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Ah Hanebado, the sport that is really underrated in all honesty is finally being adapted into a show...except that show is disguised as a cheap drama with a competition to see who can draw the best yandere face at LIDENFILMS

They don't call it HaneBADo for a reason amirite?


*THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS*
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Plot:

So Hanebado delves into the perspective of 2 central protagonists. Well I say to but really we just have 1 protag while the other is pretty much disregarded for half the story. If I had to give an analogy over how the story went, let's use a burger shall we? Now Aragaki our hero...ine represents the buns, shown at both the beginning and the end of the story whereas Hanesaki, is like that weird special sauce that once you bite into the burger just leaks everywhere and covers the entire burger and gets your hands all dirty and gives you a bad time. Anywho our story starts off with a match between our central protagonists, in which one is clearly putting all the effort she's got while the other, yep you guessed it...has a yandere face on. Yandere face wins and our other protagonist goes into deep depression and copes using drugs and alcohol, which leads her to develop anger issues. Well everything except the first and last parts are false. Fast forward years later in high school and what a surprise! They're both going to the same school. Eventually our yandere friend (who is perfectly sane at this point) get peer pressured into joining the school's badminton team even though she clearly doesn't want to, and once she meets Anger issues guess what... she gets anger issues!! Now I would be lying if I didn't say that this setup was pretty promising (barring the obvious issues). What we could've gotten is 2 rivals who are opposed against each other, one who is energetic and the other who is more serious, learn to cope with each other for the greater good of the school's team and rely on each other to develop their own skills. Sounds familiar doesn't it?

Instead what we got was 12 eps of utter nonsense ranging from Hanesaki's mother leaving her when she was young (which we'll have fun with that later), to Hanesaki having a non-biological sister (yay yuri shippers) to pointless side character expeditions just so we know that the whole world doesn't revolve around our protagonists and that there are actually other members in the club. Cause y'know, it's a sports anime

See the main problem with Hanebado is that it tries to fit in a bunch of shounen elements (even though it's a seinen) but it never takes the time to well... actually show them. What we end up getting is a bunch of half-assed executions and all problems getting resolved in a matter of minutes. Athlete is currently in a slump? Yeah just play a few rounds and you're good as new. Can't win a game even when your yandere face is active? Yeah just remember that one time everyone said "we're a team" and despite you treating them like absolute shit, they're still behind you. Mother left you for supposedly bad intentions when you were young? Yeah don't worry about it she obviously had good intentions for it, just lose a game and it's all settled

So how does this wonderful journey end you may ask? Well we do get that typical sports scenario where the last few episodes are all focused on the end-all game of the century where it's round 2 between yandere and anger issues (although she has calmed down at this point so hey, character development amirite). Now usually in shows that do this like Kuroko's Basket, we get these prolonged episodes to build tension and hype into the game, in order for all the elements such as sound, art and characters to come together for the epic ending. In Hanebado's case, what we get is the kind of shaft style art you'd see in ef: slow motion jump cut back and forth, and constant breathing for about a solid minute or 2. Yep that's it. There's no thrilling use of OST, no witty quotes about never giving up, we don't even get to see SPOILER Aragaki smash it or finesse it past Hanesaki. We just get a bunch of uncolored lines, some breathing and then it jumps to the end. Even the crowd were like wtf is going on

Sound:

Judging by the last few sentences you can probably guess where I'm going with sound. It's not really there. Well it is but not where it is needed the most. One of the main purposes of the OST is to set the atmosphere, whether it be tense, joyful or dramatic like we've seen recently with BnHA S3. Part of what makes OST's so outstanding is the ability to recognize certain tracks that play, such as Monogatari's Suteki Meppu, or the infamous hug scene in Clannad AS. Sure there are dramatic tracks in dramatic situations, but there's nothing really that gets me into the mood of the situation. Now you may be complaining "It's not a shounen so don't expect that kind of stuff" but even in something like the Chuunibyou movie, the use of the OST provided an excellent set to the situation. Moving on the OP isn't anything too spectacular/funky/outright intriguing. It's not a bad song per se, but the energetic vibes from it really contrast with the show in general

Art/Animation:

Now this is the one field where I do have to give credit for. Not so much the art, since it was basically yandere faces and especially during the final match it was all over the place, but the animation. For badminton, a sport with a lot of rapid movements, I thought the animation was pretty well done, especially since the use of CGI was scarce (if used at all apart from the shuttlecock). Maybe the animation off the matches wasn't amazing, but definitely the actual matches themselves were some eye candy

Characters: As my old friend Anakin would say, this is where the fun begins

Bunch of Side Characters: Literally have no use at all other than to visually show how much Hanesaki/Aragaki are treating them like shit, and to lighten the mood when those 2 can't since they're always mad. There was also a romance subplot going on with some love triangle drama, but that turned out to be rubbish because main girl didn't know if she like the B(adminton) or the D(ick). Spoiler, she chooses the B.

