What They Say:
Baby Steps centers on a honor student named Eiichiro Maruo who becomes frustrated with his life and decides to join the tennis club. Despite lacking experience and physical strength, he utilizes his studious nature to develop a strategic approach to playing tennis. Taking notes of his opponents’ habits and tendencies, he is able to predict their next move before they even react. He also meets Natsu Takasaki, a beautiful girl with a passion for tennis. With her help, he aims to become a professional tennis player.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Baby Steps has put Eiichiro in a difficult match as he works closer towards the top seeded players and his most recent match, which came after a very quick and mostly off-screen match, pits him against Iwasa. Iwasa has certainly taken him seriously, as he should since Eiichiro has progressed in this tournament well, and he’s actually enjoying the match in his own way. But as Eiichiro gets a feel for playing against him, he starts to understand more of what it is that works here and he gets kind of excited in his own way for the match as well. With him progressing so quickly, especially after having some quality time with Mike from Florida recently, he is, as they show, putting together the pieces of what kind of player Eiichiro wants to be and the end result is starting to show through at a key time.
The match picks up the pace well and it’s definitely fun to watch as the two of them really go at it, but not in an over the top or overly dramatic way. But it does take a twist along the way as Iwasa ends up taking a fall due to a leg cramp, something we start to learn about from the audience commentary as being a problem of his that may b getting worse. We see how that cramp has changed the nature of his leg movements here and has crippled him in the match in a big way as the smoothness of his moves are impacted and at first he can’t even really make them move in order to do what’s needed. That it causes the end of the match so quickly is surprising and, as some of the watchers not, anti-climactic, but it shows how part of the tournaments can go. Sometimes things just fall apart like that.
It is instructive for Eiichiro though as he does get to understand Iwasa’s method of training a bit, and we also learn a bit of why Iwasa was even playing tennis, which makes a weird sort of sense. Now that things are advancing again, we see how Eiichiro’s likely competition is keeping an eye on him while Eiichiro himsel fis just focusing on his training and keeping at it. While some think he’s taking it all too seriously, he’s just finding it fun and exciting, which is why he’s throwing himself into it so much. Eiichiro’s growing love of the sport is in full evidence here and seeing him training and engaging in the sport is good, though his coach gives him an amusing mix of praise and criticism that explains why he’s now progressing sine he’s able to figure out his opponent’s weaknesses through exploration of their skills. Knowing that may throw him off in his next match against Araya though.
In Summary:
Baby Steps again gives us the kind of forward motion that is working well for the series as we see Eiichiro finish out his match with Iwasa and grow and change from it. He’s learned a lot through this tournament both from his friends at the club and those he’s playing against and he’s becoming a better player day by day since he puts so much of himself into it. There’s a good feeling from the show as it has a kind of honest if simple approach to sports and that’s definitely a welcome change of pace from the more intense series that are out there at times. Eiichiro’s growth has been great to see and the fact that he’s completely just in love with the sport itself and what it means is becoming more and more evident, to us and to him. And that’s heartwarming good stuff.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
