Basquash! – 12

Part A

Summary:

One of the teams that Dan and company have to face in the championship consists of triplets who specialize in magic tricks. Their goal is to use these tricks and illusions to keep Dan’s team busy until right before the time limit when they can score and win. This works on Dan and Sela, however Iceman is eventually able to see through it and takes the triplets out with a Destroy ball, allowing Dan to score and win.

Special ED

Watch the ED! Mirror 1, Mirror 2, Streaming ▼

Special OP

Watch the OP! Mirror 1, Mirror 2, Streaming ▼

Part B

Summary:

While the team is not playing, the team members go their separate ways. Sela visits her mother’s old home and finds a picture of her mother and herself from many years ago. Iceman spends his time practicing, and towards the end of the session, he’s paid a visit by Falcon. Falcon comments on how Iceman’s playing changed after meeting a certain someone, and before he leaves, he advises Iceman not to break before they meet in the finals. Flora and Coco, on the other hand, talk about Team Basquash and how Coco’s intent is to see what people want from Basquash and what her brother does. Meanwhile, Eclipse is winning their matches, but they decide to go directly confront James about the true goal of the championship, and he agrees to tell them. Later that night, Rouge finds Dan by himself and reveals that Eclipse is a group originally formed for the purpose of winning. What’s changed is that she now personally wants to fight and win against Dan’s team, and her teammates share her determination to win.

Preview

Well I have to give them credit for what turned out to be a fairly entertaining episode, even if having two halves, each with a shortened OP and ED (plus faux commercials), was a little gimmicky. If nothing else, it was a nice change of pace. From a plot point of view though, the problem is that the first half of the episode basically amounts to a filler match, and the second half was a lot of jumping around so that there could be a hodgepodge of minor character development for everyone. The most focus probably went to Rouge and the Eclipse girls, but even then we get to find out what James told them.

The one thing I did find interesting was Slash’s comment about hope and crisis getting bigger. He said it while looking at the moon, and I have to question if he was implying in a more literal sense that the moon is getting closer to the planet or that something on the moon was getting bigger. As you might be able to tell, I’m eager to see the overall story move forward so that we can clear up some of these mysteries. For the time being though, Dan and company still have a lot of opponents to go through, including Rouge and Eclipse in the next episode. I wonder if the shot of her wearing glasses mean that we’ll find out more about her real identity.