HOSHIAI NO SORA

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REVIEWS

• 

  Protogeist

  80/100
  A review of the 2019 tv-series Hoshiai no Sora and on its exploration of escapism and abuse

  I have never really been into sports anime (Are those the exact words I used in my Ping Pong review opening? Or that I use in all of my reviews!? Fuck it… Being self-aware makes bad writing okay so whatever. You did this Deadpool).
  It isn’t really the sport part that puts me off, I’ll watch anything if I think that it’ll be good. But sadly, few sports anime have really intrigued me in any way other than “that shot was kind of cool I guess” so I just stayed out of it. I still have a lot of sports anime on my PTW-list (I think at least. Hang on… Hey there’s 9 of them at least! Including Girls und Panzer… Whatever) but I never really felt the need to watch any of them. Even when people said that they weren’t about the actual sports that they based the story on, that never worked on me. If the show’s strength is the themes it tackles then why don’t I just watch a show that actually has interesting themes and don’t have to constantly be described as “not about the sport”. It’s just kind of annoying. And so before this I had only seen like 2 sports anime, one of which was extremely mediocre. So I wasn’t really that compelled to watch any of it if it wasn’t highly acclaimed.
  But for some reason, a sports show this season intrigued me. I don’t even really know why, it was just on a whim that I started watching it this season. Maybe it helped that I had played Tennis before and wanted to watch a show about it, but I never expected to find Hoshiai no Sora this interesting.

  One of my favorite youtube creators is Oliver “Philosophy Tube” Thorn. He does a lot of videos on subjects including but not limited to climate change, abortion, the validity of democracy and of course the philosophy of anime (Haven’t watched that one, I just think the character he plays annoys the hell out of me. He’s kind of like a majority of r/anime or Reddit in general. Yes I’m calling you out right now). You know, standard “left-wing youtube” topics (I hate that word but whatever). And I find his videos very interesting and have influenced my own way of thinking greatly, while also being surprisingly well directed and produced. Like, really! He’s kind of like Contrapoints if you know of her. He makes those kinds of videos that I can just put in the background while I’m doing something over and over and over again.

  But a video of his that I find especially interesting is his link video on abuse and trauma. He tells us the story of No Exit and his own experience with the topic. It’s a very personal video and one that kind of opened me up to how an abusive relationship could look like and what it inevitably leads to. How an abusive partner makes you feel like you are dependant on them and that even if hell opens up, you won’t leave.
  It’s a topic that I feel as though doesn’t get talked about enough. Sure, we see girls being hit by their boyfriends in bad movies all the time, but they rarely touch on the psychological aspects of it. That even if you know that something’s wrong, you will not leave cause your self-image has now become defined by your partner. You become nothing.

  And it’s surprising how few times this is dealt with in sports anime considering how heavily sports rely on teams. How you have to play as one to really win, that you can’t do so alone. And I thought this would continue to be with this series but I was quickly proven wrong.
  (Btw I’ll be spoiling stuff, so bye-bye if you don’t want to read that)

  From episode 1 I was highly interested in the show even if it didn’t seem like it would do anything special. While I didn’t find the art style to be that interesting to look at, the execution was fantastic! The overall direction is gorgeous and the attention to detail in the animation is so human that I don’t think I can really look at anime like I used to. Even (what I assume are) CG characters look really good! I hadn’t really seen anything from the director before and the art director had seriously only worked on one anime before this so it was a huge surprise! That coupled with the really well-toned composition and enjoyable characters made the show good enough to continue watching even though it had its problems. Looking at my notes, the showed seemed to be a mix of “I love Mitsue”, the animation being super nice and the main guy being way too good at tennis for someone who has never played it before (Even for someone really passionate about it). It was very relaxing to watch and just generally fun.
  But around a third of the series, this changed almost completely.

