Birdie Wing – Par for the Course

Production

I do think the ED is the best-looking part of the show. Otherwise, it’s just kind of ok. I would call Birdie Wing generally nondescript. The character designs are fine, some are pretty cute. But they’re not striking and kind of interchangeable with dozens of other cute anime girls. Also, the rendering of those characters is pretty inconsistent so they end up looking a bit derpy from time to time.

Similarly, the backgrounds look fine. In fact, all those lush grounds with mountains in the background are genuinely beautiful but they also get kind of repetitive. Golf courses tend to look a lot alike after a while. And other settings are lacklustre.

By far the most visually interesting spot was the mechanized mafia golf course that was literally underground. The way it moved to rearrange the layout was fun to look at and to me the most visually entertaining moment.

That’s about it. I don’t have much to say on the voice acting and aside from the OP music, I don’t really remember the sound design. And I just watched the show. I was mildly disappointed that they didn’t make an effort to make the “golf” sounds stand out more. You know, the wack of the club on the ball, the thud on the ground. Those sounds are there, it would be extremely weird if they weren’t, but they’re sort of dull.

Man, I complain a lot. Let me summarize. Bridie Wing looks fine. It’s fine.

Story & Characters

I wasn’t kidding in my synopsis, I think one of the biggest things playing against the plot and character development of Birdie Wing is the narrative. To story works against itself. Before I go on there’s a big caveat here so I’ll get one of my points out of the way right now.

Season 1 of Birdie Wing is incomplete. It really should have been a split cour instead of two different seasons. And this is not a case where there are a lot of loose threads and questions to answer but we leave off in a satisfying spot. It more or less ends right in the middle of a sentence. OK not a sentence but a match, in the middle of it… The last few episodes are set up for things that never come.

The second season of Birdie Wing has already been announced for winter 2023 and now I feel like I have to watch it. Still, I don’t like when anime do that. There is so much imoredictability in the industry that the chances of leaving your audience hanging are very high. I like it when they at least aim at finding a nice place to stop for now.

Anywho, what this has as an effect is that I find the first season very hard to judge. My impression of the story could change drastically once I see the second half. A lot of elements which seem superfluous and unnecessary might turn out to be brilliant. This post is basically reviewing half a show, so keep that in mind. I will have t revisit it after season 2. For now, I will do the best I can with what I’ve seen so far.

To me, the first half of the season, essentially the whole violent mafia storyline, was a waste of time. It’s not that I disliked it. I thought the idea of rough and tumble criminal golf tournaments was rather funny. And I do like the characters introduced but, they seem like they belong to a different show altogether. Ultimately, Birdie Wing felt like it was actually starting once Eve got to Japan and started on her traditional sports! anime journey. You know, training, getting used to a new team, meeting increasingly powerful rivals every few episodes. You know the drill.

Honestly, I liked that arc of Birdie Wing. I found it easier to get into.

However, the first half of the season set up this grimy crime drama with golf in it. There was amnesia, child prostitution, racketeering, mob hits, the whole shebang. And that could have been a cool show as well if they stuck to it. It felt a bit disjointed and not quite thought out all the way through which is why I personally had a bit more trouble engaging with the first half of the show but it also had the potential to become something truly fun and unique.

Instead, that entire arc, which was the entire arc of the show, is dropped suddenly over the course of half an episode, and the show becomes something completely different.

As it currently stands, I feel the time that was spent partially developing about half a dozen characters we might never see again would have been better spend fleshing out the girls at Raiou academy and making Eve and Aoi’s relationship a bit deeper than just liking each other’s golfing.

There are some little tonal quirks here and there as well. For instance, when Eve first gets to Japan from her imaginary European country of Nafrece she tries talking to the locals in broken English. Literally, the voice actress switches to English. But she gets quickly frustrated and just switches to Japanese. The other character is stunned that Eve can speak the language and asks her how come and Eve just looks stunned herself and says something along the lines of I guess I can speak Japanese, I wonder how come. And that’s it. It’s never mentioned again.

You can tell from the expressions on the character’s faces that this is a joke. And it’s the only instance of anything even resembling meta humour in the entire show. I loved it. It’s weird and for some may feel out of place but I think that makes it work even more. However, it works the other way as well. Tiny instances of high drama or tension pop up here and there and seem unconnected to the rest of the show. In my opinion, it hurts the momentum of the series.

At the end of the day, Birdie Wing is a fine half a surreal crime drama and a fine half a sports! anime. It’s fine.

You might like this anime if:

You want to watch a golfing anime. There aren’t all that many out there!

I save all my screencaps on my Pinterest and you can find more there if you are interested. But I still like to show you a few in the post. If you’re like me, screencaps are something that really helps you decide to watch an anime or not.