SPOILER-FREE!
Golf and I get along like oil and water – we simply do not mix. I’ve gone to the driving range several times, spent some days out at the links (both voluntarily and when I’d rather not), and have even tried watching the Master’s on television. Even after all these years, actually playing the sport itself just bounces off me like rubber. I can see why it has the appeal that it does, but I think it’s fair to say that I’ve given golf more than my own fair share of time and chances. There comes a point where you must shake your head and admit that something’s not worth pursuing as a hobby or activity any longer. It’s a shame, but that’s sometimes the way things go.

BIRDIE WING: Golf Girls’ Story was therefore a show that I was taking a major chance on. There was, however, reason to be hopeful – earlier this year, a 15-minute OVA called Sorairo Utility featured a slice-of-life take on golf, which I found pleasant, even if a little bit flawed. A thought then occurred to me – it is possible that golf and I were going to have a magical reconciliation, that I would gain new appreciation for the sport and see something within it that I had somehow missed all this time? I doubted it, but I still nevertheless decided to give this new series a drive.
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Eve is a blonde-haired golfer who takes on various golfing challenges. She earns money on these challenges with her “bullet” style of golfing, which doesn’t adhere to any of the techniques or refinement that one expects from a typical golfer. Her playstyle however attracts the attention of the young golf champion Amawashi Aoi, and Eve challenged to a hole on the range. After losing, Eve finds herself excited and wanting to challenge Amawashi again. She’ll have to deal though with other golfers desperate to knock her off her pedestal, as well as deal with her boss who holds a mafia-esque grip on her.

In effect, BIRDIE WING: Golf Girls’ Story is a shonen in sports clothing, all done for a sport that, in theory, complements the idea the least. One of golf’s appeals is the relaxed nature of the whole, an underlying classiness and etiquette that is meant to be adhered to. It is a sport that requires patience and calculation, which allows one to stop and take the time to enjoy the setting and the company you’re keeping. It’s supposed to be encapsulated by the visual imagery of the course, expansive and lushly green with its bodies of water…so long as the bunkers and rough don’t eat your golf ball alive in the process. With the bombast and sense of extreme escalation that shonen is known for bringing to the table, golf is one of the sports that doesn’t sound at all ripe for making into a larger-scale spectacle.

The show attacks that very mindset head-on, best demonstrated with its main character. Eve’s very manner of being is the polar opposite of everything that you reasonably expect from a golfer. Her attire looks like it was hastily thrown together in the dark, no doubt a result of her struggling financial situation both for herself and the family that she’s helping to care for (Gundam model kits included, evidently). Even her hair is largely unkempt, flowing down but without a ponytail or other way to keep it tidy. It makes for a perfect mirror to her personality: abrasive, blunt, and always ready to reach for her driver and destroy whoever lies in wait.

And destroy them she does – despite her unorthodox style of presentation, it makes for highly-effective golfing. The training she underwent caused her to develop what she calls “Rainbow Bullet” golfing, in which she attacks the courses with a series of strong, blasting swings that take on particular effects to get the ball in the hole as quickly as possible. While she’s quite skilled, her style is also rife with risk, leaving the ever-lingering question behind of when, or if, the method will fail her. But when it clicks, the look on the faces of her opponents usually comes in two delicious flavors: resignation, or absolute fury at their sport being “desecrated.”

Contrasting Eve is Amawashi, the perfect posterchild for the golfing world. Not only has her play been recognized (not to mention commented upon and envied) by her peers, but she also has the perfect smile and temperament to match. Much of BIRDIE WING: Golf Girls’ Story’s drama comes from these two girls from two different worlds colliding on the day of their fateful encounter, the results of which leave lasting impressions on both. In that sense, the show adopts the classic shonen trope of friendships being forged on the “battlefield,” establishing the kind of spontaneous connection that defies explanation or description. Their dynamic is a walking example of the old adage that “opposites attract.”

That attraction is spilled all over the anime. In an effort to leave the audience with the yearning to have the two see each other again, the show manages to concoct various do-or-die scenarios for Eve in the mafia’s vicegrip, or play up the melancholy Amawashi feels since she cannot see the person who has thrilled her more than anyone else (much to the consternation of her caddy, who’d sooner throw Eve off the side of a cliff if she could). There is no attempt here to hide yuri baiting, whether it be conveyed through actual dialogue or when the anime decides to temporarily adopt shoujo-style bubbles with a glowing border and many sparkles. In this case, the bait is part of the appeal – BIRDIE WING: Golf Girls’ Story fully commits to its desire to go over the absurd threshold and not look back. The result is that the “romance” between Eve and Amawashi is odd and fun.

Odd and fun, wonderfully enough, refers to much of the other cast as well. With the mafia backdrop, there is no shortage of rich, pompous slimeballs who delight in using a dignified sport for their undignified operations. The web of how the mafia operates, both in external effects on the world and with its internal politics, is something that series composer Kuroda Yousuke clearly had fun reveling in. The labyrinth runs hilariously deep, with so much goings-on that the golf matches both act as plot threads to move things forward and fun little digressions when the narrative isn’t spending time teeing up its next crazy situation. No matter what situation is present at the moment, its always stupidly enjoyable.

Though the animation could, at best, be considered “acceptable” given that it’s not particularly excelling in any respects. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the character models, occasional use of CGI, or the backgrounds and layouts. The visual element suffers from mostly just being unimpressive, and at times the lighting and compositing gives things an unusual sheen, even in the sunlight. Musically, the series doesn’t really have anything to offer either, as the tracks themselves seemed to exist more as placeholders and ways to fill space rather than incorporating anything noteworthy.

But more than any of that is just the sensation that I couldn’t help but feel that I wondered into the wrong country club. I mean that in the best way possible. Everything in BIRDIE WING: Golf Girls’ Story’s existence is over-the-top and impossible to take seriously. It is a mosaic of ideas where everyone involved in production seemed to ask themselves, “Why the hell not? Throw it in!” and ran full-tilt with that ideology. What should have been, under virtually all other circumstances or conditions, bugs in the design instead became features. The series is a chimera of hilarity and that indescribable feeling of enjoying something that, by all accounts, should not exist.

As I’ve hinted at throughout the course of this writing, that, I think, is part of the reason why the show worked for me – in a way, BIRDIE WING: Golf Girls’ Story is the thematic antithesis to golf despite taking place within a golf framework. Eve’s sheer brutality and unrefined attitude functions as a fun contrast to the more prim-and-proper Amawashi, and the fact that so much of Eve’s circumstances is rooted in a kind of seedy, golf underworld is bizarrely entertaining. I was left with so many questions as to why things transpired the way that they did, but always with a wink and a nod rather than a headshaking disappointment.

I was quirkily amused by its silliness and occasional ineptitude such that I couldn’t help myself but have fun. How else would one plausibly explain why an entire mafia underworld golf course is in the subterranean basement level of a real estate office, taking place in a gigantic wind tunnel and with mechanisms in place to randomize the course however you see fit? I suppose in a way it’s rather sad that golf had to take such a perverse angle on itself to capture my attention, but, nevertheless, capture my attention it did!
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BIRDIE WING: Golf Girls’ Story embraces its absurdity by taking the finesse of golf and making it more rugged. While in many respects it fails as a piece of entertainment given the animation, compositing, and music, its characters and the story they inhabit are such an odd bunch that it manages to hold itself together. I fault no one for saying this show is garbage, since I can’t even bring myself to disagree that much; but as a piece of entertainment, it amused me in a way that real golf never did. I won’t be grabbing a five-iron anytime soon, but I certainly won’t be forgetting this show anytime soon, either.