When the winter anime season started this year, I followed 15 series including the leftovers from previous season. And then I dropped the total to 13 series after a weeks. I kept watching the 13 anime series until now, but of course not all episodes have been absolutely fun.
As usual, some series will have good episodes and then some bad ones. It’s the overall premise of a series that keeps me going. Anyway, I’m here to write about some of the series I’ve been following this season thus far.
In recent episodes (11 episodes at the time of writing) of Free! Eternal Summer, we saw avid swimmer Nanase Haruka struggles to deal with the expectations from people around him. As a talented freestyler, Haruka was well sought after by universities but he wanted nothing of it. As he tries to find his place in the swimming arena, Haruka repeatedly told his friends all he wanted to be is “free”.
As a person who never had such high expectations rested on his shoulders, Haruka found it extremely difficult to manage. After all, we’re talking about a guy who has been swimming casually. Since day one, we viewers have been told that he swims because he enjoys swimming. He swims to have fun experiences with his friends. Haruka is competitive, but at the end of the day, he always swims for his own reasons.
As I found myself following quite a number of sports anime this season, I can’t help but to take a step back and wonder why I like sports and competitive game anime. Over the seven years of me watching anime, I’ve watched many sports anime such as Bamboo Blade, Slam Dunk, Chihayafuru, Kuroko no Basuke, Free! etc.
So why do I like sports anime that much? Here’s why.
My last update was in August! That’s how time flies! In between August and October, loads of stuff had happened. I’m away from home most days of the week for work and some of my family members are facing health scares so much time was spent taking care/paying attention to them when I’m home. It’s like I totally understand how sometimes people – even huge anime fans – would slipped behind a few months because there are so much things going on.
Sometimes, just sometimes, other things take precedence over hobbies.
World of Yamaguchi Hoshiko 