Birdie Wing – Episode 1 - Ai Animes 🤖

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m delighted to announce we’re embarking on a fresh new journey, as we explore the action-packed world of high-stakes golf drama. That’s right, it’s time for motherfucking Birdie Wing, which I know by reputation as a proud entry in anime’s distinguished “sports are basically DBZ battles” subgenre. Having greatly enjoyed such delightful genre forebearers as Scorching Ping Pong Girls and Sk8 the Infinity, I am eager to see how this production elevates what is generally agreed to be a sedate, largely retiree-aimed sporting passion.

Apparently our heroine’s origin story is “competes in unlicensed golf challenges to earn money for underprivileged youths,” which is a statement of such simultaneous absurdity and confidence that I’m already hooked. Our director Takayuki Inagaki is a seasoned veteran, having done key work on productions ranging from Desert Punk to School Rumble to Chio’s School Road, meaning he definitely has the comedy chops for this sort of thing. Meanwhile, screenwriter/series composer Yōsuke Kuroda seems even more appropriate for the project, having proven both his sports and melodrama cred through works like Big Windup!, BASTARD!!, and Gundam Build Fighters. All signs point towards an exceptionally executed slice of birdie-seeking absurdity, so let’s get right to the action of Birdie Wing!

Episode 1

“Rainbow Bullet.” See, first episode and we’re already naming episodes after signature golf attacks. An excellent sign

We open on a pan up the CG golf course of the Nafrece Women’s Open. CG is of course a necessary concession for a sport like golf, and if anything likely indicates the writing will actually take an interest in the unique challenges of each individual course. It also just feels nostalgic for me, given my hundreds of happy hours playing Everybody’s Golf

Our current competitor is named “Chris Christina,” a superbly silly name

Other competitors include “Sierra Daniel” and “Alice Bunch.” Genuinely charmed when anime make basically no effort to construct convincing non-Japanese names

An excellent approach shot puts her within a meter of the pin. Apparently she favors heavier clubs, going for the seven iron over the five even this close to the green

Incidentally, my own golf experience is almost entirely videogame-based. I played plenty of mini golf as a kid, and my dad took me to an actual course once or twice, but the overwhelming bulk of my experience comes from Mario Golf, PGA Tour games, and the aforementioned Everybody’s and Hotshots Golf. Definitely one of my favorite party game genres, and also one of the few genres that still allows for couch co-op in this tragically compartmentalized online-only era

We pan up to a private jet, where all eyes are on the tournament broadcast

A soft-spoken woman on the plane seems like she’s trying out for this show’s glasses-pushing technical data announcer, a key role in any anime sports drama

Oh my god, Chris Christina was actually being played by a doppelganger paid to come in fourth, wearing a perfect Chris Christina mask. Two minutes in and we’re already reaching “the time they let John Woo direct a Mission Impossible” levels of silliness

Our doppelganger is Eve, our presumed heroine

Nice color design for these cityscapes, which makes them feel vibrant in spite of their sterile CG construction

We then meet the barful of orphans that Eve is presumably feeding with her winnings. It’s hard out there for an undercover golf mercenary

Then another job comes in. Eve will golf any time, any place to keep these kids off the street!

She meets some kind of masked golf jester at an industrial site, as you do

Her opponent is the nefarious Kevin, scourge of the sand wedge

Ah, the “Rainbow Bullet” is actually Eve’s nickname

Apparently her actual competitor will be CC, the nefarious golf clown

Their makeshift hole actually goes straight over the train tracks. Really hoping someone fires a drive directly between the trains

As before, the technicolor lighting does a fine job of masking the so-so background art

Eve actually lets her friend Lily take the first shot. Lily makes it a mere seventy yards down the three hundred-plus yard course, making Eve’s victory practically impossible for anyone short of an anime character

I almost feel sorry for this jobber Kevin, who must embrace the thankless role of preemptively gloating and licking his lips and generally making a grotesque spectacle of himself before being inevitably defeated

Lily reveals that Eve can only pull out all the stops when she feels pressured. A classic weakness of sports anime protagonists, regularly employed because it naturally lends itself to tense, come-from-behind victories, where the protagonist receives a sudden gust of wind when they’ve fallen precipitously behind. Thus a classic dramatic arc is presented in each of their matches, with the first half setting up a sense of hopelessness, and the second half balancing the protagonist’s newfound strength against their limited remaining opportunities to catch up

Ahahah yeeep, there’s that train a’comin!

