Love All Play

Name: Spoiler-free rant of Love All Play. How to not produce a sports anime.
Item: Love All Play
Rating: 54
Author: Benkei

a review by Benkei

Benkei

3 years ago·Sep 30, 2022

54

/ 100

════ ⋆★⋆ ════ Considerations ════ ⋆★⋆ ════

● This is a spoiler-free review.
● 50+ in my rating means below average.

● I've added one of the anime soundtracks to the soundtrack section. If you wish, scroll down, start it, and use it as your background music while you read.
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The Story ════ ⋆★⋆ ════ Mizushima enrolls in a junior high and joins the badminton club with his friends. They found themselves in love with it. Mizushima is invited to go to Yokohama Minato, a powerhouse high school famous for their badminton program and their ace, Yusa, who has never lost since he enrolled at the school. Now Muzushima has to practice to be able to withstand the high demands of the school.The story of Love All Play seems good in theory, but it is terrible in practice, especially due to its pacing. The anime had a concept of mixing academics and athletics, which I really liked, yet it wasn't developed at all.There's also the point that they just lack games. The pacing is so bad that sometimes it follows the group like a SoL (Slice of Life), disregarding the sport, and when you have an important game, you have two episodes giving you all the hype to watch a certain competition or match, and they end up just cutting it and telling you the results. That's not done with occasional matches, but they do it even with finals.

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The Art ════ ⋆★⋆ ════ The art style is average. The main issue I had with this anime was how much money they saved (despite producing two cours). Most of the matches are just static frames with the camera moving. When you have a big rally, and when the shuttle is falling, the CGI enters with a very slow movement (in the racket), which contrasts greatly with the speed of the match itself and looks terrible.

The characters are very well drawn; each one has a very distinctive hairstyle that is pretty easy to spot. Facial expressions are also very well drawn, and as far as characters go in artistic terms, I don't have anything to complain about.

(Can you guess who's our Sasuke?)

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The Characters ════ ⋆★⋆ ════ There are an average number of characters in this work: Mizushima, his family, friends, and adversaries. They follow the "anime starter pack," which is like having one quiet kid, one smart kid, one extroverted, one introverted, one meathead, and so on. I don't have anything against that.

As I always like to talk about the main character, Mizushima was extremely weak. For a sports anime, he barely has the spotlight on him; he takes way too long to really start acting as a main character. He is as bland as it can get; I just couldn't find his story interesting at all.

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The Sound ════ ⋆★⋆ ════ The sound is actually good. Okay, I've been ranting for this long. It should at least have one good thing, right? Well, yes, the soundtrack is really upbeat and really nice to hear. It's composed mainly with electronic beats, like house style; they feel pretty much like "summer beats", and I really liked them within the context.

In terms of voice acting, I don't have anything to complain about either. Their actors were pretty good, especially Yusa, who was able to transfer his emotional load through his tone of voice.

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Conclusion ════ ⋆★⋆ ════ If you're like me, you skip everything and read only the conclusion because you don't want to get spoiled with other themes. So I will try to be brief on this point:Don't watch it. Yeah, if you follow my reviews, you know that's pretty rare, but I don't know any reason why you should spend the time watching this series. There are many other sports anime that you can watch and get way more from.

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