Burning Kabaddi First Impressions

“I took entering high school as my opportunity to live a life as far away from sports as possible.”

One challenge that many sports anime have is how best to present nuanced information about an obscure activity without overshadowing the underlying character dynamics or characters themselves. Burning Kabaddi has an interesting solution to this issue, and it’s to make the characters loud and obnoxious to remain memorable next to the exposition. That might be a rather mean way of putting it, but I can’t say I’m particularly keen on any of these individuals yet. I say yet, because in spite of a tumultuous start, I do find myself curious about the central sport and I can see these characters being interesting once they’ve been given time to breathe. However, in this first episode, there is a sense that everyone has turned their personality up to max levels so that they can stand out, but all this results in is a cacophonous mess. Burning Kabaddi has some potential, but this first entry is a bit rough.

Kabaddi is evidently a sport that involves something not unlike a highly regulated game of tag. I’d never heard of it, and if there is a clear downside to this sport, it would be that it doesn’t seem particularly marketable. Based on the only promotional image I had seen for the series, I would have assumed to maybe be about rugby based on the uniforms and my limited knowledge of the subject. Still, as a sport to build a show around, it seems promising. Our main character is Yoigoshi Tatsuya, a former middle-school soccer playing star who has turned against sports with a passion. He finds himself… extorted into giving his school’s kabaddi club a chance. That was one of the first knocks against the show. As much as characters may throw around the, “I can tell you’re having fun,” line, they’re still coercing someone who claims to be uninterested in sports into joining their game. As someone who has watched his fair share of sports anime, I know they’re correct, but that doesn’t make this first episode go down any easier. When he gets to the club he meets the other 4 current members of the club who are all varying flavors of over-the-top. There’s the small and exuberant underclassman, the muscle obsessed one, the guy who’s obsessed with looking good, and of course, the calculating and manipulative glasses-wearer. It’s all predictable at the moment, but I’m probably going to at least give it a few episodes to make its case. I’ve stuck with sports series that had less going for them.

Speaking of what the show does have going for it, the production is being handled by TMS Entertainment. Given that they’re currently also working on the sequel to Megalo Box this season, they appear to be, probably unintentionally, cornering the market on full contact sports anime. After all, they just wrapped up Dr. Stone season 2, and given that I’ve only ever watched two episodes of the first season, I’m fairly confident that’s a show about beating lions to death with your bare fists. Joking aside, they do a good job here. It’s not A-tier animation, but it’s solid enough. As far as sports series are concerned, I’d consider the visual quality to be roughly on par with Yowamushi Pedal. The OP is pretty striking too, and while it may rely on the red-white color palette a little too strongly, I can’t deny that the good impression it made could be what’s convincing me to stick around. The ED sounds nice, but it’s the bare-bones production approach. We get a bunch of still images as the music plays over them. They even seem to linger longer than usual for these types of endings, so that adds to the mildly phoned-in quality of it.

Before I wrap up a few Notes and Nitpicks:

• This review sat in its own little purgatory for most of the past week, so the second episode has already aired. Most of my gripes hold through with the second episode, though the sport itself gets a little more time to make its introduction, and the characters are a bit less abrasive. Hopefully this is a trend that continues.
• The humor is very hit or miss in the first two episodes, and in most instances, pretty predictable. If the show tries to lean heavily on comedy, it could run the risk of exacerbating its other problems rather than alleviating them. A recurring gag in the second episode about the soccer coach trying to recruit Yoigoshi is particularly unfunny and hopefully won’t continue.
• I haven’t been wearing glasses long enough to sort out my feelings regarding the “demon in glasses” trope.
• During the course of this review, I don’t know if there is a singular instance where I spelled “kabaddi” correctly on the first try.