Name: Buzzer Beater
Genre: Sports
Year: 2005
Rating: Average
In the future the sport of basketball has spread across the universe, now the participants include the humans and an alien race called Gorgons. However the Intergalactic League is dominated by the Gorgons and their superior physical status. Yoshimune a basketball coach and the founder of the Intergalactic League dreams of creating a team that is able to compete against Gorgons. He holds a strong belief that as the original founders of the game the humans should be able to compete at an equal level with the Gorgons. To create his team he seeks to find the strongest basketball players on earth and Hideyoshi our protagonist is one of them. Though still young and vertically challenged (short) Yoshimune is a skilled player whose agile movements and incredible jumping power is able to allow him to play against taller opponents. Though he is far from perfect his will power and determination makes him a candidate for being the rival to a famed and skilled basket baller Gyuma.
First of all if your after a basketball series then go take a look at Slam Dunk first as for several good reasons it is a very famous and admired series. You may notice when viewing this series that the art though nice is quite different from the conventional, especially the facial features. Despite the design that may put off some people the series uses 3D imaging along with 2D animation in order to create some of its scenes. Though this may be viewed as a cheap alternative to drawing the whole scene it allows the creation of an overall better scene. If you look at Initial D which is famous for its 3D cgi animation, by using 3D imaging it is much easier to create unique scenes and allows for less repeated frames as you would find in many other anime serials. Apart from the visual I found it was nice that they created the character Gyuma as an idol, one which the Yoshimune looks up to as well as desiring to compete against. If your desperate for some basketball anime then you should give this series a try but if you just want a sports genre there are much better ones out there.
