天下制覇

They decided badminton would be the sport very late in this show's production, I suspect.

Impressions:

Do we need to learn anything about actual badminton in high schools, or can we just make a complete generic sports show, throw one or two badminton scenes into it, and call it a day? Mind you, I don't think shriking the subject matter is necessarily a bad thing, if you were to concentrate on the characters or tell some kind of compelling story instead with the sport being just the framework. But when you're getting super melodramatic over the dangers of sports scholarships from being recruited to a high school badminton team… a badminton team that's twenty people strong and nationally renowned, it's getting quite silly. 

So the story's dumb, but how about the characters? The protagonist's entire deal through the episode is that he's recruited to play 'serious badminton' at 'the serious badminton school,' but doesn't know if he belongs. So his sister yells at him to be more confident, and he decides to try his best. Cue training/studying montage. That's the entire character arc. Even for generic sports shows, that's weak. Usually there's some injury or even coma and amnesia that has caused a lack of confidence. Dude went to the Regionals or whatever and spends the next ten minutes mewling about whether he's actually any good. Which is to say that the depth of the characters is akin to an evaporated puddle. Who is this show even for?  

Next Episode:

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