First Impressions / Series Introduction / Snapshots

Summary:

Dan JD is a boy living on the world Earthdash where the sight of the lunar surface looms overhead and Bigfoot mecha play basketball. These basketball matches are televised, but Dan – masquerading as Dunk Mask – and his friends have been causing havoc by destroying the public TVs. Dan knows though that no matter how many TVs they destroy, they won’t get rid of Bigfoot Basketball (BFB), and he’s considering doing something about an upcoming BFB League game. The reason he doesn’t like BFB is because a Bigfoot accident caused his sister Coco to be confined to a wheelchair. While thinking about this, he’s approached by a well-endowed girl who claims to work with Bigfoots. Dan gets so worked up about them that he accidentally crushes a water bottle and gets himself soaked, so the girl drags him off to her home. Along the way, they see the moon in the night sky, and Dan reveals how he believes that they can get anything if they can reach the moon, including a cure for Coco’s leg.

At the girl’s place, she puts Dan’s clothes in the wash and then throws him into the cockpit of a nearby Bigfoot. She lets him drive, but Dan tries to jump for the moon and crashes the mecha. When Dan gets home, he thinks about the tickets to the BFB League game that the girl gave him, and when the big day comes, he rushes off to the stadium. What surprises him and his friends is how boring the game is live compared to what it’s like on TV, and Dan’s friend Ganz realizes that it’s because the TV version has special effects added. Dan gets so pissed off at this that he has to be knocked out by his pet Spanky, and while he’s unconscious, he dreams about how he and a girl named Miyuki had liked each other when they were young. She had to move away but had promised that she’d be back. When Dan regains consciousness, the girl from before is standing over him, and Dan realizes that she is actually Miyuki. She had known how Dan would react to seeing this kind of basketball, and she leads him to the Bigfoot that she brought with her.

Dan thus makes a dramatic entrance with the Bigfoot as Dunk Mask and demonstrates some real basketball to the spectators. He manages to outplay all the other Bigfoots and avoid all of the police that come after him – energizing the crowd in the process – and he tries to cap it all off with a slam dunk. However, one of the Bigfoots manages to block him, and Dan’s Bigfoot crashes into the backboard and onto the ground. That leads to much damage to the stadium and ends in Dan getting arrested and locked up. He gets sentenced to one year in prison, but he doesn’t mind because he thinks that he managed to get rid of BFB in the process. One year later, Dan is released, but to his shock, he finds Bigfoots running around all over the place playing basketball. Ganz reveals that Dan has become a legend.

ED Sequence

ED: 「free」 by 山田優 (Yamada Yuu)
Watch the ED! Mirror 1, Mirror 2, Streaming ▼

The ED’s nothing to call home about, either in song or animation sequence. They chose the catchiest part for the commercials, and the rest of the song isn’t that great. Maybe the OP will be better (there was no OP this first episode).

Preview

Let me say first that I think the comparisons with Macross Frontier are unavoidable given that this is a Satelight and Kawamori Shouji title with several of the same voice actors. Now this wasn’t as impressive as Macross Frontier’s special first episode, but that’s hard to beat and this was still pretty good. The concept of car-like mecha playing basketball is certainly outlandish, but the basketball action ended up being fairly fun to watch (the rest of the visuals were quite nice as well), so it didn’t really bother me. And though I think the main character is kind of an idiot, I took an immediate liking to both Miyuki and Spanky’s characters. The former had the right amount of playfulness and the latter – voiced by Endou Aya who also voiced Sheryl – was just amusing as hell. My favorite scene out of the episode was the one where Spanky ate the cutesy pet that Dan brought home for Coco and then spit out the bones right in front of them.

You could probably make a further comparison to Macross Frontier based on how there appear to be two girls – Miyuki and Sela – who are interested in the main guy, but it’s too early to tell if that’s what’ll happen. Neither of the girls are songstresses though. For that, we’ll have to rely on Ranka’s voice actress Nakajima Megumi and the two others who are voicing the idol group whose insert song moon passport was featured this episode (it was a better fit than expected for an action scene and better overall than the ED was). They’re supposedly from the moon, so I’m curious to see how they and the moon will factor into all this since it wasn’t talked about too much in this first episode. In any case, this is all to say that I found the first episode of Basquash very promising, and I’ll likely continue watching and blogging it.

