#such an unabashedly geeky series that clearly has a love of female characters

[bananasareupsidedown]

[x0401x]

Is no24 good

Okay, this took me a while to answer, so sorry for the late reply! And sorry for not putting a read more. I'm on mobile.

That's kind of a difficult question because I honestly don't know whether it's actually good or not. It's an original anime, so there's no source material to see more of its contents, and just one episode wasn't enough for me to decide whether or not I'll stick with it. The animation, art style, soundtrack, sceneries and narrative are pretty good, but there's a number of things that made me very wary of this show, so right now, I'm sitting on the fence. I'll list down the points that caught my attention so you can evaluate whether or not it's worth your time.

First, the bad ones:

1. It's extremely, unabashedly fatphobic. This is probably what turned me off the most in episode one. There's this one character who's actually a very nice but slightly overzealous junior of the protagonist, and it was honestly painful to see the way that the creators treat him. He's good-intentioned and energetic, and often sings his seniors' praises, yet there are many scenes that highlight unpleasant facts about him, which are all connected to his weight. For example, sweating a lot or having difficulty to pass through narrow spaces, or worst of all, that he stinks. This one made me seriously mad. I'm honestly hoping there will be some sort of scene later showing him playing a big part in something that will be of great help for the team (or at least for the protag) and that this will make everyone realize his true potential. But I won't raise my expectations because he's surely just a minor character. I feel really bad for him, and it's pretty hard to get attached to any of the characters who occasion  act like he's a nuisance.

2. Some characters look too childish. I mean, I can totally understand that people look like they're fresh out of high school during their first year in college, but that's not the case with the main character, and a few of the characters look straight-up like middle school kids. It's weird, specially when you think that the audience is supposed to feel charmed by their looks.

3. The pacing is a little fast. A lot happens in just one episode, and it's a bit hard to empathize with the characters while keeping up with the issues presented when you don't even know why you should be caring about them in the first place. So far, I've only managed to get attached to three or four characters even though dozens of them were introduced.

Now, for the good ones:

1. The storyline is fairly original. This normally earns points in my book. I won't go too much into detail, but first things first, it's very rare to see a sports anime centered on adult characters, who are college students, rather than teenagers. The premise is that the protag was involved in a motorcycle accident and got severe hernia, so he can no longer play the sport he loves, which in this case is rugby. He has gone through intensive rehab for many months and now has to repeat a year. In order to help his team and stay as close as he can to the field, he starts training to be the club's manager. That of course means heavy work, which he shouldn't be doing but does either way because it's all he has now. He screws up at first and is aware that he must look lame in the eyes of some teammates, but he continues doing what he thinks is best. I've never seen a plot like that before, so kudos to the writers for that sparkle of creativity.

2. The main character, Natsusa, is also pretty different from any I've ever seen in a sports anime. Girly name, girly face, but no one makes a fuss about it. He's passionate about rugby and was good at it, but he's no genius with miraculous talent that everyone is jealous of, no authority figure with exemplary discipline, no nerd with hidden skills that only work for specific moments of the game, and yet he's most definitely not what you could define as "normal". He's the idol type, and it shows both in his looks and personality. This is normally the kind of person that men hate, both in anime and real life. But he has leadership and persuasion on his favor, so he's liked by juniors and seniors, except one particular guy whose motives we don't know yet. He's also very perceptive and tries to do what he can for his teammates, going around helping them solve their respective problems, rather than the whole club's teamwork centering only on his issues for some reason and all of the members going through unnecessarily dramatic trouble to help him solve his problems instead. Natsusa tries to face his obstacles with positivity and optimism, so he doesn't lose face. In other words, he's not hotheaded, geeky, aloof or overly innocent like most sports anime protags, but fragile-looking yet charismatic and shrewd. He's also apparently from a functional family and it looks like both of his parents are alive. Also, rather than having one best friend who's like an overbearing mom and one rival who's always pushing his buttons, he has two best friends, one who's caring but not obsessive, and one who has seemingly screwed up big time. But Natsusa himself holds no grudges against him from what we have been shown, so there's probably more than it meets the eye to the whole situation. I like that breath of fresh air, though some of the cuteness in Natsusa is annoyingly exaggerated at times.

3. The characters seem generally less cliché and more human than average in this one. They have differing body types and not all of them are conventionally attractive. Moreover, you can tell they have underlying personal issues that are realistic and more drastic than the usual stuff, which involve health and sometimes cause them to give up things they love. Kudos for that realism, and I commend the narrative for throwing bits of info in the right places and doing foreshadowing the right way. And who knows? Maybe this also involves family problems and whatnot. It seems like a story about overcoming these issues and moving on in unexpected ways too, and if so, I hope it keeps up like that. The opening made me fear that I was going to watch a show about an idol group camouflaged as rugby team and I was scared shitless for a second, but I'm glad to have been betrayed on that matter.

Other than this, there's a lot of gay subtext going on, as one would expect, but I'm not sure what to think of it. It's open and heavy, even more than the doses of fanservice you'd find in most series. I'm praying that it'll turn out to be more than just that, but again, this show is clearly full of female fetishes, so I won't get my expectations up.

I hope this wall of text wasn't a pain to read and that it answered the question! If not, feel free to come back anytime.