The Fall 2024 Anime Preview Guide

Blue Box

Taiki Inomata is on the boys' badminton team at sports powerhouse Eimei Junior and Senior High. 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.

Blue Box is based on the manga series by Kōji Miura. The anime series is streaming on Netflix on Thursdays.

I've heard quite a bit of buzz about the Blue Box manga, a sports series running in Weekly Shonen Jump where the "sports" is partnered with a sincere love story. Admittedly, most of that buzz came from Nicholas Dupree, so it's incredibly frustrating not to hear his thoughts on Telecom Animation Film and director Yūichirō Yano's adaptation.

The story isn't doing anything new; if I had to levy any criticism at Blue Box, it is that its sincerity, paired with the cloying shiny visuals, veer into saccharine territory. However, I can't bring myself to fault the production for going whole hog on the sentimentality. There are lingering shots of Eimei Junior and Senior High cast in the colors of sunset, held frames of haphazardly placed sports equipment, and slow pans of Chinatsu, Taiki's crush, dreamily reading sports tactics as strands of her hair catch the light. Blue Box's visuals are selling a nostalgic idea of high school life, one that's highly romanticized. If you aren't willing to give yourself over its picturesque standard, it can all seem hokey.

But what's the fun in that sort of cynicism?

Taiki is a sweet kid with a sweet crush on a sweet basketball player who, through the contrivances of manga, will now live with him and his mom when her family goes overseas. Chinatsu's personality still feels a little weak at this point and I'd have difficulty describing her beyond "nice" and "dedicated to her sport." While not the primary heroine, gymnast Hina steals the show with her injection of playful ribbing. Taiki's friend Ryo rounds out the early cast as the frank friend with no filter. I'm confident the interpersonal relationships will get messier as time goes on, but so far this seems like a fun group to follow as they navigate romance. The aesthetically pleasing visuals don't hurt either, even if the CG elements don't blend as well as I'd like.

There was a single moment in Blue Box that struck me. The show is beautiful, with lots of dramatic lighting and expressive character animation. Despite that, when Chinatsu throws a jump shot, she doesn't really land so much as float back down to the ground. The throw itself looks great, but she drifts back to the ground like a feather. Her knees don't bend from the impact, nor is there any thump from her shoes hitting the floor. It's like she's weightless. “Ah,” I thought, “what an apt metaphor for how I feel about the episode as a whole.”

See, Blue Box is extremely technically proficient, but the story barely had any impact on me. Chinatsu and Taiki are such nice kids! She offers him a candy bar, and when he finds her outside the gym, he gives her his scarf when she sneezes, then sneezes himself. He playfully banters about height with his female childhood friend, who obviously has feelings for him! As these kids work toward their high school sports goals in the full bloom of their youth, they'll live. They'll laugh. Maybe they'll even… love? All while beautifully lit, of course. Maybe with a speech or two about the ephemeral preciousness of their high school days. We've already gotten a couple about wanting to live without regrets. It is beautiful, saccharine, and weightless.

To be clear, I'm coming from a place where I've already read several chapters of the manga and eventually decided it wasn't for me. I just don't have a lot of interest in beautiful heterosexual teenagers living their lives frictionlessly. Not even Chinatsu moving in with Taiki's family, as hackneyed a sitcom plot as there ever has been, or the requisite love triangle could create the impact a story like this needs. So, the first episode was going to be an uphill battle, and it turned out that not even gorgeous mood lighting could win me over.