37 Comments

  16. @Omni

    Is there going to be more shows later today? Are you going to blog anymore shows for the Spring this season. You didn’t even tell us what shows you were going to post. :/ Well I guess i’m going to have to find out soon this week. I hope you will be able to blog Sengoku BASARA, Gokujou!! Mecha Mote Iinchou, Shin Mazinger Shougeki! Z-Hen on television, Shinkyoku Soukai Polyphonica crimson S, Senjou no Valkyria, Cross Game, Fullmetal Alchemist, Shangri-la, Tayutama -Kiss on my Deity-, Natsu no Arashi!, Saki, 07-GHOST, Souten Kouro, Eden of the East and Hatsukoi Limited. Well good luck on the posting this season.

    Bakuman
    Reply

  18. @Omni

    You posted Queen’s Blade – Rurou no Senshi and you typed in Odds I’ll Blog This: Poor. So why did you post it anyways? Plus you didn’t blog Sengoku BASARA and you typed in Odds I’ll Blog This: Decent. Same with Asura Cryin’, Tayutama -Kiss on my Deity-
    and 07-GHOST. Did you change your mind on any other shows you said was poor? Oh, are you going to be bloging Arad Senki ~Slap Up Party~, Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom~
    and PandoraHearts because they already came out. Aroduc from Tenka Seiha sure can post anime shows fast. I’m not saying that you don’t.

    Bakuman
    Reply

  23. Bakuman: I technically kept true to my word: I didn’t blog Queen’s Blade. Jaalin did. And I only promise to blog things that I label as Guaranteed on the Spring Preview. Like Basquash here and FMA tomorrow.

    I’m not planning on killing myself trying to blog every single new series. That’s why I do my research beforehand for the Spring Preview so that I know what I should prioritize. You’d know that if you were a long-time reader of RC. So no, I won’t be doing Arad Senki or Phantom or PH.

    As for your comment on aroduc, he has a very different blogging style, one that relies less on comprehension and more on knee-jerk reactions. That’s fine and all, but it’s not how I blog.

    Omni
    Reply

  27. Basically Dan brought life to Big foot basket ball at the end even though he wanted to get rid of it, I like Dan he’s pretty funny I don’t mind that he’s an idiot he’s pretty cool because idiots are the one’s that stand out and actually do something hence dunk mask, he’s better than one of those emo or serious type kids in anime. I like Miyuki she wasn’t one of those ditz girls the fact that shes a mechanic and wasn’t one of those useless main heroines is pretty good. And Spunky was also pretty cool the fact that he could morph and he ate that flying cat thing was pretty funny. Overall I like this anime and I can’t wait till the next episode come out.

    zarth4
    Reply

  31. @SnooSnoo

    No it’s not, I watched it but I’m not exactly sure what it is. All I know is I watched the entire episode raw, without understanding a thing and loved every minute of it. Definently picking this up and praying a good sub group will pick it up.

    Vent
    Reply

  32. I agree that comparing them is a given, but considering the overall theme and all, there’s only such an extent you can compare them. I’m pretty glad that Kawamori-sensei is on it though, because that means we don’t have to worry about the mech part of the show suffering. As long as he doesn’t try any characterization (or romances) like we saw in Frontier. But maybe having Thomas Romain there is a help too.

    And I don’t think Miyuki is much of a romantic interest for Dan at this point (or later kind of), and vice versa. Which is also nice. Everyone keeps going on about the cliche childhood friend thing, but it’s not cliche until they fall in love for me.

    I kind of want to compare this to Michiko to Hatchin. Maybe the style, but something about the cast too.

    ManaChwan
    Reply

  35. It has good production quality and is nicely animated… but wtf, mech basketball. It was decent until they started to make the bigfoots the main focus. Seeing the preview leads me to believe that the main focus will be ugly looking mechs playing ball.

    I’ll pass. Dan’s pet/mask thing reminds me of Stitch though.

    Anon
    Reply

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