Izumi: Slightly more important side character. She stays by Aragaki's side when she goes batshit crazy and practically causes half the club to leave. Oh yeah, she also's involved in a match or 2 and gets involved with some past beef with big lips and her rapist looking coach

Tachibana: New coach that introduced himself by molesting Hanesaki's hands in the beginning. Nice. Literally only there to provide commentary on the game (as every sports anime needs) and to constantly remind Aragaki that her knee is gonna get messed up (but she has plot armor so who cares)

Nozomi: Big lips. I say that but they aren't really that big so excuse me. Anywho not much to say other than she was selected because rapist coach though she followed instructions well or something. Pretty much becomes rapist coach's slave until she manages to get saved with the power of Badminton, cause every sports anime needs that slave needing saving right? (Looking at you Major)

Rapist coach: By far the most developed character. We see him start off as your generic douche-bag who only cares about winning, but then he suddenly does a 180 and becomes the generic old dude who gives insights on the match. Now that's some serious change! Oh yeah, he also completely analyzed Aragaki and her fitness by staring at her ass for a few seconds

Serigaya: Pink haired ponytail antagonist. Molested Hanesaki when they were young so that she would get sick and therefore lose the game (which led to her mother leaving her). What an asshole. Eventually gets paired up against Hanesaki and gets defeated. Take that dick

Erena: Hanesaki's BFF and that girl who peer pressured her into joining. Ngl she's probably my least favourite character. The whole time she acts all confused as to why Hanesaki is so depressed and yandere like when she's literally the reason. And when she gets scolded by Hanesaki she just sits there and sulks (Well I guess what else are you supposed to do)

Connie: Golden haired ponytail antag...actually I don't even know. In the beginning she acts like an antagonist, triggering her period when she realizes that she was at the convenience store with Hanesaki after all. Then she proceeds to rub it in Hanesaki's face that she's her half-sister and all of a sudden she acts all nice and wants to make amends with her? She literally makes no sense and we get an entire episode on her devoting herself to become a family with Hanesaki (like that's gonna work) and then gets dumped on and shat by yanesaki (get it cause yandere Hanesaki? No?) and then is no longer seen ever again. And that doesn't even begin to question the way she got with yane's mom. She literally impressed her with her badminton skills, Uchika tells her that she's her new mom and she just whole heatedly accepts? There are so many things weird about this. Where are her biological parents? Why does she completely ditch said parents and/or guardians to go and live with a complete stranger? Why is she so casual and calm about this even though she's a kid? Why is she at a badminton team if her parent's are nowhere to be found?

Uchika: Oh boy here we go. Trying to understand Uchika's mind set is like trying to claim Ousama Game is the best anime of all time. You just don't. Being the all famous pro badminton player that she is, it's normal for her to want to get her daughter into the sport she loves. So, when she loses a game since she was playing while sick, what does Uchika decide to do? That's right, fucking LEAVE HER. Like seriously I don't even know how much weed the author must have smoked to come up with a plot line so random as this. It's about as ridiculous as Snake destroying a tank with solely grenades, but at least that was bad ass, this was just retarded. But wait! At the last minute we're presented with the whole bad mom was good all along, and her reasoning was that... she wanted Hanesaki to get better at badminton? Like seriously that's some ass writing. But because of happy endings and all Hanesaki and Uchika reunite at the end and hold hands and circle jerk over how Connie hasn't been shown for a couple of episodes and everyone lives happily ever after. Speaking of Connie, Uchika literally showed no sign of guilt over leaving Hanesaki, even going as far as casually talking about her and showing photos to a young Connie. I get how Darling in the Franxx was trying to low key promote more births, but if people are gonna give birth to Uchika's then humanities sense is gone.

Aragaki: Arguably the best character in the series, mainly because she wasn't present in half of it. For real, even though she started off being some angsty teen she gradually grew to become more calm and collected in her actions, as if the writers decided halfway through that they forgot to include the quiet type character into the show. Despite constant moaning from coach molester, she soldiers on and eventually wins the whole tournament and goes to nationals. Whoop di dee.

Hanesaki: Yay saving the last character for last. If you're ever bored and want to play a drinking game with your friends, drink every time Hanesaki puts on her yandere face. By the end of the show congrats! you'd be in hospital. Seriously the amount of times she puts on her yandere face makes Yuno look like your average harem girl. And the constant mood swings don't help either. Her personality changes so many times even a mathematician would have a hard time finding that angle. As the story progresses, we come to learn more about our protagonist. Like how she got molested, got sick and then got her mother leaving the front door. But don't worry, she wasn't mad that her mother completely abandoned her, she was mad that she thought her mother thought she was shit at badminton. That way at the end, all the pieces were put together for their heartfelt reunion amirite? Oh yeah, she also treats everyone like shit for pretty much her whole time, but as soon as she returns to normal everything's all good and no harm done. If only irl sports teams worked that way.


Conclusion:

Overall I wouldn't say HaneBADo is the worst sports anime there is, but it certainly is far from the best. On paper it's good that they took a more dramatic approach to typical sports shows, but if you're gonna do that route, then it kinda makes you look bad when you start adding cliche shounen sports elements to it