DESCRIPTION

CAST

MANGA DramaLove All Play

REVIEWS

• 

  Benkei

  54/100
  Spoiler-free rant of Love All Play. How to not produce a sports anime.

  ════ ⋆★⋆ ════ Considerations ════ ⋆★⋆ ════ ● __This is a spoiler-free review__. ● 50+ in my rating means below average. ● I've added one of the anime soundtracks to the soundtrack section. If you wish, scroll down, start it, and use it as your background music while you read. ════ ⋆★⋆ ════ The Story ════ ⋆★⋆ ════ Mizushima enrolls in a junior high and joins the badminton club with his friends. They found themselves in love with it. Mizushima is invited to go to Yokohama Minato, a powerhouse high school famous for their badminton program and their ace, Yusa, who has never lost since he enrolled at the school. Now Muzushima has to practice to be able to withstand the high demands of the school. The story of Love All Play seems good in theory, but it is terrible in practice, especially due to its pacing. The anime had a concept of mixing academics and athletics, which I really liked, yet it wasn't developed at all. There's also the point that they just lack games. The pacing is so bad that sometimes it follows the group like a SoL (Slice of Life), disregarding the sport, and when you have an important game, you have two episodes giving you all the hype to watch a certain competition or match, and they end up just cutting it and telling you the results. That's not done with occasional matches, but they do it even with finals. ════ ⋆★⋆ ════ The Art ════ ⋆★⋆ ════ The art style is average. The main issue I had with this anime was how much money they saved (despite producing two cours). Most of the matches are just static frames with the camera moving. When you have a big rally, and when the shuttle is falling, the CGI enters with a very slow movement (in the racket), which contrasts greatly with the speed of the match itself and looks terrible. The characters are very well drawn; each one has a very distinctive hairstyle that is pretty easy to spot. Facial expressions are also very well drawn, and as far as characters go in artistic terms, I don't have anything to complain about. (Can you guess who's our Sasuke?) ════ ⋆★⋆ ════ The Characters ════ ⋆★⋆ ════ There are an average number of characters in this work: Mizushima, his family, friends, and adversaries. They follow the "anime starter pack," which is like having one quiet kid, one smart kid, one extroverted, one introverted, one meathead, and so on. I don't have anything against that. As I always like to talk about the main character, Mizushima was extremely weak. For a sports anime, he barely has the spotlight on him; he takes way too long to really start acting as a main character. He is as bland as it can get; I just couldn't find his story interesting at all. ════ ⋆★⋆ ════ The Sound ════ ⋆★⋆ ════ The sound is actually good. Okay, I've been ranting for this long. It should at least have one good thing, right? Well, yes, the soundtrack is really upbeat and really nice to hear. It's composed mainly with electronic beats, like house style; they feel pretty much like "summer beats", and I really liked them within the context.

  In terms of voice acting, I don't have anything to complain about either. Their actors were pretty good, especially Yusa, who was able to transfer his emotional load through his tone of voice. ════ ⋆★⋆ ════ Conclusion ════ ⋆★⋆ ════ If you're like me, you skip everything and read only the conclusion because you don't want to get spoiled with other themes. So I will try to be brief on this point: Don't watch it. Yeah, if you follow my reviews, you know that's pretty rare, but I don't know any reason why you should spend the time watching this series. There are many other sports anime that you can watch and get way more from.
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• 

  Zedlin

  40/100
  A sports anime that poorly attempts to crush two years of high school badminton into 24 episodes.

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  - Love All Play Analysis -

  This analysis contains spoilers

  

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  "If you want to go quick go alone, but to go far one must go together."

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  A sports anime that ambitiously attempts to crush two years of high school badminton into 24 episodes. As you'd expect it's rushed and matches don't have much weight to them. Part of what makes an enjoyable sports anime is seeing the matches play out with strategy with good buildup between the players in the match. Love All Play doesn't have that impact, it's hollow.

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  Same can be stated for the characters, outside of their initial introductions, nobody stands out in particular as interesting. There are twins, they are super happy and energetic, as you'd expect they love playing doubles, that's their strength. Halfway into the series one of the twins becomes conflicted wondering if his passion in badminton is real, but he gets over it fast and the twins don't change personality wise.

