Dear Boys

Category: Shounen, sports, basketball
Episodes: 26
Year: 2003


I wanted to like Dear Boys. In the beginning it had some potential. The main character, Kazuhiko Aikawa, is a truly endearing character. He has just the right amount of 'You can do it!" without the emo lack of ability many other characters with the same attitude have. This could have been a great sports anime. It wasn't.

The synopsis is as follows:
Kazuhiko Aikawa is a transfer student to Mizuho school. Aikawa is interested in joining the basketball team at Mizuho after leaving the elite basketball school, "Tendouji". The basketball team at Mizuho is on the verge of disbandment, with only 4 member remaing. What craziness will ensue?
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The character models for the boys in this anime were decent, with an emphasis on longer limbs and enhanced physiques. The girls just looked plain strange and awkward. The animation fluctuated from bad to criminal. Although there was some CG, it was pretty awful. I can't help feeling that the anime felt like they were running out of production money as they got near the end of the series (reference 2 minutes of still shots in episode 24 during a pivotal game that weren't even fully colored). Just terrible animation. I'm proud I made it to the end, though, because the last episode has a truly fantasticly awful 3d CG scene that really brings home how bad CG can be. It's like they rendered the anime in 12 fps or something.

If this anime were to succeed, it would need to flesh out the relationships between the boys and girls, go a little bit deeper with character development and the animation needs to be kicked up 6 to 700 notches.

NOTE: it did have some good music and I found the end credits to be amusing.


I'd give it a D+

Here's the breakdown

Animation: 3
Story: 6
Music: 8
Char. Models: 6
X Factor: 1