We admit: the headline is a pretty bold question, considering the impact Slam Dunk has left in the Philippines. But we’re not comparing these two titles just for the heck of it.
We wouldn’t be surprised if most of you haven’t heard of Ahiro no Sora. Unlike other popular current sports anime Haikyuu!! and Koroko No Basuke, it isn’t as widely marketed in streaming platforms like Netflix and Crunchyroll.
Maybe because the anime is decidedly “old school”.
From its themes, its music, and even its animation (based on a manga that’s been running for almost 16 years), you can really feel distinct change of pace from newer manga/anime titles. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Ahiro no Sora has a very simple premise: it’s all about overcoming your weaknesses through hard work and teamwork. Nothing groundbreaking, true, but when done right, it could lead to very emotionally effective storytelling.
The protagonist, Sora Kurumatani, is a passionate and lovable teenager who’s a bit too short for basketball. That doesn’t stop him from loving the sport, though, and he uses his passion to inspire his school’s team of baller misfits and troublemakers.
The great thing about Ahiru no Sora’s premise is because it is founded on tried and tested shonen tropes so that it can freely focus its efforts into developing smaller details of the story that make each individual’s quirks and background stories shine.
As in most sports anime, the show often interrupts itself to explain the rules of basketball. It’s less intrusive than it sounds — because the characters are actually newbies at basketball.
We won’t spoil too much of the plot here, but if you get past the first few episodes of borderline cringy shonen exposition — like how Sora would repeat, over and over, that he’d “never run away from a fight” — the story will slowly build up its cardboard-thin introductions into real, interesting people you’ll be glad to root for.
The animation, while not as spectacular as the excellent work done by Production I.G. for, say, Haikyuu!!, decent. You can, however, spot the budget cuts during exposition and scene transitions, where the recycling of old backgrounds and the use of lengthy static frames becomes especially grating.
But despite these constraints, Ahiru no Sora still manages to be a compelling watch, thanks to its slow-burn character building. (This was Slam Dunk’s strength as well, where you felt so invested in the cast’s troubles, whether they were studying for an exam to spitting out humorous love confessions.) There was a moment in the first few episodes of the anime when the on-the-nose metaphors the characters were spouting actually became very real conflicts that us viewers could really relate with. Plus, we never thought we would care about the well-being of shoes as much as we did for Sora’s dirty pair of old Asics.
While he’s not yet on the level of Hanamichi Sakuragi, Sora manages to do this as well, his complexity he has as a character is mostly based on his backstory and drive, and therefore the impact it has on us viewers does not change that dramatically throughout the entire series, leaving us with the same level of emotional attachment to him throughout the season (so far).
This is probably the biggest factors that prevents a lot of anime from being considered as modern classics — the seasonal format rarely gives us ample time to really feel the growth of each character. We had 101 episodes to really get to know the boys of Sh?hoku High School, but barely a quarter of that to get to know the ones from Kuzury? High School. Maybe the next seasons will flesh them out a bit more but contemporary budget constraints really make that difficult to achieve.
Hopefully more quality stories will be loved and supported by people so that they get the adaptations that they deserve.
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