We will continue where we stopped last episode. We will see Chiaki in action who will be up against the girl’s offense since Sora and Kite are benched. But more excitingly we get Nao’s flashbacks and we get to learn how determined she is to basketball sport. It would be foolish to underestimate her, even though she is not trained by a professional coach, but her dedication for basketball and improving after every mistake gives her an upper hand among all the other athletes. I’m really happy to see Nao getting a spotlight in this episode, but I still believe that in this episode they bite off more than they could chew.
Since we’re progressing towards the game we get to see a lot of attention towards Chiaki in the first half of the episode, displaying his skills to abuse all the misplays Nao does in her plays. In this part we get to see Yasu, Chucky and Nabe making full use of their skills they learned since they joined the team. It may not have been enough, but since Kite and Sora were not the focus of the show, we can observe clearly what they are good at and which parts they need improvement in, rather than just being newbies at the game. And while Kite decides to overlook Nao’s commentary, her words still had some impact on Sora. As mentioned earlier, Sora and Kite possess a quality that they will carry the entire team solely – they will win with their abilities. They only need to complete the squad just to register as a team and participate in the competition. And so with this we can say their biggest weakness is they cannot rely on their teammates. Their teammates might not be the best out there, but if they stop thinking about themselves they can help their team improve in the parts they are lacking.
The most interesting thing to observe here is how they present that both Sora and Kite faces the same problem, but in completely different manner. Kite has really just been a lone wolf from the start where as Sora mostly tries to encourage his team and tell them they can achieve anything. Kite’s arrogant behavior is showed both on and off from court, but we see a different version of Sora once they start the match. He only cares about winning, that he is only thinking about himself. So basically, I’m really glad that they pointed out this problem, in different ways. And once they were able to clear out these things, they were able to look at a brighter and more correct picture of how a team play looks like because Chiaki and Momoharu have the knowledge of pros and cons of every team member in the squad… obviously, that doesn’t direct they won’t ignore and task the awful shooter with adding the final point.
Unluckily, no one takes their clothes off, but the boys Basketball team is really depressed after this whole nightmare which makes Nao to reconsider taking her position as manager (even though she begin an hour ago). Nao’s flashback shimmer at this point. We have witness the moments where Nao’s is neglected even though she has vast amount of knowledge, but also we get good logic to make us accept that she is says the right things. She is not some aimless girl who randomly chose Basketball as her path. But she is someone who is really determined about it, but unlike other player she has tons of complications to deal with. They showed her struggle towards this sport, so that if she leaves we realize how much Basketball team will be effected without her. Whether you like or no, take the self-assured pineapple head, she is here to support and the two of you are certainly going to clash heads.
Once the game is finished, Nao starts coaching the team in practice sessions and she is merciless. At least if we relate to the past condition of the team (which was actually zero). They prioritize this again that while the team has made some development, they are nowhere near the state they hope to achieve to be real fighter for the inter-high. So it’s time for every sport anime fan’ most interesting arc: the training camp! Yay! Personally, I felt once this news was revealed, the rest of the anime was very choppy. And yet again we are discussing about Okinawa, and an immediate scene to all the boys doing jobs, lastly Sora with his mom and milk. There is too much going on from one part to another part, they thrust in so much when they are ending the episode. They wanted us to feel what the team was feeling, their excitement. But it’s been a minute since we discussed about Sora’s mother so we should put it there as well. I’m not trying to criticize here, it was definitely a pleasant, and I just thought that they overdid it a little, particularly because the jobs didn’t add up to anything.
Never mind! Next time we will be watching the team working on some really difficult training and by looking at just the label of the next episode I can predict few of the teammates will start to wonder why they even chose to stick to this team. Let’s hope it doesn’t occur to that, because while Nabe and Chucky didn’t really perform well enough to impress me they are still part of the group and no one can replace them.