  When I watched the fourth episode of the series I noticed that there still was content after the ending. I usually stop watching when the ED plays since I want to actually watch the show, even when the ending is great like in this case! So when I saw this I was kind of shocked. And even more so to see what the after-credits scene had to offer.
  The scene shows Maki home alone in his apartment when his biological father rings the bell and bursts in and takes the money that he supposedly needs from them. And this causes Maki to have a panic attack, something we don’t really see from Maki before this. It’s a very emotional scene since it breaks all the expectations you have for what kind of series this is. The way that they really put you inside of Maki with the use of cinematography and music was really special. It’s a glimpse of discomfort in Maki that kind of changed how I saw this show completely.

  And while the show continues to have cute and wholesome moments where the members of the club support each other, this is consistent. Almost every member of the club seems to have some internal problem that they have to face throughout the show, which often has to do with domestic abuse (whether physical or psychological). And while this is pretty common in a lot of anime, the consistency in this really surprised me. The way they seemed to be able to give almost every character depth originally and interestingly was highly effective when trying to make this story seem real.
  Toma’s problems with his mother and expectations of being as good as his brother, Nao’s silence in the face of his mother’s disapproval, and Mitsue’s fears that being an artist makes her stupid are just a few of these problems that the characters have to get over. And while a lot of them revolve around their parents, which can get a little repetitive (I would’ve liked to see this theme of abuse being developed in more ways), I feel like they explore this domestic abuse in a way that shows how much a child can be fucked up from this. There is a variety in how it is executed.

  Yuuta is a character here that I feel as though is extra special in this regard though since his arc doesn’t really have to do with his parents at all. And while I think the character wouldn’t have been worse if it did have to do with his parents, it’s something that I can appreciate as it is.
  Cause while I don’t think most anime are that problematic, I find the exploration of sex and gender to be very weak in it. I haven’t really seen anything tackling it realistically, and most of the time when a gay couple appears in an anime it just feels as though they are there to please the yaoi/yuri crowd. So seeing it being explored in Yuuta’s character was very shocking! In one of the earlier episodes, it is basically revealed that Yuuta is into guys. After this, we see this developed more, where we get to see his questioning of gender and sex as a whole. How he doesn’t feel comfortable even labeling himself, something a lot of trans and non-binary people has problems with as well. But he never feels defined by this either. While his sexuality and gender questions are developed in the series, he spends most of the time just being another guy in the club. No one jokes about or feels the need to point out that he’s gay or something. He just is and seeing a show deal with identity like this is incredibly respectable.

  And again, character development like this happens so many times! Rintauro has like 3 scenes where he gets character development yet I feel like this is enough for him to be one of my favorite characters in the show. At the same time, I feel like they make every character feel flawed in some way. Whether it is being an asshole sometimes or to give their own responsibility at others, they don’t feel perfect. It’s incredibly impressive to see this in just another seasonal show when it is more common in longer shows seen as classics!

  We even get to see this theme of abusive relationships being explored in tennis itself which is I think is just incredible! Arashi and his tennis partner reflect what an abusive relationship looks like. How Arashi is controlling of the whole field while his partner always second-guesses both his failings and wins. I would even say that Toma and Maki represent this in the way that they relate to their opponents. Their strategy is often to start out losing but learning who their opponents are so that they later can completely destroy them both physically and mentally. They become the controlling ones. It is kind of fucked sometimes, and I can see this conveying how a whole tennis match can symbolize a relationship like that. They get to know each other and then one of them manipulate that knowledge.
  And I find that so interesting cause it doesn’t just use tennis as a backdrop to tell their story, but a vehicle. It is important for the story. So, in the end, I still believe that this show is about tennis. How we can escape into tennis, and that it can either distract you from your problems in life or just make them bigger.

  And speaking of ending, I feel like I have to bring it up. This show has become the subject of quite a few controversies, one of which has to do with how the production of the series went. And I usually don’t think to talk about the production of a show really matters when discussing the quality of a series, since a work of art is what it is and not how it was originally supposed to be. But in this case, I feel like I have to bring up how the ending of the show was dealt with. Because according to the director himself, the series was cut into a 12 episode series 2 years into production when it was originally supposed to be double the length. So the story is essentially just half of what it was supposed to be. And this is obviously a shame. I would’ve wanted a 24 episodes series from this, and seeing the staff being fucked like this is terrible. But still, I genuinely think the 12th episode of the series works really well as an ending. While it doesn’t resolve everything the series has to say and definitely doesn’t end the story, seeing Maki becoming worse than his dad was really interesting. I generally think that stories that end on a negative point are more interesting than ones where the characters all end up happily. So while it is obviously too bad that this had to happen for the series, but for what it is I’m happy with it!

