Taiki Inomata is on the boys' badminton team at sports powerhouse Eimei Junior and Senior Highschool. He's in love with basketball player Chinatsu Kano, the older girl he trains alongside every morning in the gym. One spring day, their relationship takes a sharp turn.

I'd heard quite a bit of buzz about Blue Box, a sports series running in Weekly Shonen Jump where the sports story is partnered with a sincere love story. I always say that I'm an easy mark for sappy romances when they're executed well, and while that's as true as it ever was, I've found myself becoming pickier about sappy teen romances in particular as I've gotten older. When it comes to anime, such stories have a ridiculously huge percentage of market domination, and I yearn for more well-written love stories about adults. This is all to say such a show has to put in some work to get me to really enjoy it. Well, lemme tell ya, folks, I loved the premiere of Blue Box.

This first episode is mostly focused on the romance side of things. We have Taiki, a low-level badminton player, who has a crush on his senpai Chinatsu, the star basketball player. Through a bit of luck and awkward-but-well-meaning fumbling, he's able to start getting to know her, and they've quickly started to positively impact each other's lives just by being themselves. Then the episode ends with a twist: The two are going to live together--or, more accurately, Chinatsu will be moving in with his family for a year while her parents are working abroad, as it turns out her mother and Taiki's are close friends who were once the stars of Eimei Highschool's basketball team themselves.

When it comes to shows that center around kids with Big Feelings About Sports™ and also Big Crushes on Their Senpais™, Blue Box basically does everything right. Seeing the world through Taiki and Chinatsu lets us feel their vivacious and romantic ambitions. And just talking about the sports aspect, it taakes no effort to make basketball look cool and exciting, because it already is, but Blue Box makes friggin' badminton seem like the sport of a generation, and I never thought I'd see the day that any show other than Hanebado managed that feat.

More importantly for a viewer like me, the connection that our protagonists share feels genuine and compelling. I have seen so many goddamn cartoons about teenagers brought together through the magic of friendly sports rivalries and love interests who suddenly become roomates due to absurdly convenient plot developments, but Blue Box still ends up feeling fresh the whole way through. I never felt like I was being manipulated or pandered to, and small sequences like Taiki's panicked under-the-covers limb flailing at the end of the episode is just such an accurate representation of what it feels like to be terrified by and hopelessly entangled in your own feelings at that age.

To be fair, of course, the story isn't doing anything new--if I had to levy any criticism at Blue Box, it's that its sincerity can sometimes threaten to veer into saccharine territory. However, I can't bring myself to fault the production for going this hard with the sentimentality. There are lingering shots of the school cast in the colors of sunset, held frames of haphazardly placed sports equipment, slow pans of Chinatsu dreamily reading up on sports tactics as strands of her hair catch the light... Blue Box's visuals are selling a nostalgic, romanticized idea of highschool life, and if you aren't willing to play along with its picturesque standard, it could be enough to make one declare "That's hokey. And old JonTron was better."

But whee's the fun in that sort of cynicism? Taiki is a genuinely sweet kid with a cute crush on a beautiful and kind girl. Chinatsu's personality still feels a little weak at this point and I'd have difficulty describing her beyond "generally nice" and "dedicated to her sport". While not the primary heroine, the tiny gymnast Hina steals the show far more with her injection of playful ribbing. Taiki's friend Ryo rounds out the early cast as the filthily frank friend with no filter. So far this seems like a fun group to follow.

Oh, and did I mention that the anime is obscenely beautiful to look at too? Yeah, outside of maybe one or two moments where the character animation and lighting effects try maybe a little too hard to impress, one of which results in a rather chuckleworthy moment of Chinatsu appearing outright weightless as she takes a shot at the hoop, this is a gorgeous work, hands down. The animation is smooth and the character designs are both wholesome and attractive, and the CG they use looks good for the most part, especially the big sweeping shot early on of the whole gymnasium and all the different sports being practiced there. That lush, cinematic flair only makes all of those Big Feelings™ hit that much harder, and I have no reason to doubt that Blue Box will be able to keep those hits coming so long as the artists at Telecom Animation can keep up the work at a healthy pace.

This is by far one of THE must-watch premieres of the season. Overall, it's safe to say that if you like romance anime or sports anime, you'll probably get some enjoyment out of this one.