261892.jpg

The anime's story centers on Minato, a boy who stopped playing water polo due to a certain incident in the winter of his third middle school year. He picks the sport back up again with a new team when he starts in high school, but the fledgling team runs into many problems.

Source: ANN

Genre(s): Sports

________________

Since water polo is (as admitted by the show itself) a 'minor sport', I'll lead with the hook instead: amnesia. So, main character already had won it all, pretty much, but got in a wreck/coma and lost all of his water polo memories/skills/muscles; a total of three years of life- gone. So, he must start anew. While that is all well and good, what struck me as the most interesting thing, oddly, is how this almost adult (high schooler) has the mind of an elementary kid, essentially. This is actually depicted slyly in how some of the other characters describe him being a person he does not recognize (well, he does a few). He seems content to to 'fake it until he makes it', so he isn't completely juvenile.

They didn't gloss over his cramming to close the educational gap, and the actual trauma the 'incident' has manifest on his family. He actually has no strong feelings about water polo, and sees his returning to it as symbolic of returning his family to normalcy. That makes Minato endearing, though how everyone acts like they just don't believe he could have forgotten all about water polo is a tad grating, I'm excited to see what happens next.