Blue Box Episode 1 [First Impression]

Eva’s First Impression

Here we go! A sports love story! Introducing Inomata Taiki and Kano Chinatsu, both attend the sports powerhouse, Eimei Private High School. Taiki is on the senior highschool badminton team, but he’s still considered a ‘low-level underling’. He still has a long way to go, but he’s definitely putting in the effort for it. Taiki prefers badminton because it’s a sport where he can own up to his own efforts on the court, as opposed to relying on teammates. And then you have Chinatsu, the prestigious ace on the girl’s Basketball Team, but she isn’t the ace for nothing, as she puts in a ton of work outside of practice to sharpen her skills, and we can see how her world very much revolves around the sport with her reading/studying the strategy books too.

Taiki he has had a crush on Chinatsu for a long time now. He fell for her the day he happened across her in tears, practising after failing to qualify for nationals, he believes that was the day he fell for her, as her earnest determination to keep striving to better her game inspired him to do better too. He seems like a good guy, but we can see how he can turn into this adorable shy and awkward duckling when it comes to trying to interacting with Chinatsu. He’s always trying to be rationale about it, but then the way he just acts before thinking when trying to be considerate is so adorable. Just a sneeze and he’s like, “HERE TAKE THIS SCARF, I ALSO HAVE THIS WARM TEA, GLOVES, HANDWARMER–” how could you not giggle? Meanwhile, Chinatsu had a cool moment with the way she actually gave back his scarf when he had a sneeze, mindful of him not to catch a cold too. After-all, he needs to be in tip top form for his own sake too!

This episode went from Taiki trying to muster up his courage to start speaking to Chinatsu, to hearing that she was going to be moving abroad, to discovering that was all a misunderstanding— she’s actually will be staying at his place under his mother’s care. Talk about an evolved opportunity to get to know each other better!

I also find it find it so funny how Taiki keeps imagining Chinatsu and him as a ‘newly-wed couple’, and I wonder how that’s going to translate with her actually living with him now. Throughout the episode, he kept on thinking about ‘big points of contact’, but now he has the best opportunity, and one that cannot be missed! Fortunately the two seem to get along quite well at the moment. At least Chinatsu welcomes his company enough to ask him to play one-on-one with her. The two have always been doing early morning practice together while respectfully letting the other do their own thing, so they are certainly used to each other’s company.

As for Chinatsu, she seems to be a pretty nice and chill girl. We didn’t hear too much of her this episode, but she has left a favourable first impression me so far, probably because I can relate to her passion for basketball. Originally she wasn’t sure if she’d stay or join her family moving abraod, but it was actually Taiki that reminded Chinatsu why she has been working so hard in the first place, and helped solidify her resolve. She actually didn’t remember the day she had cried while practising with her shots after a narrow loss in Nationals, but it served as an important reminder to what she had been working hard towards, and why it was so important to stick with her team.

That said, I do find it both funny and surprising how Chinatsu and Taiki never met each other when they were younger. You’d think they might have despite the fact their moms been friends since highschool (who had also attended Elmei), and were even on the girl’s basketball team together. And lo and behold, now, of all things– because Chinatsu’s parents have to move abroad for work, Taiki’s mom had agreed to take Chinatsu under her wing so that she can continue competing with her team.

And finally, there’s Hina and Kyo, both friends with Taiki. At the moment it doesn’t appear that Hina has a crush on Taiki, and they have a habit of occasionally bantering with each other like elementary kids. We can see she has a mischievous side as she was having a lot of fun teasing him once she figured out who he had a crush on. Here’s to hoping she doesn’t actually fall for him, I’d actually be very happy if we can be spared from a love triangle between Taiki, Chinatsu and Hina. As for Kyo, we didn’t hear a whole lot from him except at the beginning of the episode, so I’ll save my impression of him for another day.

So far it’s off on an endearing start because Taiki is such a wholesome bean! I’m glad this show is confirmed to have at least 25 episodes to start with. especially since this one is an on-going title that’s already at 166 chapters (16 volumes) to work with. So it got a decent amount of materials to kick things off, but also that puts into perspective to be mindful of how the pace of the romance may unfold. We’ll have to see how the pacing of things go, but I’m mostly interested on the balance between the romance and the focus on multiple different sports, as it looks like we might see them dabble a bit on rhythm gymnastics with Hina too.

The animation was solid for most part, but the CGI was… rough to say the least. The slow-mo blurry transition of the gymnasium with all the students practising their sports was not exactly pleasing to the eyes… But as long as they don’t do too much of that, we’ll be fine. The little bit of 2D animation of sports we did get was clean~, so hopefully they will stick to that for most part.

As for blogging, I’ll be giving this one up to three episodes to decide whether I’ll commit to it or not for the season. I still have five or six other shows up for consideration, but as it stands right now, this is one has earned a high spot on the priority list!

Possibility of Watching: Guaranteed
Possibility of Blogging: High