ラケット少年団

It's an oversaturated manufactured cheap emotional bait that lacked the genuine human connection and necessary depth but rather opted out for easily digestible cliches. Most of the cast, especially the younger ones, were desperately overacting in an attempt to translate the youth energy to screen but it came off as fake most of the time. The actual sports scenes were average at best, it's themed around the sport but not the sport itself. Most scenes with a sweaty face, the sweat looked as fake as it can be. It's so damn laughable that some scenes the neck was sweaty but the face was perfectly dry! The cast didn't do a good job in showing the physical exhaustion of performing the sport whether it was while training or competing. Again, making the sports scenes even more fake. What's up with the drama trying so hard to pair every boy with a girl? Really unnecessary. This drama would have fared infinitely better as a standalone one-off movie. The drama really highlighted the "bad" in badminton. Going into this I had the slightest tiniest bits of hope to get something that can be remotely and ever so slightly similar to "Ping Pong the Animation" but I quickly realized within a few minutes it wouldn't be the case.