why it’s so easy to get into this anime for people who don’t play basketball because it’s not actually basketball. The games are too lackluster and don't have enough strategy to be interesting to anyone who isn't just satisfied with seeing random dunking. There are never any stakes because we are never invested in the characters, and nobody is playing for anything meaningful.

In Summary:
In sports, everyone has to constantly work on their game to improve it no matter the sport. This is how you get better than others. In real life, anyone can be as good as they want to be at any sport if they work hard enough at it and learn what their strengths and weaknesses are. This isn't the case in Kuroko because no matter how hard they train, the side characters will never come close to touching the skill of the main characters. Therefore the message of this show is to hope you get lucky and are born with the best genetics. So, if you aren't born as a 7-foot-tall male with a 50" vertical that can also shoot consistently from anywhere on the floor efficiently and play defense at a high level, you might as well just not play basketball in the first place unless you want to be an irrelevant side character.
There is no sense in attempting to get better at the sport, there is no strategy, and we aren't shown the intricacies of the sport in the slightest. I was able to enjoy something like Initial D even though I was never interested in racing in the slightest because the author bothered to show the viewers the intricacies of the sport, and I was able to really appreciate racing once I finished it. I learned a lot about racing after completing Initial D, However, with Kuroko, this isn't the case. The concept of the abilities takes what is good about basketball out and turn it into something it isn't and should never be. If you don't know anything about basketball, don't expect Kuroko to teach you a single thing. Kuroko doesn't capture the struggle of being on a team, having to put in the actual effort, and suffering loss as a team while overcoming that loss and getting better. It fails at even showing the most simple aspects of basketball on a fundamental or rudimentary level, and it doesn't have that much of an interesting plot outside of the basketball games. The characters are bland for the most part, with no real motivations of their own. Kuroko is bad in many aspects, and the only people I would recommend it to are those who enjoy turning their brains off and watching Rule of Cool action. It isn't a complete disaster and has some positives, but there are other anime more worth your time.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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