Kuroko’s Basketball (Kuroko No Basuke)

Ever since the London Summer Olympics 2012 started, I haven’t been watching any anime lately until today. I decided to give Kuroko No Basuke a try and was pleasantly surprised by it. I’m a huge fan of Slam Dunk, the anime-manga on basketball written by Takehiko Inoue. When I spotted this basketball anime I was instantly curious and after the first episode, I think I’m hooked!

This anime however is not to be mistaken as just a copy cat of Slam Dunk. The girl isn’t in love with the main character, she is in fact the team coach, the hot head and best basketball player may seem like Sakuragi Hanamichi but he starts off as a definite pro unlike Sakuragi’s untrained raw talent. The main character and star of this anime is in fact the weakest of the team players, the blue haired boy named Kuroko. And what’s more, some team player in all of the schools seem to have a sense of humor and not altogether an obvious bad person.

 

You may think that perhaps he is like Kaede Rukawa, the cool and ultra talented guy. You couldn’t be more wrong. He is actually the weakest of the team players, barely noticeable among his peers, seems pleasant enough and the only thing going for him is his boyish blue haired looks. Just kidding. He is however, much to people’s dismay, part of the legendary “Generation of Miracles” back in middle school competitions and is known as the ‘Shadow’.

His special set of skills is using his ‘Shadow’ presence that opponents do not pay attention to  to pass the ball to his team players in strategic positions. A passive ability but effective nonetheless. And being Kuroko, who just loves basketball and understands that he is neither weak nor strong in it, decides to use his unique skill to make Kagami, a naturally talented player, to be the best basketball player in Japan.

Kagami does not know what to make of Kuroko and finds his weakness in basketball annoying but tolerates Kuroko because his ‘Shadow’ skills did in fact proved useful. Is this the start of a beautiful relationship? I have noticed a few ‘yaoi’ photos of these two lol but going to reserve judgement until I’ve progressed further ahead into the episodes. One has got to admire Kagami’s enthusiasm in basketball. When he is faced with a strong opponent, he gets fired up and looks forward to improve his skills.

As for the coach, it’s interesting to see she has a sadistic side to her style of training the team. As part of the initiation, she required each of the new members to announce to the whole school their reason for playing basketball and if they fail to achieve their goal they would declare their love to the girl that they like butt naked. An odd motivation but that got the guys sweating at least at the possibility of failure. Another odd thing about this coach is that when she analyzes the players, she sees numbers…literally. And from those numbers she determines the strength and weaknesses of the player.

Will they win and achieve the #1 top spot in the competition (somehow I have a feeling they will…of course)? Stay tuned…