Hanebado! is what I call a hidden gem. No one knew about it, no one had any expectations for it, and it was released with Boku no Hero Academia S3, Shingeki no Kyojin S3, Overlord III, Banana Fish.... it got totally eclipsed and a lot of ppl didn't even tried to watch it. But in the end it was really good in my opinion.

I didn't expect anything either when I started watching it, but soon enough it became my most hyped anime each week for the new episode. I honestly though the quality of this anime would be really bad, but the music, art anmd animation is really good, I was impressed about how good the animation was.

The best thing about Hanebado! is how they focus a lot on the technical part of Badminton and how they explain every move and situation, how they change the flow of a match, how they could hit the mentality of each player, etc. We could see different play styles: strengh, strategy, control, mentality, ofensive vs defensive, talent vs hard work.

Characters were also very good and, while it is clearly focused on the female characters, there are some male characters too. The main rivals for this season are Nagisa Aragaki and Ayano Hanesaki. Aragaki is a more ofensive player that trains a lot to be better, specially after a very huge defeat on a past match vs Ayano Hanesaki, a really talented girl fro badminton everyone says has a gift. She focuses more on a defensive playstyle and it is really good at reaching every hit. Her mother is also a famous badminton player and always played with her daughter since she was a child.

There are a lot more important characters, like Riko Izumi, close friend to Aragaki wich also play badminton of the same team, and it is actually very good at teamwork.

After some stuff happens both Aragaki and Hanesaki end up in the same badminton team, and a lot of thing will happen between them and the other members of the team, as well as other members of different teams. There are a lot of cool opponents with different play styles and strategies that really makes the matches awesome to watch. The charatcer development is also really big, and will change a lot the way they approach their matches and their improvement.

I would say anyone that enjoyed the competitive feeling of Haikyuu! and their struggle to get better, would enjoy Hanebado! too, while it is not as good as Haikyuu! ofc, it is similar on how each of those approach their sport and how technical they get.