A Focus on Watching Former Seasonal Shows

(The title of this section doesn’t make sense because every show was a seasonal series at some point, but you get what I mean here right?)

Recently, I started my new idea of watching seasonal shows that I intended to watch but never got to before. As of starting to write this, I am on my fifth series since doing that. A lot of my blog focus has always been watching older shows. Stuff from the 2000’s that goes down to the early days of anime. But recently, I watched the first season of Shadows House and then moved on to other things that aired around it here too. I wanted to break out of that mold that I have been into so I can be caught up on newer shows as well as some older shows. We shall see how that works.

Which turns us to Birdie Wing. A show that I have written about before, but haven’t written about in its own totality there yet either. I guess part of that was because I didn’t hear the good news about Birdie Wing until half way into the season it aired and by then it’s too late. The thing with seasonal anime is that you have to stay on top of them. If you don’t, then falling behind one day or one week will cause everything to dog pile on you. The more you don’t watch them, the more you pile on episodes on episodes. That is what happened with me when it came to Birdie Wing, Ya Boy Kongming, and just a lot of shows. Now I have watched it though out of the seasonal context.

The Beginning of Birdie Wing

The first half of Birdie Wing takes place in the fake France look alike called Nafres. It also centers on golf. Not just golf, but underground golf where mafias compete by choosing their gold player to win on a large bet. The first episode spends a lot of time showing that there is golf and then there is the extreme, hilarious, and physics breaking golf that our protagonist Eve plays. It starts with normal stuff and then the obvious happens when great people who have practiced all their lives to play golf have their spirits broken by anime golf. I love it so much Birdie Wing started strong and just kept going with that.

Then there came more things that happened in the first episode that motivated the plot going. Eve met an insanely good golfer named Aoi, from Japan, whose golf swing went further than Eve’s did. Instantly, there was an attraction between Eve who lives on the streets and plays mafia golf to support a bar that has illegal kids in it and Aoi whose DNA comes from two excellent golfers and couldn’t be any more privileged if she tried. A clash of two worlds that influences both of them to golf even harder than they ever did before. Whether it’s romance or people being attached to the golf of one another, neither of their lives will ever be the same.

Underground Mafia Golf Courses

The first half of this show is insane in ways that only anime could take it. I mean, underground mafia golf and fighting over land rights. Plus, Eve finally discovers the way she wants to play golf and where she wants to go next. Plus there are crazy characters with very interesting sense of morality, unique fashion senses, and very intriguing agendas. Rose, who has been one of Eve’s guardians, has pushed Eve to go further and further and gold by using Aoi. Of course there are a lot of bits of land rights and other things, but the final passing of the baton for Eve to defeat Rose really means a lot in the end.

We could talk about Vipere, the snake woman who uses her “tattoo” to get women off their golf game, but I could never do that justice. Same with the actual underground golf course that can create any sort of playing field at random. Or everything. It’s just so insane and wonderful. Whoever thought about this show and how to go about it must be completely insane in a way that anime would accept them. No other medium could make golf so emotional and so strange at the same time. I wasn’t a golf fan in the first place, but I can’t see golf without comparing it to Birdie Wing. 

Eve in Japan and Golf Tournaments

The ridiculousness of this show continues when Eve is forced to go to Japan because she has a hit on her. Where does she go? To Aoi of course in order to play golf. Which Aoi is very excited about after missing Eve in the sort of virtual reality golf for who knows how long. But leaving the mafia behind just shows a different side of all this craziness. The classic school girl competition of golf where every girl affiliated with golf has some kind of super ability. Eve also had to go through so many steps just to play golf alongside Aoi in a tournament.

What is interesting is that Aoi and Eve are not even the ones guiding the plot along into the high school girls tournament. The second that Eve showed up, showed her golf ability, and speak Japanese for some mysterious reason. I guess Eve has always had a mysterious past, but some of it does open up when Eve shows up and is pushed into a golf tournament by the mysterious Coach Amuro. But at this moment, Eve just doesn’t care because she and Aoi are together again to play some good golf and hopefully take everything home for them. 

Crazy Golfers, Normal Caddys

Even with all of the craziness put into place, there is always some great characters that help to ground the series a little bit. Let’s just face it, while Eve, Aoi, and other characters are great in some amazing ways, they just aren’t relatable. Aoi being the most privileged person ever and Eve being a mystery box doesn’t really create any sort of relatability. So it helps when other characters show up to display some normal reactions to everything that is going on because what they are playing with matters to so many people.

The first half didn’t need it because Birdie Wing went in for the insane with Vipere, Rose, and everything else. But Ichina Saotome is our guide in the highschool golf tournament arc. She is very normal, shows up late to school, and doesn’t know how to handle the insane brute force way that Eve likes to play golf at first. She wants to be the best caddie in the world and honestly, she has a lot of talent and slowly figures out how to interact with Eve’s sense of golf and just casually accepts everything. She is the fortunate/unfortunate character that we need to see Birdie Wing operate. Shinjo, Aoi’s caddy, does the same thing in this position as she tries to find some bit of normalcy in whatever craziness that Aoi is doing. What a fun time. 

The Unfinished Fun, Can’t Wait For Season 2

Birdie Wing is not over yet, because this is the first half. We don’t even know what is going to happen in the high school tournament that just got underway. So many opponents for Eve and Aoi to face and just poor Ichina for sleeping with Eve’s foot in her face all night. Some really character designs, perfect levels of insanity, and just so much fun going on throughout the show itself. The show knows what it is doing and where it wants to go moving forward. Especially when this show looks so good at doing whatever it wants to do. There is a good ride here that I hope continues with part 2. Even if I have some horrible feelings about what is going to go on.

I want to see the relationship between Eve and Aoi continue to develop. Whether its for the love of golf OR because they love each other, it doesn’t matter to me. It could be that old fashion style of rivalry where people are so into golf or whatever they are doing that they automatically want to connect with someone who is as good as they are. I see a lot of that in Birdie Wing. But if the show went the yuri route and they love each other so much, I would dig all of that too. Plus, there is non-golf, golf. What isn’t there to like? I don’t see how a person couldn’t connect with this show unless they don’t like fun. 

No, I didn’t mention any of the older references and gundam in this show, because I’ve already written a post about those things. Let’s call this post part two of the first season of Birdie Wing series. There is so much going on in Birdie Wing then those fanservice elements and treatments and I wanted everyone to know or dig into all of that. Birdie Wing has so much good quality to it that everyone should watch it and enjoy it no matter how affiliated you are with anime. It works on a good level and can dig you further and further into it as a person has watched more and more anime series.