Baby Steps Episode 11
What They Say:
Baby Steps centers on a honor student named Eiichiro Maruo who becomes frustrated with his life and decides to join the tennis club. Despite lacking experience and physical strength, he utilizes his studious nature to develop a strategic approach to playing tennis. Taking notes of his opponents’ habits and tendencies, he is able to predict their next move before they even react. He also meets Natsu Takasaki, a beautiful girl with a passion for tennis. With her help, he aims to become a professional tennis player.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Eiichiro definitely made some solid progress in the last couple of episodes with his matches against Miyagawa as we saw him starting to come into his own. He hasn’t really established his own style yet, something that the big players always seem to be able to do, but he’s been learning and analyzing a lot and that helps to get him to move along well. It also starts to up his reputation a bit as he’s gone up against a seeded player now and won, which puts more interest on him by others. But what really helps is that Eiichiro isn’t full of, well, personality. We know what he’s like, but he largely comes across as a serious young man with some odd quirks, which Miyagawa saw with all the notebooks and his mannerisms between matches, and that keeps him from being over the top. And it also means that we aren’t really seeing those personalities with other characters as well, which is a great change of pace.
With the matches against Miyagawa carrying on into this episode, we see that Miyagawa has figured out Eiichiro a bit even after all the surprises and is now working to push back against him in order to win the next round. And that pushes him closer to a break in the overall series of matches that should give him a definitive victory. The first half of the episode works things well as Eiichiro starts to feel the pressure and we see how Miyagawa is getting more serious and establishing his position better to win, doing it in his own calculated kind of way. That does, in turn, challenge Eiichiro all the more and it helps that he remembers the important words from Natsu that he got bout focusing less on himself and what he’s doing and more about his opponent.
This pushes us well into the second half as we see how Eiichiro has to react more to these kinds of changes. He does get pretty analytical, which is amusing because it’s filled with a whole lot of math, but it’s the kind of thing that fits for him in the way he approaches things. Of course, as serious as he gets and as much as he breaks it down, he ends up betting wrong on a big play and it pushes him into an even tougher position. Which is definitely good in a way because it’s a trial by fire that can really define a young player like him that’s not been in the game that long. But it also puts some real pressure on Miyagawa as well because he realizes how close he came to doing what Eiichiro thought he was. The ups and downs of the match are fantastic to watch, especially as we see Eiichiro really taking some risks.
In Summary:
This episode takes the long approach to the matches against Miyagawa, especially as it gets into a difficult position that really makes it so that both of them feel the pressure of it all. There is, as there should be, some luck involved with it towards the end that makes it one of those great moments where you have to laugh because there’s a good dose of reality in it all. But overall, the matches as they progressed challenged both players in realistic ways that kept you on your toes and uncertain of where it would go. But also because it felt like we were seeing something that was once again natural and honest. And while I love my over the top sports shows, there’s a lot to be said for doing things in this approach as well because it just feels a lot more engaging and real.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
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