Battle Athletes Anime Review

Quick Review

• Reviewer: Marc
• Review Date: 2005-01-23 (updated 2011-09-11)
• 3.5 stars out of 5 (?)

Battle Athletes is something like a shoujo-tinted take on a sci-fi sports drama given a Pioneer twist. Though it could have easily turned into a cute girls in space romp or a really silly comedy (which the TV version is), the focus is more on character development and the building of friendships, with enough tension to satisfy fans of more emotionally-oriented stories. To cover the sports anime end of things there's plenty of creative futuristic athletic action, and the animation and art are of the quality you'd expect from AIC.

If an athletic soap opera with cute girls, a spot of wacky humor, and a fair amount of action sounds good to you, Battle Athletes is definitely worth a look, but be warned that the dubbed version has some major character changes, and is significantly raunchier with a lot more jokes.

Read the full-length review...

Full Review

• Reviewer: Marc
• Review Date: 2005-01-23 (updated 2011-09-11)
• 3.5 stars out of 5 (?)

At first glance, Battle Athletes seems to be pretty much what you'd expect from Pioneer: Fun characters, a little bit of story, and plenty of action. Once you get into it, though, melodrama is more central than hijinks, resulting in a shoujo-tinted sports show with a Pioneer-style sci-fi twist. A fun premise taken in an unexpected direction, Battle Athletes is at heart a light-yet-serious coming of age story.

Aside from the overdramatic introduction to the setting (which is rattled off in the first five minutes of the first episode), the plot is pretty much another girls' high-school athletics show, this time in space. It could easily have been a cute-girls-in-space romp or a silly comedy (which the alternate reality of the TV version is). Instead, after an early sprinkling of situation comedy, the focus is on character development and the building of friendships, with enough emotional (not to mention physical) tension to satisfy fans of more character-oriented stories. The last two episodes in particular are quite sobering, and it can't honestly be called a comedy by that point.

The same goes for the characters--though most of them seem to be simple caricatures at first, several turn out to be significantly more complex than I was expecting. A few have impressive emotional depth for a series like this--Kris' deep religious beliefs in particular stand out as a straight-faced portrayal of a type of person rarely seen in anime. This cast alone was enough to keep me interested. Romance, incidentally, is completely absent--there are no boys on the station and it stays away from yuri territory as well.

Even the plot, while generally obvious, manages to serve up a few surprising twists. The last episode in particular is interesting--being a sports show, the outcome is pretty much foreordained, yet I was a bit surprised at how things turn out and the road it takes to get there. Definitely not another generic "Yay, I did it, and everybody's happy" ending--I found the conclusion surprisingly affecting.

That said, the choice of which language you watch it in will make a big difference in the character of the show as a whole.

The acting in the original Japanese is very good, with suitable casting, plenty of variety to go with the characters, and quality performances all-around. The standout is unquestionably Tomoko Kawakami as Kris--her performance is a perfect fit for an unusual character with a surprising amount of depth. The rather frightening Mylandah is also played quite well by Akemi Okamura. Pioneer's subtitles are accurate, but a little dry... which they apparently thought they'd fix in the dub.

It's not that the dub is badly acted--the acting is surprisingly good. It's that the dialogue has been altered to the point where it actually changes the personalities of the characters, reminding me of ADV's penchant for rewrites. Many of the characters in the English version wouldn't even be recognizable if they didn't have the same face, and the dialogue is considerably cruder. There are also a lot more jokes thrown into the English version (I can only assume they thought the broader interpretation would go over better with dub fans).

Basically, the Japanese version is about idealized Japanese high school girls (most of them cute) with unexpected depth, while the English one is about attitude-equipped American high school girls cracking wise. The English dub is a lot more likely to appeal to fans of sillier and raunchier anime (yet again, the TV version), while the original dialogue will appeal more to fans of shoujo and the cuter sort of anime. Either way, you'll probably hate one or the other.

Important to any sports show are the athletic competitions, which are handled quite well. We've all seen our share of come-from-behind victories, and although Battle Athletes sticks to the formula, it manages to keep things interesting and somehow even pull some tension out of an ancient cliche. The futuristic sports themselves are quite creative, and although I could have imagined them having more fun with really wild events (which the TV series does), the slightly more realistic slant fits better with the rest of the plot. The great zero-G scenes deserve particular praise--there is a really cool random gravity fight early on (you won't see that in Apollo 13).

On that note, the animation is very smooth, with a fair amount of sports-related action. The character designs, as you'd expect from AIC, are attractive, with lanky physiques and particularly large eyes on the cutest ones (if you like cute--in the classic anime sense--girls, you probably can't go wrong here). The many girls at the school have quite a range of looks, which I appreciate both for variety's sake and for telling the characters apart.

In all, Battle Athletes is another enjoyable ensemble series from Pioneer, but not quite what I was expecting. Lighter on comedy and more prone to melodrama, particularly toward the end, it's a nice-looking sports show with a varied and interesting cast of characters. Don't come expecting another dumb fun series, but if an athletic soap opera with cute girls, a spot of wacky humor, and a fair amount of action sounds good to you, Battle Athletes is definitely worth a look.

If you'd rather see hijinks than drama, take a look at the TV version; it's a more standard take on the same concept.

Have something to say about this anime? Join our newly-resurrected forums and speak your mind.

Related Recommendations

Battle Athletes has a lot in common with a variety of sports anime, such as Ayane's High Kick or Princess Nine. It also bears some resemblance to light comedies in the Dual! or Tenchi Muyo vein, though the romance is replaced by peer bonding and friendship in this case (no boys to be found). It shares some themes with Gunbuster as well--though Battle Athletes is considerably more humorous, both are melodramatic coming-of-age stories that deepen toward the end.