A cliffhanger being misleading? Well! I’ve never heard of such a thing!
Summary of Baby Steps Episode 3
- Eiichirou stumbles across Takuma and Natsu in the park, and after the two part ways, Natsu hangs out with Eiichirou while he practices returning against a wall. It’s then revealed that he likes Natsu. The next day, Eiichirou practices against a wall at the tennis club for six hours. The next day at school, Eiichirou comes across Takuma, who is being scolded for skipping class. After school, he then goes to the club to play his first match against his young rival Yuuki. He, however, loses this match, and observes Takuma’s serving technique, which annoys Takuma to the point where he almost attacks Eiichirou. Takuma then challenges Eiichirou to see if he can return just one of his serves.
My Take
- Eiichirou is too naive for his own good. Doesn’t he know that it’s not a good idea to be confrontational with easily-pissed-off tennis studs? It will only lead to rivalries. Wait a minute… rivalries…in a sports anime? Well, that’s surprising.
Stereotypical overreaction in 3… 2… 1…
- Anyway, it’s cliffhanger time! Not only was this a cliffhanger (that I honestly didn’t really care too much about), but it was a cliffhanger that had no merit whatsoever! It looked like Natsu and Takuma were kissing, but it turned out to be completely different! I mean, I like cliffhangers when there’s legitimate suspense, but this was an annoying, transparent attempt at misleading the audience. “Man, that was misleading!” Yeah, it was. However… I won’t let that get under my skin, because as I said earlier, I honestly didn’t care too much about it.
- It was obvious before this episode, but now it’s official that Eiichirou totally wants Natsu. Yeah, yeah, I know, it was obvious… but now it’s official! I guess that this newfound infatuation with Natsu will only further strain the already imperfect relationship that Eiichirou shares with Takuma, who is easily the most needlessly jealous character in this anime. I can’t wait until they throw down!
- So, Eiichirou has been training for a month, but he’s never played a match? Honestly, I remember when I played tennis, and the first thing I did after practicing on a wall for 10 minutes was play a quick match to get the feel for the game. That’s one aspect of Eiichirou that I’ve been a little disappointed with. He’s obviously intelligent and studious, but he never gets how to absorb information. He’ll do everything right when he’s practicing tennis, but he’ll forget very crucial steps in the learning process.
- Takuma’s not a main character, but he manages to get some screen time in this episode so that he can get a bit of development. Wait, what’s that? Character development for Takuma? Well, alright, it wasn’t a drastic amount of character development, but it was pretty decent. Apparently he’s been an extremely talented tennis prodigy for many years now, but his combative attitude and lack of motivation have been (supposedly) holding him back. Not only that, but his attitude gets him in trouble and only makes the rift between him and Eiichirou bigger. If the intent was to make him unlikable, he’s done a pretty good job solidifying his role as that. It’s one thing that he’s a jealous, distant, possibly homicidal maniac… but he’s also a delinquent!? How dare he challenge authority!
The stakes have never been higher than they are now!
- I guess Natsu is going to get her own character development further down the road, and knowing sports anime, it’s probably going to be riddled with hardships and “drama” that our hero will no doubt have to help her overcome. Perhaps she actually doesn’t have a story to tell and becomes one of those characters who just does something for the hell of it. Seeing how she acts up to this point, that wouldn’t surprise me at all. It would actually be pretty funny.
- At least the cliffhanger at the end of this episode has a much smaller chance of misleading the audience than the last one did. Best case scenario; he returns at least on (or more) balls. Worst case scenario; he gets punched by Takuma. It’s probably not going to change anything in the story… but I guess we’ll just have to wait and find out. However, he just got his butt kicked by a kid, so the chances of him succeeding at returning a ball are slim to none. Perfect underdog story? Nah.
I like this little subplot of Eiichirou always losing to this little kid. Such a smug little brat
- Yeah, I liked this episode. Since I’ve officially passed the 3-episode-limit-to-judge-a-series-on standard, I feel I made a good decision to pick up on this show. Eiichirou is a pretty good main character, and Natsu is a very interesting female lead, not to mention all of the decent supporting characters. Could it use improvement? Yeah… but it doesn’t drastically need it. So far, it’s a good series. If you’re not watching it by this point, I’d recommend that you give it a shot.
