I've just seen the first episode of the latest season of Kuroko no Basket (Or "Kuroko's Basketball" if you're going by Crunchy Roll titles), and seeing Taiga Kagami trying to eat with his chopsticks in his left hand (as practice, of course) gave me an idea for me to do the same to hopefully improve on my typing skills. Except for me that would mean eating with my chopsticks in my right hand... yes, I'm left-handed. But past the jump break is what I thought about the first episode of the second season of this show...
This is a series that I saw on Crunchy Roll.com before, but only gained any interest in it by hearing about it from a "shounen ai" panel at Kumori Con of 2012. A series about a unrefined, but talented basketball player named Taiga Kagami who meets the eponymous protagonist of this series, Tetsuya Kuroko (the rumored "Phantom Sixth Man" of the Generation of Miracles), while signing up for the Seirin High Basketball Team. The two of them play a one-on-one game and it's quite obvious that Kuroko... sucks badly at playing basketball. But, long story short, by the end of the first episode of the series as a whole; the two of them decide to team up to defeat the rest of the Generation of Miracles. As for why I'm watching this now, let me put it this way. "I came for the eye candy, but stayed for the comedy."
But, back to the point of this post: The first episode of Season Two! As I mentioned, there's this one scene at the beginning where Kagami's training his hand-eye coordination while he's eating. When another member of the team brings up a Street Basketball tournament that's running nearby. But Riko, the Seirin High Basketball Team's manager, isn't so enthusiastic about it. Insisting that (because it's during a holiday) they should be relaxing. But, she makes an exception for the first year members. Considering that the third-year members are going to retire soon and all.
For American readers, like myself, High School First Year's the Japanese equivelent of one's Freshman year. Although, in Japanese High Schools, there's only three years as opposed to an American Hight Schools four years. So, if American High School year nicknames where to be used with a Japanese High School, which one would be dropped? Of course "Freshman" would apply to First Years, and "Senior" would apply to the third years (Senior is for the last year of High School, as I recall) But which of the two middle year nicknames would be kept, "Sophmore" or "Junior"?
Right, speaking of American stuff, we get to see quite a bit of flashbacks to before Kagami returned to America just after we see for the first time a friendly rival Kagami met in America who's like an older brother to him. And I'd have to say, although the "English" may not be grammatically correct in the academic sense, aside from some odd pronunciations here and there, it actually sounded pretty believable to me. Then again, I do watch anime a lot. To the point that I'm almost fluent in "Engrish" in addition to "L337-speak".
But this... *Looks at TV Tropes for last name and spelling of this guy's first name* ..."Tatsuya Himuro", Shooting Guard of the Yousen High Basketball Team; who (according to Kuroko) seems to have skill with basketball on par with that of the members of the "Generation of Miracles"... And speaking of the Generation of Miracles, Himuro's not the only character the audience is introduced to.
We also meet, presumably, the Center player for the same High School. Presumably the Center player in his High School team because that's the same position he played back in middle school. We see, for the first time beyond the opening or ending credits, the purple haired and eyed member of the Generation of Miracles: Atsushi Murasakibara! And boy does he have a sweet tooth!
And, yes, I'm only listing the court positions because I read them off of the TV Tropes character page. There's several subjects outside of anime, manga, the arts, and science that I'm rather ignorant about; and anything beyond the absolute basics of basketball is one of those subjects.
But while I do not have the knowledge to sufficiently analyse how realistic the basketball moves in this series are. And why spend too much time worrying about that? This is a series here someone with SKY BLUE COLORED HAIR can be treated as though he has a more realistic invisibility spell active all the time, realism can't be that high on the creators priority list!
Still, I'm willing to accept that as an expectable break from reality. Right now my reality involves being in the focus of petty disputes and isolation, reality is the last place I'd want to dwell on right now. So, I'm more than willing to see how this continuation of Tetsuya Kuroko and Taiga Kagami quest to pwn the more recognised members of the Generation of Miracles ends.
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