“Pierce your opponent’s heart clean with a single shot.” Eve contemplates some words of wisdom from her golf sensei, who presumably gave his life to secure a desperate hole-in-one and defeat the nefarious Golf Emperor

“Destroy them mentally. Make it so they’ll never want to face you again.” Presumably Eve will eventually move away from this ruthless philosophy, and find joy in sharing happiness with her opponents through the introduction of her eventual rival

“Blue Bullet!” Oh good, she still calls out her attack names – and in fact, if this is just the “blue bullet,” presumably she’s got a whole rainbow’s worth of special attacks

As expected, she fires off straight between the train cars, because why not?

She actually bounces off the rake lying by the one bunker, pulling off an exceedingly Happy Gilmore-style coup

Oh shit, the golf jester was actually Chris Christina all along!

Our other lead is apparently named Aoi, a cool blue competitor to balance the fiery Eve, fitted with the most literal name possible

And glasses-pusher is Amane

More effective use of filters to fix up these backgrounds, this time adding a light purple hue to evoke the early morning sunlight over the city

“You didn’t get your rocks off?” “Yeah. I’m still not satisfied.” As is also genre tradition, our principle sport is obviously a sex metaphor

Apparently the cops have been extorting our little family, as cops do

We then get a… melancholy sepia music video montage of Eve moping around town? Sure, absolutely works for me

I don’t think Aimee Mann ever wrote a song about the underground golf extortion blues, but I imagine it would sound a little something like this

Eve’s incredible power shot lodges a golf ball in a goddamn tree, after which she fires a second into the exact same spot. Quite the variation on the Robin Hood “arrow splitting the previous arrow” trick shot

We then jump to the Amawashi headquarters in Shinjuku. Another classic staple of this subgenre, the evil corporation somehow attempting to make a nefarious profit off local sporting events. It’s not exactly the same thing, but I feel like Ave Mujica’s “you couldn’t possibly understand the terrifying power of the Togawa Group” might the purest, silliest expression of this concept

“I’ve got all the data on her opponents. If she plays as she usually does, there’s no problem.” As expected, Amane is capable of calculating any golf outcome to a tenth of a percentage point

Nice trick conveying the relative grandeur of Eve’s next course by actually painting it, rather than relying solely on CG

Eve’s next challenger is Helene Robert, an apparent legacy talent

Once again, we get an instructive pan down the hole before the match begins, providing us clear visual context for the contest ahead. This genre requires an interesting balance of tones; the overarching character drama is generally quite silly, but the actual contests should be worth investing in, constructed as satisfying martial battles. Thus you achieve the unique appeal of something like Scorching Ping Pong Girls or Girls und Panzer, wherein the overall melodramatic or self-parodic tone of the production never undercuts the tension and thrill of its individual challenges

We even get Helene closely analyzing the individual challenges of this hole. A very welcome attention to detail

And all that analysis ends up selling the JoJo-tier absurdity of Eve’s solution: not to bank a shot around the tree, but instead use her overwhelming force to just blast through a blanch. A choice that further emphasizes the distinction between our two leads, brawn versus elegance

“I’m no pro. Not even a golfer. All I do is hit a ball with a stick to make money.” Shame it’s too early in the day for her to ride off into the sunset on that line

Thus Helene forfeits, not willing to endure the shame of seeing her own dreams embodied in Eve’s play

And at last, Aoi takes the stage

“I won’t bet. Golf is a sacred sport, and that would be an insult to it.” Further setting up the philosophical contrast between our leads. Presumably Eve will learn to find the joy in pure competition, while Aoi will learn that her allegedly “sacred” sport is inherently compromised by monetary considerations

Aw shit, her drive surpassed the Blue Bullet!

And Done

Well, that was utterly delightful! As I said at the start, I’m always down for a bombastic, gleefully ridiculous sports drama, and consider such shows one of the signature pleasures of anime as an art form. And so far, Birdie Wing is proving itself an exemplary addition to the field, operating with extreme confidence and introducing at least one ridiculous new variable every five minutes or so. The show’s playing the hits, but a classic genre riff executed with distinction is a fine thing indeed, and I’m eager to see how it handles a genuinely competitive match between our well-balanced protagonists. So long as the escalations continue and the matches stay interesting, I’d say we’ve got a wonderful journey ahead of us.

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