Hanebado! Is an Exceptionally Dramatic Sports Anime

Liden Films

If you were to think about sports that have been represented in anime, what is the first sport that comes to your mind? Do you think of popular sports such baseball, basketball, or soccer? Or do you think of less mainstream ones like golf, tennis, rugby, or squash? Most of these sports I’ve mentioned have had spectacular anime centered around them, to be sure, but what if I were to tell you that there is an anime focused on tennis’s sprightlier cousin—badminton?

Step forward Hanebado!, a 2018 sports drama created by Liden Films, which is also known for such gems as Magical Sempai, Terra Formars, and the 2016 reboot of Berserk.

I have a personal (brief) history with badminton, discovering and playing it quite frequently during my freshman year of high school. Naturally, when I discovered Hanebado! over a decade later, I was pleasantly surprised to see that my once-favorite sport had gotten some recognition from my favorite art form. And when I actually started watching it, I became so engrossed by the gritty drama, character arcs, and heart-stopping matches that I all but forgot about the popcorn I had made beforehand.

Our leading ladies are Nagisa Aragaki and Ayano Hanesaki: two exceptional badminton players who have had their own deep history with badminton—and each other—since they were very small. Ayano is a naturally gifted athlete who can trounce just about anyone on the court with little effort, while Nagisa has to constantly push herself to improve her game, and the two are reunited by pure chance. With the arrival of a new coach who is determined to lead the Kitakomachi High School badminton team to glory, Nagisa and Ayano re-enter the realm of professional badminton with plenty of friends and foes to keep things interesting.

While it is true that the “talent versus hard work” conflict is ubiquitous in the sports genre as a whole, it’s how and why these girls do what they do that makes them so compelling. These girls are being trained in order to identify their own shortcomings and work around them so that they become better players. Plus, their individual motives are so deep and complex that it would be a shame to spoil them in this review—you have to see for yourself what drives these two daring characters. It’s clear that the original mangaka, Kosuke Hamada, had a deep understanding of the sport when he first penned Hanebado! back in 2013, and it makes the characters feel more like real athletes as a result.

More interestingly, however, is Ayano’s darker side, which emerges whenever she gets serious. Not only is it intimidating; it is also thrilling, as it typically means that whoever she is facing at that point will be eating dirt at the prodigy’s hands. The ways in which the rival characters get defeated is such a satisfying sight. In other words, you don’t really need to like badminton in order to appreciate the sheer ferocity that Ayano serves her opponents on a regular basis.

With all this being said, I wouldn’t really call it an entry point into the sports genre of anime unless the viewer is also into heavy doses of character-based drama. Nonetheless, if you enjoy watching obscure sports and/or cocky characters getting totally served (both figuratively and literally), I cannot recommend Hanebado! nearly enough.