After messing up on the Highschool DxD review I decided to take a step back and review something I was passionate about and since I hadn’t reviewed a sports anime yet I decided to take a look at Ro-kyu-bu. As I said before in the past I’m a huge fan of basketball, it’s my favorite sport I’ve been playing it ever since I was in kindergarten and now I use my knowledge and skills to teach and train other kids how to play the game. So this anime was right up my alley but at the same time it was an anime that made you feel uncomfortable.
The series focuses on a guy named Subaru a guy who joined his basketball team in high school only to watch it get suspended for a year after the captain of the team was caught having a relationship with the coach’s daughter who was in elementary school. Because of this everyone begins calling everyone in the basketball club a lolicon and Subaru begins to fall out of love with basketball coming close to giving it up. Not wanting to watch him go to waste his aunt forces him to coach a team of elementary girls who have created their own basketball club and are trying to get ready for a match that could determine whether or not they’ll be seen as an official club or not. From there the anime becomes a story of healing, learning, teaching, and growing. Through his interactions with the girls Subaru finds his love for basketball again and through their interactions with Subaru the girls come to learn how to play basketball with each one becoming good at the sport and learning to overcome their limitations and walls. The coaching aspect and the games are all well done. Again, as a guy who has coached kids around the ages of Tomoka and the other girls this series connected with me. Although the games weren’t as close or as exciting as the games presented in the anime. Yeah, surprisingly the games in the anime are very intense. At times I forgot I was watching a bunch of elementary girls playing basketball. And yes I have to admit the girls are cute. So far my favorite characters are Tomoka and Saki and my least favorite being Airi because of her constant whining. Also, I know girls mature faster than boys and there are some cases when girls in elementary start to develop breast but seriously, Airi’s breast are something I would expect to see on a high school girl. Seeing them on an elementary girl is disturbing.
While the coaching and basketball games are good it’s the rest of the anime that becomes unsettling to watch. For starters there’s a fair amount of fanservice with the girls such as a shower scene, a bath scene, and two of them try to flaunt their bodies up against Subaru. It’s downright disgusting and puts a bad taste in my mouth. Another thing that pissed me off about this series was everyone calling Subaru a lolicon. Why are we calling him that? He didn’t have an affair with an underage girl and even in the series he shows no signs of being romantically interested in any of the girls. The girls show an interest in him but in my opinion it’s more of a fascination than a romantic interest. He’s just unlike any of the other boys they’ve seen around their age so they’re fascinated by him. While it’s true he gets caught up in perverted situations with the girls he shows that he’s uncomfortable as any normal person would be if they were in his situation. They also waste a lot of time in this series like that dumb filler arc of Airi learning how to swim and the beach episode. Why are you wasting time with that stuff, get back to playing basketball. I thought the series was okay when I watch and reviewed it but today I have to admit it’s not really all that good as I originally thought it was. If I was grading it today I give it 4.5/10. It’s pretty bad but watchable and I still have a soft spot for it and those of you out there wondering when I’m going to review the second season I might get to it.