Dezaki and Tennis Return

I watched the first season of Aim for the Ace last year and it was a blast. It’s so astonishing to watch this first part of the franchise when Dezaki hasn’t discovered his full power yet. The first Aim for the Ace came out in 1973 so that was baby days for anime and Dezaki. There are a lot of dynamic shots and some really good writing, but some parts of the art that remain are very questionable. Like you couldn’t even tell what kind of pet the protagonist has because it looked like a combination of a dog and cat that could be either. 

In a shorter review of the original series, Hiromi Oka joins her school’s tennis club as a fan girl. She never thought that she would be chosen as the next grad candidate to represent her school in a tennis tournament by coach Munakata. It’s a really good show about Hiromi facing so many trials including her club that bullies her to becoming a fantastic tennis player. Her coach gives her extra practice to become stronger and her best friend Maki never leaves her side. It’s so good with decent direction that both of those things weigh over everything else. Watch it,

The Story of Another Match

Aim for the Ace! 2 starts off three years after the original series. It starts with Hiromi Oka winning the All Japan Tennis Tournament barely. After that, she and five tennis players (Todo, Ryuzaki, among others) are tasked to represent Japan in an international tournament in New York. Hiromi Oka’s coach Jin Munakata is in the hospital before she leaves and dies afterwards while the tennis crew is in New York. Hiromi makes connections she never thought she would while playing the best tennis she has ever played in her life. All like Coach Munakata told her. Too bad when she returns home, Hiromi gets destroyed by knowing her coach’s fate. 

The rest of the series is Hiromi just completely falling apart and trying to find her way back again. Her best friend Maki doesn’t know what to do, her parents don’t know what to do, and Hiromi just lives with Munakata’s best friend, the monk Katsura. The one he played tennis with at a very high level.  This is where her rehabilitation begins as she re-examines her life. Hiromi has been with Munakata all her tennis career and slowly, bit by bit, finds her passion for tennis once again. First she moved from the beginning from the horrible state of her body to being able to compete at a higher level because she found her love for tennis again by herself. 

Ranko, Hiromi, and the Handling of Grief

Coach Jin Munakata was an important figure in everyone’s lives when it came to tennis. I feel very cold hearted to condense the story of what happened in this show because it really lessens the show as a whole. Everyone was hit hard by Munakata’s death. Ryuzaki and Todo do not perform at the level they usually do in New York because the grief hits them immediately. Though, their own attachment to tennis has been held together by their life long love of the sport itself. They both return to somewhat normal after making it back to Japan. Hiromi is one person that has been emotionally destroyed.

Though, I have not mentioned another character who was damaged as much as Hiromi was by her cousin’s death. Ranko Manukata with her amazing serve is almost a mirror image of Hiromi based on so many opposite decisions. Ranko stayed home from the journey to New York and her love for tennis was almost immediately damaged by Jin’s death. She quit tennis or seemed to when the pull for it won’t leave her at all. The very same thing that happened to Hiromi and she never got as much help from the group of friends other than Ryuzaki who doesn’t want to see her stronger opponents disappear.

The main difference between the two is the coaching. Hiromi Oka found her resolve to love and perform as much tennis as possible by proper coaching and friendship. Maki never left HIromi’s side because she constantly made Hiromi’s life hit some kind of normal. Ranko went to Australia by herself and performed serve after serve after serve with the heaviest balls possible. So she did discover that passion and love for tennis again. It wasn’t focused and it ended up with her damaging her right arm. Both are positive in their own way, but Ranko needed someone to help her and stop her when it became too much. Passion and recovery shouldn’t come without some guidance.

Hiromi Gets in the Way and Youth?

This seems to be the running idea in Aim for the Ace. She shouldn’t have been chosen to represent her school in the first series because she’s a newbie. Yet here she is being that annoying tennis player until she earns it. Here, Hiromi is already one of the best tennis players in Japan and possibly the world. The main thing is that in New York, and took someone else’s coach and then beat that coach’s daughter in a tennis match. That girl was jealous until she understood it. Not to mention how she took Jin from Ranko as a coach. So that only adds to their rivalry when the two compete against each other. Hiromi is such a huge threat now that the double rivalry between them is so strong.

I also like how the show knows these characters are so young and spending their youth playing tennis and the work and trauma that comes with it. Hiromi and Maki are going to college now, but Hiromi spends her time after school at the local tennis club, with other people at the peak of tennis like Todo and Ryuzaki, and using her youth becoming one of the greatest players and competing in tournaments. Maki is the one having the time of her life by living an entire romcom in the background with her romance life with her own normalcy compared to everyone else. Mainly because everyone else is in love with tennis and those who play it. This is how humanity works.

Visuals and Conclusions

This show is so gorgeous, man. It’s a 13 episode OVA series and it’s just so stunning to this day. Lots of great bits of animation with excellent direction that allow you to feel every single hit in a tennis game. Dezaki’s direction also plays very well, as you would expect from him, into the character drama with people drowning themselves in sadness and trying to recover from it.  The character designs are definitely the same that they appeared in the 1973 series, but upgraded to be very realistic and actually feel like such teenagers or young adults still in the prime of their youth. I couldn’t say anything about it there either.

As a whole, Aim for the Ace by itself is fantastic and Another Match raised the already good bar of the first season by being so astonishing. Another Match just took the ideas and themes of that original series and matured them in a very relatable way. I think the fact that it is three years after the original series allowed it to have its own playground for what it wanted to do and honestly, this whole show made it worth it. I say that when it introduced so much pain and growth on a fantastic level. There are so many things that are good about it that you should buy the blu-ray of the original series or the recap film and then watch this one because the entire journey isn’t that long and is really good.