  In the end, I don’t think this series will change my life or the media I choose to consume. I have to learn a lesson in that a show I like won’t make me automatically want to watch shows in the same genre. I will probably always have the precognition that sports shows won’t be worth the time. But it doesn’t have to. I find it interesting and it made me spend time I could’ve wasted on something else and for what it is, it matters.

  Strong 8/10!

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• 

  wheatsquares33

  74/100
  Despite being dense with ideas and strong characterization, Hoshiai is hurt by a rushed, damaging "conclusion"

  Bad endings are a given in many anime. Whether it’s because sudden time constraints causing things to rush into a messy conclusion or trying to fart out an anime original ending to an ongoing sourcework, lots of times anime just doesn’t end cleanly. And that’s fine, if a show is enjoyable for most of its run then a stupid ending can be forgivable (see Nana, No Game No Life, Angel Beats).

  All you have to do is wrap things up in a bow, no matter how messy, that doesn’t undermine the spirit and message of the show or recontextualize all the moments of growth into a way that makes them all across vapid and pointless, meanwhile wrapping up none of the loose ends that are presented throughout the better part of the show. I mean. Easy enough right? Well.

  Hoshiai no Sora is an incredibly frustrating show for me. From episode 4 on, I was confident it would be a 10/10 and an easy addition to my all time favorites list. There’s just so much that does right throughout it’s first eleven episodes, and all it had to do was stick the landing at least halfway. And as soon as I saw the 12 episode run, I knew it wouldn’t be a pretty end, but hopefully end with enough good will and room to grow should there be another possibility in another season. But I guess fucking up everything monstrously in a way that makes me rethink how much I actually enjoyed the show is also a viable option huh.

  Well, let’s talk about the strengths of Hoshiai no Sora. Because at one point I did really love this show. I can’t say it ever did anything particularly heady or high concept, but did manage to maintain a level of thoughtfulness in its drama that I appreciated. Hoshiai no Sora is a show about a soft tennis club made up of space-y, dispassionate guys, on the verge of being shut down because the lack of effort really comes through. But when best boy of the year Maki Katsuragi is convinced into joining the club, he breathes a new life into it and the team begins to grow. Meanwhile all the individual members have their own drama back home (because every parent in this universe is abusive, controlling, or whatever varying shade of asshole you might choose), all with some nice BL undertones.

  So it’s a very nice mix of sports, slice-of-life, and hard drama for the better part of 12 episodes, and I think it pulls it off very nicely. The art and animation throughout the show is incredible, I absolutely love the soft, round character designs and light, pleasant color palette. The characters are adorable and expressive, and the sports action segments are very well animated, 8bit is a studio I usually anticipate having above average production and they delivered here.

  And the artwork isn’t just pretty wrapping paper, because the actual content of the show manages to stay pretty gripping too. There’s a wide breadth of emotions in this show, from harrowing and gritty scenes of abuse to the heartwarming and exhilarating scenes of the tennis team growing together and achieving something as a unit. And I think that the emotions of these scenes are presented perfectly through Kazuki Akane’s direction, he really is great at capturing the mood of a scene and making the viewer feel it.

  And while the direction and visuals are very strong, it’s really the excellent, detailed, diverse cast of characters that these heavily dramatic scenes are based around that make them go down so smoothly. Every character in this feels so real and thought out, believably quirky without feeling gimmicky. I love how the pairings in the tennis games allows the cast to be directly toyed with, to see how they interact with each other and show different sides of their personalities. And it might be a bit reductive for me to boil down the dramatic centerpieces of Hoshiai no Sora as “parents are assholes” (or maybe it’s not...), but that is essentially a lot of these characters’ dramas. But they’re all handled pretty well, even if it is a bit simplistic.

