Review contains spoilers.

Burning Kabaddi feels like it ended before it could start. Writers did a thorough job explaining how a sport (which I was previously unfamiliar with) functions. I assume the discontinuation of the series is the product of the unpopularity of the sport it is based around. The interactions between characters felt natural for the most part. Animation style is good. Voice acting and music is good quality. Quality was similar to other sports animes I have watched. Pacing is bad after the first few episodes. A single practice game should not span 5 episodes. They spent all season hyping up a tournament, but the season ended before they could ever start. It's been 4 years. Season 2 never came and I am pessimistic it ever will be produced. One nitpick is the introduction of a femboy, a second dude who I can't see ever actually being able to play kabaddi because his voice is too quiet to be heard saying it (kind of ironic in a sport where saying the name of the sport out loud is a key gameplay mechanic), and a fat guy who admitted he was over the established game weight limit halfway through the show. The addition of these members felt like more of an inside joke between writers than an addition of characters that could be important to the plot. Following their introduction, they were hardly utilized. These characters had more playing time in a separate sport (bowling) than full games of the sport the show was written for and were only used to magically make the main character realize he knew how to work with the team by looking at the femboy's bowling score. Yoigoshi's main character flaw is his inability to work with a team, but one practice session and bowling with a femboy was enough to completely rewire his brain? At that point why doesn't he just go back to playing soccer and display teamwork there? The soccer coach and team that was relentlessly pursuing him as a player until they saw him play one practice match, were used to rehash game rules from the audience of a practice game they showed up to for ultimately no reason other than stalking the main character, and then left and weren't important for the rest of the show. Yoigoshi (the main character)'s streaming interest was not important past the first episode where he talked about how much he liked it, was blackmailed into joining the team because of it, and then just dropped his hobby completely. The writers could have easily used that element to help other team members find the team instead of making the a femboy show up out of thin air for no reason. If Iona had so many connections, why did they have so much trouble growing the team? They built up the team captain (Ojo)'s entrance to the show by showing him in the hospital and briefly cutting away to him a few times and acting like he was super weak and sick in the first few appearances, but later he said it was just an overuse injury. If someone broke into my apartment and tackled me telling me to show up for a niche sport practice, I don't think I would show up. There are a lot of small things that do not make sense, but this is the quality level of most anime of this genre, so I can't complain too much.