Holy Mackerel! Another basketball series? The intro blasted
me away with the pretty energetic rap song and a beautiful 3D animation. The guys
in this series are very sexy (because the intro lyrics says so), and the girls
are catchy themselves. So beautiful and promising the intro was. But after sitting
through the first episode, it discouraged me from being drawn to this anime.
It all begins with the all star Tendouji HS player Aikawa transferring to Mizuho
HS in search of a better basketball experience. Mizuho, unlike the strong Tendouji,
doesn't have an organized boys basketball team. The Mizuho boys' team was suspended
for one year due to the misbehavior of one of its members, Fujiwara. Now that
one-year is up, Aikawa tries to bring back the boys basketball team and try to
win the prefecture championships.
There is high
school crush in this series, although there isn't any fan service. The girls in
this anime are all members of the famous Mizuho girls team. To totally revive
the boys team, the boys always had practice matches with the girls, which is quite
weird in America. The real downside of DB is the physics animation. If you know
at least something about basketball, the movement of the players in DB can really
disturb you. The players seem to pass and shoot the ball like it was a beach ball.
The wrist movement while dribbling and shooting looks fake. Most of their "nice
shoot!" comes from players taking pure chance shots. The dribbling and crossovers
are really badly animated and is nothing compared to the older Slam Dunk
anime series.
Although the close-up scenes of the
characters look very neat and pretty, background characters are choppy and its
flaws are very noticeable by any anime watchers (such as deformed face, averted
eyes etc). The ending of this series is very sudden and disappointing, which I
won't spoil. This series has failed to capture the true beauty of basketball (relating
it to rap? What the heck?) and I suggest to stay away from this title.
Highs:
The characters look very nice when up close. Computer animated scenes are pretty.
Lows: Very bad physics. Plot inferior to Slam Dunk (and not
nearly as funny). Very sudden and bad conclusion.
Bottom Line: Do not
watch this unless you are a hardcore sports fan. who loves basketball. And have
already watched Slam Dunk.