  Every character has their own goals and struggles that they must face as teenagers, but not belying the fact that they are just kids with parents who care about them (though often either too much or in the wrong ways). And that’s not really something you see in high school anime, oftentimes the characters are treated as just not fully matured adults with no responsibilities or higher authorities to report to, save for the occasional home room teacher. So for a high school drama to have these authority figures present and taken to their extremes is...interesting at the very least, sets it apart from most teenage dramas.

  Couple of these characters narratives really stood out to me too, the LGBT+ themes approached in Yuuta’s arc are handled with a level of grace and subtlety that most anime is way too scared to touch. Baby goth’s struggle with artistic passion and actually find application for it is relatable and fleshes out the character in a way I wouldn’t expect. And I absolutely adore Maki and his ability to stay responsible, energetic, and positive in the face of a terrible home life. Also his relationship with Touma was some of the cutest BL all year and I was dying to see it go all the way with it, this show does not shy away from gayness, and, given more time, could have seen it going in that direction.

  And overall I feel that Maki’s character really captures the spirit of what this show is supposed to be. Lots of these characters do have rough home lives or are just struggling with their own personal issues, and yet when they get together and accomplish something together, it’s a very positive experience and only adds to the hype of seeing cute boys achieve something together. It’s just such a smart approach to sports anime and hard drama, reminiscent of something like Tsuritama which I also love.

  So, to get back at the thesis of this review, I really did love this show for the most part, and maybe you think I’m being melodramatic when I say that the last five minutes made me drop it from a 10 to a 7, but it really does miss the mark that badly. Apparently this show was supposed to be 2-cour, was cut down to one. And the end result is just so underthought and so bad and aimless and nihilistic in a way that isn’t even smart.

  After reaching one of the highest highs of the show at the end of the final game, things just go completely off the fucking rails. New dramatic plot points are introduced only to go completely unresolved. All these characters’ struggles are remembered for one last time, but only in the grimmest, most hopeless lights, culminating in an almost laughably creepypasta-flavored scene where Maki buys a knife to go kill his dad THE FUCK.

  So this is where we’re left off huh. I guess in some ways there is a level of artistic tragedy in this exceedingly grim ending, but it doesn’t come across as...smart. Or thought out at all. Just an “fuck you” at the end. Try as they might to overcome their personal struggles, tennis is only a brief escapism and ultimately there’s just no end or resolution to the personal suffering. All of the highs are hopeless.

  And doesn’t that kind of shed a new light on all of the hard drama in the first 11 episodes? Instead of these characters growing together to overcome their struggles it’s just an edgy showcase of suffering that ultimately accomplishes nothing except to make you feel bad. Any of the theming and detailed character writing is just undermined by the sense of none of it mattering.

  And again, I don’t think this kind of ending is innately wrong in and of itself. I think shows like Texhnolyze and Shiki and Fate/Zero really succeed in finishing their stories off in a similarly hopeless fashion, but where those shows excel is that their very existences reflect on the pointlessness of war or killing and end apocalyptically in a way that reflects more on human existence more than teen melodrama. It’s ugly, but the point is to showcase the flaws of humanity and the pointlessness in the bigger picture, the magnitude of the themes are so huge that the idea of growth and thriving are just dwarfed.

  Meanwhile Hoshiai no Sora is a very personal, introspective show about characters that haven’t grown and have hope and room to grow and overcome their struggles. And these glimpses of hope and positivity are shown throughout the show as its very focus and theming. So to end with this idea that all of that was completely pointless just doesn’t fit. It’s just a stunted, sudden ending to make you feel bad, resolves absolutely nothing and ultimately completely misses the point of the characters and the show itself to such a degree that it makes me like the whole show significantly less.

  I’ve been needing to review this show awhile now, so glad to finally have it out. Would I recommend Hoshiai no Sora, I don’t know. The whole thing is just building up hope really, wow this is a good starting point, I want to see where these characters and their struggles go. And at the end of the day, there are just too many starting points to care about that ultimately remain unresolved and in the ugliest, worst way possible. I’d say I enjoyed my time with the show, but now in the face of this conclusion, I realize that my like of it comes more from a hope of things to come than the actual events of the show. Falls from grace this hard don’t come often, and it really really sucks. Going from a 10/10 to a show I can barely recommend based off the worst 5 minutes of TV anime this year is just the Ultimate Despair.

