Ahiru no Sora

Lacking what is considered the most important asset in basketball, Sora Kurumatani has struggled with his short height since the inception of his love for the game. Despite missing this beneficial aspect, Sora's unwavering drive never allowed his small stature to dictate his ability to play, believing strongly in trying his hardest and persistently practicing to prove his capability.

In hopes of satisfying his mother's wishes, Sora enters Kuzuryuu High School to become a member of the basketball club and compete wholeheartedly in tournaments. However, Sora is disappointed to find out that the boy's basketball team is nothing but a retreat for punks who have no interest in the sport. Sora also comes to learn that brothers Chiaki and Momoharu Hanazono—whom he becomes acquainted with—have also lost their once spirited motivation to play.

Determined to revive the basketball team, Sora challenges the boys to a match against him, where his quick feet and swift movements overwhelm the group. Gradually affected by Sora's impressive skills, sheer effort, and tireless devotion to basketball, the boys unexpectedly find their burnt-out passion for the game rekindling once again.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Natsume, Kenji Main

Taniyama, Kishou Japanese

Hanazono, Chiaki Main

Konishi, Katsuyuki Japanese

Kurumatani, Sora Main

Kaji, Yuuki Japanese

Hanazono, Momoharu Main

Uchida, Yuuma Japanese

Shigeyoshi, Kaname Main

Miyano, Mamoru Japanese

Yabuuchi, Madoka Main

Senbongi, Sayaka Japanese

Kurumatani, Tomohisa Supporting

Koyasu, Takehito Japanese

Nanao, Nao Supporting

Taniguchi, Yuna Japanese

Takahashi, Katsumi Supporting

Namikawa, Daisuke Japanese

Fuwa, Hyou Supporting

Matsuoka, Yoshitsugu Japanese

Umetsu, Satoshi Producer

Kawando, Kenjirou Producer

Kusakawa, Keizou Director

Tamaki, Shingo Director

Reviews

Sep 30, 2020

Dee333

Recommended

I loved the story of this show so much, the characters are the most real I've seen in a while; they make mistakes, they fall in love and they're not all perfect all the time.
and they feel like they're people I know in real life.

SPOILERS BELOW


In the entire show I don't think I've seen the team win once which as a person who played basketball for 3 years I say that's the most realistic thing ever basketball takes a lot of time to learn and not a sport you can perfect in a couple of month and it's a given that a new formed team ... will struggle just as much as they did especially the three who just started playing and them wanting to quit at the beginning is something I myself have went through and know to well.

The music is amazing I added all the Ops and Eds to my playlist and also the ost is so good.

The only reason it's an 8 and not higher is the animation it didn't affect my enjoyment of the show that much but it could've been better.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Sep 29, 2020

NextUniverse

Mixed Feelings

TLDR Review at the bottom. Hopefully, that helped. Thanks for reading this review if you do.

Ahiru no Sora truly wanted to be something. Ahiru no Sora had the story, the characters, but with most Shounen anime, high episode count = bad. You know, the Toei Animation disease.

The problem with high episode counts is that there is too much room, way too much room. So much room that episodes get drawn out to add suspense for, well, “DON’T MISS OUT ON NEXT WEEK’S EPISODE”. With so much room you would probably expect a magnitude of plot devices here and there to keep the story somewhat ... entertaining, but instead, anime like so just stick to their ground with overdrawn development and action. It is almost as if the writers understood that there was no conceivable way to make a story out of something so very long to the point where they just gave a middle finger to the story and began writing a product rather than something that can even be considered a decent story. It happens all the time, DBZ, One Piece, Bleach, Black Clover too. They’re all just massive let downs because they decided that it would be best to continue as some over winded product rather than just let up and end the story where it is at. I really don’t think the future for long-running anime is looking too good in terms of pulling the best stories anyone has seen, it is just a curse at this point in which all long-running anime will inevitably fall in the same circle of continuously going through the same thing over and over again with writing slipped conveniently at the right moments to create the illusion of a grand journey. It is a big deception device that people will fall into since it sells well as a product rather than something with the intention of being a true story.

Story - 6:
Pacing. With a count of 50 episodes, do I need to say more? In all fairness though, while the pacing is so bad that you can literally forget what happened the episode right before even during a binge-watch. There is an actual narrative Ahiru no Sora has to show, and that narrative is actually pretty good. It all boils down to the story of the immense training of working towards your dream, via loss, and while this isn’t original, the grand scheme of the story is actually somewhat enjoyable to experience. While the story has a good narrative, the pacing suffers so much that it harms the story way too much. Honestly, one match takes up about 8 episodes, who the hell is gonna remember anything?


Art/Visuals - 5:
Zero effort. You can tell that someone was there at the studio going like: Still shot, add dash effect, opacity = 10%, pan camera. Over and over again. There was little animation half the time that it is not even funny, I genuinely think someone looked at Ahiru no Sora and thought, “Yeah bro, you give us this literal trash, so we are not even going to try anymore”, and when there was it would ironically be used for the most irrelevant parts and less for the basketball matches where people want to see some class tricks happening here and there. I don’t know what the logic is there but someone either couldn’t be bothered, or the studio had the same situation with Sonic The Hedgehog movie where someone looked at the design and thought, “Yeah, this is good”. 3D animation for the ball too, it wasn’t ugly, but it wasn’t good either, though, I would rather have the 3D animation kept in place than some “attempted” 2D animation of a literal basketball. I don’t know how Diomedea rolls especially how this is their only work that I have seen, but I am sure that they aren’t as bad as what they have given to the audience of this anime.

