What’s the show? Hanebado! Episode 12.
So what happens in this second-to-last episode? Are you still complaining about inconsistent characterisation? Yeah… more or less, and I’m kind of sick of complaining about this show every week, as I’m sure are the readers of reading said complaints.
Well that kind of puts you in a sticky situation, because you have to talk about something? I mean I could just objectively talk about things that happened in the episode and whether I thought they were good or bad rather than repeat the same rant over and over.
That could work, I’ll be sure to cut you off if you stray and start ranting! Appreciated.
So what happens in this episode? Well we get a bit more context about how Ayano’s mother left in the form of a flashback and yeah, Ayano’s mother is just as awful as we already knew. Speaking of flashbacks, there’s actually a heck of a lot of reused footage in this episode, maybe like 15% of the entire episode is stuff from previous episodes just rearranged into montages and it kind of is a detriment to the episode in more ways than one.
How so? Well towards the end of the episode we get a lengthy montage showing how Ayano was in the early episodes, you know before she turned into a dead-eyed monster, and it goes to highlight how much better her character used to be and how much better this show was in-turn. And I don’t know if this little montage was supposed to show a journey, because all it did was show how abrupt and out-of-place her character decline was.
Getting dangerously close to ‘rant country’ best turn back! Right, sorry.
So aside from the reused footage what else happens? Just more of the match between Ayano and Nagisa and it’s expectedly great—you know the parts where Ayano’s not antagonising people—its exciting and well animated, the music is fantastic and the match is easy-to-follow and even a little bit tense! Ayano wins the first set, while Nagisa claws back the second having tired out Ayano by playing in the opposite style than her opponent had prepared for. Then the third set comes and Ayano kind of just gives up—only to be cheered on by her teammates and of course they’re going to push a ‘the power of teamwork/friendship’ redemption arc for the final episode and nope, not having it!
And that’s your prediction for the finale I take it? Yeah, I mean other commenters had seen it coming a mile away and it’s annoying because you can’t devote so much time and energy into turning a good girl into a bad girl then turning her back again! Or maybe you can, I don’t know, it’s not my anime it can do whatever the heck it wants with its characters! Oh well, only one episode left now, let’s see if they can redeem their mistakes in any way or just screw it up even more!
Previous Hanebado! Reviews:
Sports Anime + Cute Girls = A Better Sports Anime – Episode 1 Review
Emotional Flashbacks & Sausages on Sticks – Episode 2 Review
A Smash To The Feels – Episode 3 Review
Sibling Rivalry – Episode 4 Review
Rivals Are Better Than Villains – Episode 5 Review
Uniformly Improved – Episode 6 Review
Just Like Tennis – Episode 7 Review
There’s No Ayano In Team – Episode 8 Review
Beware of Villains Bearing Backstories – Episode 9 Review
Out Of Bounds – Episode 10 Review
Best and Scariest – Episode 11 Review
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Anime QandA 
Kaoruko was saying that Nagisa was expending her stamina to preserve her decision-making time. To me this episode felt like Nagisa expending all her energy to metaphorically drag Ayano back to the “light” side. Like she wasn’t playing to beat Ayano as much as she was playing to beat the attitude out of her through good play.
But boy, Ayano’s mother sure did not cover herself in glory in her conversation with Elena. “I abandoned my daughter to make her a champ at badminton.” Yeah, mother of the year, there. She doesn’t even know what she was trying to teach Ayano with her little lesson. And she could have been in the arena watching it all fall apart. But nope, time to get a drink.
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Yeah as much as a last minute redemption for Ayano would be obnoxious if they try and pull a redemption for Elena too and try and wrap ~everything~ up happily I may loose it.
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I definitely agree with you about the inconsistencies.. I don’t really have high hopes for the last episode, but who knows, we might be surprised. If you’re interested in trying out any other sports series, I actually just found a pretty interesting manga series based around fencing. It’s called En Garde, and follows the main character as he strives to reach the same level as his friend who’s in the same club as him. It has really nice pacing, and the characters were really easy for me to like! I definitely recommend giving it a shot if you’re into manga as well.
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Thanks for the recommendation, I generally stick to sports anime and manga with women as the focus but I’ll definitely consider it!
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