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• 

  Dalekkar

  91/100
  A sports drama with a different and more realistic light on what some people's lives might be like.

  Hoshiai no Sora is an anime that really surprised me on what it was going to be like, when i first saw the premise i figured it might just be just a normal run of the mill sports anime but it turned out far different. This show touches on subjects not many other anime do and not being unafraid to explore certain subjects, it also touches on the lives people may have despite on how they act or seem. I think that this anime is more of a drama than a sports show but even then the sports part of it isn't typical main cast suddenly gets good fast or somehow pulls through. (spoilers if you haven't watched the last episode or the anime in general)

  To start with as said earlier it isn't typical or cliché, you start with Toma asking Maki who he knows is really athletic to join the team and help since their team isn't doing well at all and he needs help. Immediately we see Maki adapting to soft tennis quite well but not so much that he is suddenly super good at it, all he has is his reaction time and athletic skills otherwise any pro player would easily win against him. The story does good here in which Maki takes advantage of certain pairs of people being able to work really well together or covering the other person's weakness'. Additionally they use tactics to get the upper hand but of course that won't always work and they don't win much matches.

  Now for the drama part of the show, it doesn't shy away from the darker parts of people's lives or how some people get treated. Nao and Toma showed how horrible some parents can be in their own selfish/delusional worlds, Toma & Tsubasa showing how siblings/friends can really improve one's life even if only a little, Maki's life shows the difficulty's of a single parent and even worse with the other parent being abusive and horrible, and then with Kanako we saw a bit of cyber bullying, although she doesn't let it bother her too much and is doing pretty well against it as far as we know. Then the others we know about have a normal/decent life, if i missed someone sorry my memory can be bad at times.

  Now for the bits of the story i liked and it showed how someone's life can continue to be bad regardless of other event's in their lives. Toma's mom getting a divorce and leaving Toma with his dad isn't a surprise or sudden at all, we've seen how she favored the other son a lot more, how Toma talks about how he is the reason that the marriage is so rocky, how they barely talk, that he gets ignored a lot and so on. Just because he is having a ton of fun playing soft tennis with his peers/friends and almost won against the champions doesn't mean the rest of his life gets better or that his mom changes her views or what she's been thinking about for a long time on how she feels. It's horrible to try to compare someone in your family to someone else and talk about how person A is obviously nothing like person B, but in the end you'll always have people like this in the world and it sucks but it's nice to shine a light on this to show it exists.

  As for Maki this is mostly the same, there is a slight surprise with him buying the knife but even then it's not much to be surprised at. He has been dealing with a horrible father his whole life, He deeply cares about his mom especially since she's essentially his world, so of course when his dad comes in again to grab the money after he's been told off in a threat to stop and never come back that Maki would lose it. In life (in which again this anime portrays the struggles of life) this kind of thing happens especially with younger people or kids/teens where their emotions are most often more easily influenced. So it's no surprise especially after a fun as hell day playing soft tennis with his peers/friends that he comes home to one of the most negative things in his life reappearing and he snaps.

  I do know how its seems like this anime might not get a season 2 from the talking and how things happened but even then the ending leaves open room for a season 2 and i wouldn't call it off since the anime is still relatively well received especially by those who have experience similar or close experiences as shown in the show, i can easily see the sales doing relatively well enough for a season 2 to be considered.

  Anyways i really liked the show and at the end even after all the happy and fun stuff everyone had that it still held onto the fact that some of these kids still have issues that has been going on and that's the dark truth about lives like these. The characters were really good with some great character progression with Maki becoming more comfortable with the sport and everyone and becoming good friends with Toma and having tons of fun with soft tennis which he rejected at first, only joining for money reasons which is understandable. That's all i have to say about this anime, really good and not much other anime/series like it, I highly recommend watching this anime especially if to show a few people the perspective on the bad parts of life others may have gone through.

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