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)
Eiichiro’s match against Araya dominated the previous episode and it provided another kind of challenge for the new player, relatively speaking. Each of those that he’s faced has been different in their style and approach, but not to an extreme where it feels ridiculous or out of place. Araya has a different kind of intensity to him that makes him a tough opponent, but watching Eiichiro starting to understand his style of play and pushing forward is what makes the show so much fun. Especially going up against a high ranked player like Araya who is focused on Takuma. So when Eiichiro begins to make his countermoves and starts figuring out ways to hold his own and begin scoring, there’s a lot to like with it since it’s done so naturally.
While it doesn’t happen instantly, we see Eiichiro’s continued to push and seeming inability to fall apart in the face of such challenges work well in his favor. Once he has that first return point, it shows that he can make progress and it takes effort and constant pushback to try and make it forward. He manages to win a round and that helps to keep things going, but the challenges are definitely tough for him because each time that he starts to make progress against Araya, Araya gets more intense and seems to take it up a notch. Again, not in an over the top way but in a realistic kind of brute force approach that makes him a formidable opponent both in his style of play but also his presence and personality which makes a difference in how Eiichiro views him.
The match turns into a kind of war of attrition as it moves forward as each of them makes progress and pushes hard against each other, but it takes on the feeling of a real slog march when you get down to it with the way they go at it. This goes on for much of the second half, with a bit of commentary along the way, which shows the way the two young men are really giving it their all. We do see Eiichior remembering things from previous matches of his own in order to find a path forward to victory and we get some decent commentary from the coach as well that helps explains the structure of how the matches are working for people unfamiliar with tennis. The back and forth of this match has certainly grown and while we’ve had multi-episode matches before, this one is going into a third episode. And that has the right feeling to it as we see these two going at it so intensely that you can get behind it completely.
In Summary:
Baby Steps has been the kind of fun and really grounded sports approach that I can get into more than the over the top ones, though I enjoy those as well. The series has defied what I thought it would be about and is focused on the growth of the main character in the sport with the kind of dedication that really is inspiring. This episode, the middle part of the match he’s in now, has turned into a slog for the two young men battling it out and you can feel it without it being overblown. There’s a great kind of presence to Araya that plays well against the calmer but just as intense Eiichiro and seeing them struggle as they do here is great to see, making me on edge already to see the outcome.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