  There's the straightforward Sakaki who relies on power and isn't the smartest tool in the shed, yeah as you can tell all these characters are just troupes. He plays doubles with the MC of Love All Play Ryou, who is exactly what you'd picture of when thinking of a shonen sports anime MC, so I'm skipping over him on purpose. What's there to say? Ryou's biggest strength is his love for badminton and works the hardest to make his dreams come true, yeah we've seen this play a million times folks. Back to Sakaki, he has lots of siblings and works at his families western-style restaurant, as such he's a caring, considerate person, he teams up with Ryou simply because he loves the way he plays. As a team they're not a great match, but they have fun playing.

  Alright we need a kuudere as everyone else is cheerful, oh perfect here comes Matsuda. As you'd expect he goes through the same character arc that each and every kuudere embarks on, but hey that's better than the majority of the other characters. He starts off cold and distant believing that everything needs to be done by himself. He's like this because his father (Matsuda's only real family member) is always working so he's always been alone and did everything solo. Yes, the lone wolf troupe. Over the series Matsuda learns being with friends is valuable. This does breed my favorite quote in the series let me paraphrase. "If you want to go quick go alone, but to go far one must go together." Through the power of friendship he wins his final match, wowie.

  The final character of note is team ace Yusa, a player when first joining the team was told by his coach to never lose again. As his driving force to never falter, plus his ambition to date Rika, (MC Ryou's sister) Yusa cannot lose again and has to become a triple crown winner in nationals. Yeah, this dude has some major expectations put onto his shoulders. I liked his VA work him saying "Come On!" always got a laugh out of me with the weird pitch it was at. In the beginning of the anime he's presented as a total asshole but he was like that to push his team to be better. During the final match between Yusa and Ryou, (which dang the animation was pretty good!) Yusa kept his promise and we get to see Yusa with Rika a year later in the aftermath, how cute. Imagine playing hard to get so badly and still getting the ace, only Yusa the simp would follow that pussy to that extent...

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  Love All Play isn't worth much of a watch. Even from a sports simps pov it's mediocre at best and was difficult to watch most of the time cause I was bored. It didn't help that the OST was cheesy and generic, wish I could turn it off at times. In contrast the sound design of the badminton being played was exceptional, give whoever did the sound design a raise!

  In all, the lesson to learn is, don't force 2 years of high school sports into 24 episodes you're setting yourself up for failure, simping does work if you're a generational talent, and of course friendship is magic, good riddance, don't need to have this series in my head space no more.

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• 

  flamingfalcon

  65/100
  Not amazing, but if you like the genre and have seen the main ones I don't see why not

  So let's start this of with the obvious as stated in other reviews, and that is the elephant in the room. The decision to cut 2 and a bit years into 24 episodes really took away from the potential this series had.

  This really limited character development of the entire team, which is a shame, as I found that it had the most human main character of all the sports anime I've seen. While the entire cast is a walking cliche, bouncy twins doubles pair, intellectual new player turned manager, attractive sister to make the horny teens lose braincells, cold and antagonistic yet caring ace olympian wanna be, lone wolf who struggles with emotions, and the stupid idiot who only knows power, the all knowing female manager, the coach who can see talent that no one else apparently can and the ex ace who returns to make sure the team succeeds where he couldn't with a long list of practically nameless senpais. The main character themselves actually feels like they grow in a non-superficial way, through issues with studies, game mental and other issues that they covered in a human way.

  This is all what makes the rushed content such a shame as it blurred through all the various scenarios of the side characters, which if done in a similar manner as the main character, could genuinely have made it a great series. Regardless of how cliched they were, since cliche creates a diverse series of characters, and a broad capabilty for scenarios. In addition to this the sequences of relationships and difficulties shown, along with their resolutions were well thought of, just without the length to expound upon their severity and difficulty of resolution made the series lack depth.

  Then there is the action itself, it's pretty severely lacking in all honestly, probably due to the rushed length of the series since the finale match was pretty solid. The focus in these matches is really repetitive, face close up, racket closeup and slide, then follow the shuttle cock lands and several points appear on the board. Various game results come through at once reducing tension and in general it isn't ideal.

  Now, despite all this I actually really enjoyed the series and actually got pretty addicted at certain parts since I wanted to see the conclusion, even though you could guess it a mile off. Maybe I found it better than it was as I'm coming from a long break from anime, and sometimes a nice, lighthearted fast paced series is just rather relaxing after a long days work, particularly when you have been focusing on a lot more gritty, mystery, gory tv series in the mean time. I can't see why you would regret watching this series, and how I'd class it is a no-tears lower production value version of 2.43: Seiin High School Boys Volleyball Team in badminton form but worse for the lack of emotional impact.

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