I always tell people that I’m a fan of sports anime, but that comes with the caveat that I’m extremely picky about the sports anime that I actually watch. If the tone is too juvenile or if the characters are too unlikeable (for a genre that relies so much on character interactions and growth, it’s wild to me how many contain just shitty characters), I won’t actually continue watching the series. So I suppose that I might not really be a sports anime fan, but instead just a general anime fan who happens to like some sports series (in the same way that I enjoy a few comedies, some mecha anime, etc.).
One sports series from the past couple of years that I really enjoyed is the anime-original Backflip!!, which is focused on, of all things, boys rhythmic gymnastics. If you’re imagining swirling ribbons or balls being tossed in the air, you’ve got the wrong image in mind. From my understanding (based almost entirely on what I’ve watched in this anime), the men’s version of the sport is quite different, focusing on squads performing group routines to music rather than single-person floor routines with props.
The anime does a great job portraying these routines, utilizing a hybrid CG and hand drawn animation technique that results in actual dynamic movement over an extended period of time (somewhat uncommon for anime in general). It’s a lot of fun to watch, despite the fact that the general story and character material are relatively standard for the genre. At the very least, it’s 1-cour and a movie, doesn’t wear out its welcome, and happens to be a lot of fun.
But why include a sports anime on this list? Well, like a lot of anime that doesn’t otherwise have anything to do with the horror genre or Halloween, this one does happen to have a spooky episode. Episode 5, “I Want to Hide!” sees our protagonists, the Ao High School rhythmic gymnastics team, finishing up a training camp with a rival school. To end the camp, they decide to play a game of hide-and-seek within the school, with the captains of the respective teams competing to see how many people they can find hiding. The captains prove themselves fairly ineffectual at finding anyone, but as the sun continues to set and the school gets darker and more eerie, the group discovers that they’re not alone in the building.
There are several parts of the episode that won’t have a lot of meaning for people who haven’t really watched the show to that point; aside from the hide-and-seek storyline, this episode is an opportunity for the characters to get to know one-another a little bit better. However, the spooky moments are well done. There’s good use of color, lighting, shadow, and sound effects that might fool the viewer briefly into thinking that they might be watching something other than a fun and lighthearted sports series (check the Crunchyroll comments – there seem to have been several folks who thought they’d clicked on the wrong series at first).
This is perhaps not the spookiest or Halloween-iest episode here, but it’s a lot of fun and, if you decide to check it out, I bet you’ll want to watch the rest of the series, too!
Backflip!! is available to watch on Crunchyroll.