The Fall 2024 Anime Preview Guide

Blue Box

Taiki Inomata is on the boys' badminton team at sports powerhouse Eimei Junior and Senior High. He's in love with basketball player Chinatsu Kano, the older girl he trains alongside every morning in the gym. One spring day, their relationship takes a sharp turn.

Blue Box is based on the manga series by Kōji Miura. The anime series is streaming on Netflix on Thursdays.

I always say that I'm an easy mark for sappy romances when they're executed well—and while that is as true as it ever was, I have found myself becoming exponentially pickier about sappy teen romances in particular as I've gotten older. For one, when it comes to anime, young love has a ridiculously huge percentage of market domination, and I yearn for love stories about regular-ass adults like a desert wanderer yearns for water. Also, I'm a teacher of high school students and a happily married man, to boot, so I am both overexposed to the romantic foibles and exhausting angst of real children while also being acutely aware of how happy I am to never have to deal with any of that “being single” nonsense ever again. Dating is for suckers. Hanging out and watching anime with your awesome wife is where it's really at.

All of this is to say that, while it's easy enough for me to like a schmaltzy coming-of-age melodrama just as much as the next guy, a show has to put in some work to get me to love it. Let me tell you, folks, that I loved the first episode of Blue Box. When it comes to shows that center around kids with Big Feelings About Sports™ and also Big Crushes on Their Senpais™, Blue Box basically does everything right. Seeing the world through Taiki and Chinatsu eyes lets us feel their vivacious and romantic ambitions. And just talking about the sports, aspect, it's one thing to make basketball look cool and exciting, but Blue Box makes freaking badminton seem like the sport of a generation—and I never thought I'd see the day that any show other than Hanebado! managed that feat.

More importantly for a viewer like me, the connection that our protagonists share feels genuine and compelling. I have seen so many goddamned cartoons about teenagers who are brought together through the magic of friendly sports rivalries and love interests who suddenly become roomates due to absurdly convenient plot developments, but Blue Box still ends up feeling fresh the whole way through. I never felt like I was being manipulated or pandered to, and small sequences like Taiki's panicked under-covers limb flailing at the end of the episode is just such an accurate representation of what it feels like to be terrified by and hopelessly entangled in your own feelings at that age.

Oh, did I mention that the anime is obscenely beautiful to look at, too? Yeah, outside of maybe one or two moments where the character animation and lighting effects try maybe a little too hard to impress, this is a gorgeous work of animation, hands down. That lush, cinematic flair only makes all of those Big Feelings™ hit that much harder, and I have no reason to doubt that Blue Box will be able to keep those hits coming so long as the artists at Telecom Animation can keep up the work at a healthy pace. This is one of the must-watch premieres of the Fall, so far as I'm concerned.

I'm not one for sports anime. Much of this comes from not having much interest in sports overall. As a kid, I was one of those who preferred to play a sport rather than watch it—even if I sucked at it. So when an anime is solely focused on sports, the chances are I won't be interested in it. There is, however, one exception to that rule: the works of Mitsuru Adachi—e.g., Touch, H2, and Mix. His manga perfectly mixes sports and romance—and it looks like Blue Box, while coming from a different author, will scratch a similar itch.

However, this first episode is mostly focused on the romance side of things. We have Taiki, a low-level badminton player, who has a crush on the star basketball player, Chinatsu. Through a bit of luck and awkward-but-well-meaning fumbling, he's able to start getting to know her. It's cute and harkens back to the idealized version of high school romance. Although they are little more than strangers, they have already been able to impact each others' lives just by being themselves.

Of course, the episode ends with a twist: The two are going to live together—or, more accurately, Chinatsu will move in with his family for her senior year when her parents move abroad. How will the two interact when it comes to their new, special relationship? That's a big part of what the anime looks to be about.

While the story is somewhat weak in this first episode—as it's almost all character introduction and setup—the art is great throughout. The animation is smooth and the character designs are both wholesome and attractive—and the CG animation looks good for the most part.

All in all, it's safe to say that if you like romance anime or sports anime, you'll probably get some enjoyment out of this one.

I've heard quite a bit of buzz about the Blue Box manga, a sports series running in Weekly Shonen Jump where the "sports" is partnered with a sincere love story. Admittedly, most of that buzz came from Nicholas Dupree, so it's incredibly frustrating not to hear his thoughts on Telecom Animation Film and director Yūichirō Yano's adaptation.

The story isn't doing anything new; if I had to levy any criticism at Blue Box, it is that its sincerity, paired with the cloying shiny visuals, veer into saccharine territory. However, I can't bring myself to fault the production for going whole hog on the sentimentality. There are lingering shots of Eimei Junior and Senior High cast in the colors of sunset, held frames of haphazardly placed sports equipment, and slow pans of Chinatsu, Taiki's crush, dreamily reading sports tactics as strands of her hair catch the light. Blue Box's visuals are selling a nostalgic idea of high school life, one that's highly romanticized. If you aren't willing to give yourself over its picturesque standard, it can all seem hokey.

But what's the fun in that sort of cynicism?

Taiki is a sweet kid with a sweet crush on a sweet basketball player who, through the contrivances of manga, will now live with him and his mom when her family goes overseas. Chinatsu's personality still feels a little weak at this point and I'd have difficulty describing her beyond "nice" and "dedicated to her sport." While not the primary heroine, gymnast Hina steals the show with her injection of playful ribbing. Taiki's friend Ryo rounds out the early cast as the frank friend with no filter. I'm confident the interpersonal relationships will get messier as time goes on, but so far this seems like a fun group to follow as they navigate romance. The aesthetically pleasing visuals don't hurt either, even if the CG elements don't blend as well as I'd like.

There was a single moment in Blue Box that struck me. The show is beautiful, with lots of dramatic lighting and expressive character animation. Despite that, when Chinatsu throws a jump shot, she doesn't really land so much as float back down to the ground. The throw itself looks great, but she drifts back to the ground like a feather. Her knees don't bend from the impact, nor is there any thump from her shoes hitting the floor. It's like she's weightless. “Ah,” I thought, “what an apt metaphor for how I feel about the episode as a whole.”

See, Blue Box is extremely technically proficient, but the story barely had any impact on me. Chinatsu and Taiki are such nice kids! She offers him a candy bar, and when he finds her outside the gym, he gives her his scarf when she sneezes, then sneezes himself. He playfully banters about height with his female childhood friend, who obviously has feelings for him! As these kids work toward their high school sports goals in the full bloom of their youth, they'll live. They'll laugh. Maybe they'll even… love? All while beautifully lit, of course. Maybe with a speech or two about the ephemeral preciousness of their high school days. We've already gotten a couple about wanting to live without regrets. It is beautiful, saccharine, and weightless.

To be clear, I'm coming from a place where I've already read several chapters of the manga and eventually decided it wasn't for me. I just don't have a lot of interest in beautiful heterosexual teenagers living their lives frictionlessly. Not even Chinatsu moving in with Taiki's family, as hackneyed a sitcom plot as there ever has been, or the requisite love triangle could create the impact a story like this needs. So, the first episode was going to be an uphill battle, and it turned out that not even gorgeous mood lighting could win me over.