Basquash! – 11

Summary:

Dan and company have been gaining in popularity as they win more matches, and it has gotten to the point where James invites them to the OCB championship in Turbine City. It is a city filled with wind turbines, and although Dan, Iceman, Sela, and Flora set out together to check out the place, they soon go their separate ways. Sela chooses to visit a grave overlooking the ocean – one that belongs to her mother – and while she’s there, her father arrives. He’s heard about what she’s been up to and is willing to let her do whatever she wants with the town during the championship because they have insurance on it. Sela, however, still holds a grudge against her father for chasing her mother out of their home, leading to her mother’s death, due to how Sela couldn’t become the heir as a female. Her father isn’t interested in hearing her grievances though and soon drives off, leaving Sela to spend the rest of the day reflecting on her mother and how she cried at the funeral. Iceman meanwhile finds out that Falcon is in town, so he pays a visit to Falcon’s hotel room.

During all this, Dan and Flora continue exploring the town, though it’s Flora who does most of the information gathering because Dan spends most of his time practicing his basketball skills. Dan does manage to accidentally bump into Rouge again and finds out that she’ll be singing in the opening ceremonies, but their conversation gets broken up when Eclipse’s manager comes looking for her. Flora eventually gets frustrated with Dan’s indifference to scouting the town, and what ends up getting Dan excited is the announcement that the winners of the OCB championship will be allowed to play in the Lunar League. It prompts him to run all the way back to his Bigfoot and throw a ball that bounces all around town before returning to his Bigfoot’s hand. That ball flies past everyone, including Sela at her mother’s grave, and it causes her to decide to move forward for her own sake. It also reminds Iceman not to run away, and even though he hated Falcon enough to want to kill him, he tells Falcon that he’ll instead win without killing and overcome him. In the end, everyone returns to base and gets ready to play.

Preview

Other than some short bits of character development for Sela and Iceman (mainly Sela), this was a rather uneventful episode. Certainly the story moved forward a bit, and it was interesting to see what may very well be the motivation behind Sela’s hunt for strong genes. The problem was that Flora got a lot of screentime, and most of her scenes weren’t very important at all – perhaps even a waste of time. To add to that, the animation quality was all over the place this episode. The backgrounds and CG looked good, but the character designs couldn’t stay consistent (Sela’s hair in this scene made it look like she just went Super Saiyan or something) . At least the ball throwing scene was fairly well done and allowed the episode to end on a high note.

As for the news of the recent shake-up of the staff which included the firing of director Itagaki Shin, it’s too early to tell if that’ll be a good or bad thing. As my comments these past two months might have shown, I’ve felt that Basquash’s story has floundered quite a bit in terms of the direction it wants to go, and I’m hoping this will turn out to be better for the series in the end.