Aomine steps into the game and steps everything up in a huge way.
What They Say:
In a few minutes of play, Aomie has demonstrated why he is a force to be reckoned with, with Kuroko benched in the 2nd half, will the team be able to hold Aomie off.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the match against Touou going as interesting as it is with the personalities involved, events have really gotten interesting now that Kagami is ready to go full in on things. While his intensity is strong and excitement just as powerful, things take an amusing turn when Aomine finally arrives on the scene, whispers some sweet nothings into Kagami’s ears and then suits up to dominate the game. With everyone having said that he can basically win any game all on his own, the psychological pressure is there and even Kagami says it plainly to himself that he never faced anyone like him during his time playing in America. What’s fun to watch though is when Kuroko and Aomine get back together and stare off a bit.
Amusingly, even though everyone is all fired up and ready to deal with what Aomine brings to the game, Aomine himself isn’t playing as hard as Kagami and Kuroko know he can. Even his teammates are frustrated by Aomine as the first half plays out as they go at him about not playing to his full potential. They’re not exactly worried about Seirin or anything, but when Aomine comes into the game, he plays at such a level that they’re pretty much barely supporting players when you get down to it. To have Aomine not play seriously has them not playing quite right and it just leads to situations that leave them confused and unsure of how to proceed.
With the halftime mark, we get a lot of downtime as the two teams come up with strategy and ideas to deal with each other, though Touou is working more towards trying to understand what it is that Aomine is up to. For Seirin, they’re trying to figure out the right way to deal with Aomine since they know he’ll get his stride back and Kuroko could be pretty useless here since the two know each other so well. But that could be the challenge that Kuroko needs to excel and grow more as well, especially with Kagami. So while it does take a bit of time to get there, feeling the build up of it all as we see the three principal players get into things is exciting. Aomine brings something completely new to the table here and seeing how everyone is stunned and grappling with how to play against him makes it pretty thrilling.
In Summary:
While the focus is heavily on the basketball here, pretty much to the exclusion of all else, you have to be able to get into the thrill of the game. With matches kept to just a few episodes in general and not overly dragged out, you get the build up throughout at different phases and really have to become invested in the action itself. Doing that can have some great payoff, such as this episode where we see the superstar in Aomine play, even if it has that evil feeling about it like he just stepped out of a Bleach anime episode. Taking that and watching how Kagami and the others struggles is what makes it work and even if it’s not high art or storytelling, I’m loving every minute of it.
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.