Hideyoshi is a young blue-haired street punk who hustles the basketball courts on Earth. In spite of his extremely chibi-size, he is so fast and skilled that opponents never stand a chance. He can even dunk (Japanese fans must just love short players that can dunk ^^;;). One day he runs into a red-haired girl (who is the granddaughter of uber-rich manager, Yoshimune, but you didn’t hear that from me), Cha-Che, who drops a few hints about the Intergalactic League. Hideyoshi is inspired to play in the league, since it is currently only for awesome aliens with mad skillz. Meanwhile, we also get a glimpse of D.T. getting stuck in a desert and saved by a woman named Sala (no joke). We never learn how he gets there, or how he manages to catch a red snapper and an octopus in the desert, because he leaves on a bus at night before long.
Back in the day, I actually read some of this manga online. It’s pretty cheesy, but I do love me some basketball anime, so I figured I’d give Buzzer Beater a try. Inoue Takehiko is pretty well respected after his success with Slam Dunk and Vagabond. The plot on this series so far is pretty shaky and goofy, but the animation was very nice. In spite of the CG basketballs, it looks like Buzzer Beater is safe from any Dear Boys-level animation, and all the basketball moves were very fluid and occasionally breathtaking. The music is very good, and reminiscent of Cowboy Bebop. I only remember there being 4 volumes of manga, so it will be interesting to see how the anime pans out.
In short, the first episode looked and sounded great, but there were a few flaws. Hideyoshi’s voice is so feminine and Gyuma is so blatantly ripped off of Michael Jordan that it startled me (they colored him golden, gave him bull horns, and changed his team to the “Blues” even though the jersey is red OMFG). Then that whole psychadelic 3 minute commercial in the middle drove me nuts. Finally, be prepared for lips that will fixate your gaze like no anime since Gilgamesh.
I’m not giving this series its own category until I am sure it will be picked up for realz by a fansubbing group.
This post was written by...
Kabitzin – who has written 1970 posts on Sea Slugs! Anime Blog.
One of the founders of Sea Slugs, I handle most of the blog admin tasks while wearing my I AM BOSS shirt. I like my action series well choreographed, and my romance series extra trashy. I also have a soft spot for puns.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Kabitzin, it’s already fansubbed by one group already.
I’m probably going to hang around and watch it, if anything cause much like you I do enjoy a good sports anime. Also helps a lot that there are veteran seiyuus in show. Yuji Ueda as DT was pretty sweet and Sanae Kobayashi as Che-Che (nyu!) should be good.
And thanks for telling me who created the show. I *knew* the art style looked familiar but I just couln’t place where I’ve seen it before for the life of me.
The almost nonsensical Gyuma commercial was trippy…Engrish and psychedelic colors should never be mixed – much like alcohol and pregnancy!
What can I say… My sentiments exactly I guess x_X… That hyper trippy commercial was just too much and your right Gyuma is just a funny rip off of Michael Jordan but it’s basketball so I guess we can’t complain that much
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