Character designs, however, were pretty good, it isn’t something that you see every day which gave it its unique style, however, it isn’t groundbreakingly good either. It has style but lacks power, the power to be successful as a standalone design.


Sound/Audio - 6:
Very basic sounds, used “in the moment” too, though, with 50 episodes to watch from, the OST easily because very easy to remember, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it was because the OST was good, there were merely just lots of space to throw in an OST whenever a match was played. The 4 OPs and EDs were pretty good but they were box standard in the realm of shounen anime. Nothing else to add onto that.

With VCs, Yuki Kaji on job with Sora and he did a good job at voicing Sora’s personality. Other characters had a good sense of character through VCs too, in that, this is an anime featuring delinquents. So the aggressive attitudes and voices conveyed that well.

Characters - 7:
The characters are the only thing I respect about the show, unlike the story which had horrible pacing, the characters did have some solid development, whilst it was slow, it still existed, and what made it better was that there was a sense of believable growth to these characters. People don’t just change overnight, and ironically, an incredibly prolonged story made for the best way to prove that statement. Through training, hardships, and dumbass mistakes, these characters went from zero and are still growing to this moment in time. In saying this, however, the only characters who get this kind of development were Sora, Kenji, Momoharu and Kaname (to some extent). That isn’t to say the other characters were just left out because why not, rather, they weren’t focused on much, yeah, there was visible development on them, but in something as long as Ahiru no Sora, you would think that there would be a good 20 mins dedicated for each particular character. Yeah. That doesn’t happen. I really think that the writers forgot half the characters in the show and couldn’t be bothered to do any more work to write them back in.

Enjoyment - 4:
Instead of writing why enjoyment was bad. I will leave you with a (rhetorical) question.
Would you really enjoy what is essentially 3/4 of a show being poorly animated basketball matches, with 4 developing characters and a slow story that gets worked on whenever the writers want to work on it?


Overall - 5.6 (6)



TLDR Review:
Story - 6: Good narrative, but horrible pacing.
Art - 5: Just panned shots with some effects whenever a basketball match plays, otherwise, decent in between
Sound - 6: Very basic OST.
Characters - 7: Actual good characters, but not all of them are developed.
Enjoyment - 4: Too long to enjoy.
Overall - 5.6 (6)


As someone who has never read the manga, I still have every intention to do so but Ahiru no Sora further emphasises that long shounen anime is not good. I know this isn’t battle shounen but these are just becoming products for people in the shounen demographic to just be like: “Yo, I’m gonna start playing basketball now to get as cool as these characters” or “Yo, I’m gonna starting fighting like some that hero so I can get really strong.” And does it work? Yeah. Sometimes I find myself in the position, but that doesn’t excuse that the fact that in anime, there are some genuine stories to be told and I simply cannot place Ahiru no Sora on a level like them as so.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Oct 21, 2021

hikkikomori8man

Not Recommended

The show starts out really well. All the characters are introduced one after the other and all of them are great. The starting few matches are really great as well. Most of Kuzuryu's players are inexperienced and hence they lose a lot of their starting few matches which makes sense. The players from the other teams like Konishi, Chiba san, Tokiwa and Nanao's cousin are all really lovable characters. After playing a few practice matches and gathering a full team, they finally get to an official match. I really liked the fact that they gave some history to the opposition they faced in the official ... match. But this is where the anime starts its downward spiral. Kuzuryu plays really well creating a substantial point difference between themselves and the opponents. At this point the Kuzuryu players start to get tired. Although this makes sense for the others, it doesn't for specifically Tobi and Sora. Sora is shown to have amazing stamina running 10 kms everyday, attending practice and classes and then doing 1000 3 pointer shoots. Tobi was someone who was a regular in his middle school team and hence had played many matches before. This didn't make any sense to me. Regardless Kuzuryu soldiered on. There were 3 seconds remaining on the clock. Nanao is able to accurately predict who is going to receive the pass after the rebound. Sora goes to block him from making a shoot or even receiving the pass in the first place. Moreover the player was not adept at making 3 pointers as he had failed until now. I though that the victory was in the bag but suddenly we cut to Sora's mom dying. I liked her but this abrupt cut made me really angry. Sora tells her that they won the match and I feel great but then we find out that they actually lost. I calmed myself and moved on but they burnt down their club building to force character development and romance. That angered me even further. Not only that they did that through a cigarette which fell along with juice and chips packets. This means that the cigarette fell on a damp floor away from inflammable objects and set the whole building on fire. Next Nabe accepts a practice match invitation from the best team in their area. We already know that they are going to lose terribly yet that match is extremely long and boring. I wouldn't recommend this show to anyone past the official match.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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