Baby Steps Episode 6
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’s match against his first opponent, his first real opponent since he’s only had a bit of time to train, is one that is showing him the way pretty well. With Ryo being a fifth seeded player, he’s no slouch overall though he may not be a true top tier. But it’s giving Eiichiro the challenge he needs to really understand what he’s up against in a realistic way. And what we get is what’s truly Eiichiro’s strength in understanding his opponent and style of play, somewhat instinctively, and breaking it down like he would any school problem. Except this time he has to do a lot of it in his head and on the fly while remembering everything from his copious amount of notes and other material that he’s put together over the course of his training. So when he does manage to start turning the tide, exhausted as he is, it’s definitely a rallying point.
There’s some natural explanatory material that goes into the show here as the observers from Eiichiro’s team start talking about what he’s doing and how it’s affecting him, but also the weaknesses he has due to his lack of overall experience and skill. We also get Ryo really being surprised by what’s going on and getting frustrated by it since he’s having to work a lot harder than he expected. While Eiichiro is by no means a pure tennis genius ala Prince of Tennis characters, he has a tenacity and approach that could make him a natural of a different sort. The match shows this well from all different sides and even some of the frustrations that can come into it from the way it’s being drawn out as well. What’s welcome is that as it goes on, Eiichiro’s coach really does see a lot of potential here, but he knows that Eiichiro can go only so far in this tournament based on his experience and ability so far. So it’s actually pretty nice to see him rally but not win and the way that Ryo reacts to it.
With this and Natsu’s brief but winning match making up the first half, that allows the mental side of the tournament to sink in from there on out as Eiichiro has to cope with his loss and how it affects him. While some would just toss in the towel, he returns to his strength of analysis and works to understand where he went wrong and what he needs to do to fix it with a little encouragement from his family. It’s interesting how he talks about how he doesn’t have any talent but manages to do what he did in the match and is then able to really break it down and examine it after the fact. His formation of a plan to fix what went wrong is in itself a pretty slick talent and one that he can work really well.
Eiichiro’s commitment to training is definitely nice here and we get to see how he’s focused on really trying to better himself. With the second day of the tournament in this episode as well, we get some interesting bits as he interacts with other players and ends up meeting Takuya, the third seeded player, who cheerfully tells him that he’ll avenge him when he goes up against Ryo today. The exploration of other players grows nicely here and while there are a few characters, it again avoids being Prince of Tennis territory, which is very welcome. With that and some other expository material as the coach talks to Eiichiro and gives him the knowledge he needs, letting him know that he has grown and changed in this short amount of time, that he can be a pretty strong player in a year.
In Summary:
Baby Steps once again works through slowly educating and growing Eiichiro and it does it in a way that has him intent and focused but doing the hard work. Both mental and physical. He’s not a gifted natural talent but one that can be shaped and molded into something potentially amazing based on his analytical skills. Matching that with the physical ability is the key, but it’s going to take time. And understanding that and agreeing to putting in the time is something that I really like seeing them do here. We’re not getting a fast track to greatness but an exploration of the effort that has to be put into it all while keeping a potential romance sitting along the sidelines that’s being glanced at and hoped for in some small and simple way. It’s all very encouraging to watch and it still feels like one of the more honest and realistic shows out there of the lsat few years.
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.