Kuroko’s Basketball is a show for those who love action and competition, filled with intense games and stunning plays, this sports anime doesn’t disappoint in the shonen-like action department.

Tetsuya Kuroko is a high school basketball prodigy from the Generation of Miracles, a team of six high school basketball players who each possess their own unique basketball ability. Kuroko has the ability to misdirect his opponents’ attention, causing them to forget he’s there, letting him pass the ball almost entirely undetected, and was dubbed the “Phantom Sixth Teammate” of the Generation of Miracles.

The story follows Kuroko’s journey to success with his team, with most of the episodes being based around one or part of one challenging game, in which Kuroko and his teammates, most notably Taiga Kagami, perform plays and have short conversations with opposing players in the heat of the match.

Sports anime are relatively rare compared to many other anime genres; currently the only sports anime that come to mind are Yuri on Ice, Haikyuu, and Kuroko’s Basketball, so when a good one is made, anime fans and sports fans alike tend to think of it as better than it may be, as they don’t want to think of it as bad in any way, and I think that is also what happened with Kuroko’s Basketball. Don’t get me wrong, Kuroko’s Basketball is a great show and is enjoyable to watch, but it is by no means without its flaws.

To best represent the pros and cons of Kuroko’s Basketball, I will commonly make comparisons to Haikyuu, a volleyball anime with a similar premise as Kuroko’s Basketball. Haikyuu is a show I have loved since I watch it and will always be an anime that I recommend to friends, as I think it perfectly encapsulates what a great sports anime can be. I likely have a small bias for Haikyuu, as I am not only a big fan of the show, I’m also a big fan of volleyball, but I will try to write this list of pros and cons with as little bias as possible.

Pros and Cons of Kuroko’s Basketball

The characters are generally likable and make the show fun to watch; the two main characters are foils of each other, which creates some funny moments and banter between the two characters, but are also highly in sync with each other while playing, which creates a duo who is fun to watch and makes the action much more interesting. Haikyuu also does a great job of this with their two main characters and have very similar dynamics, but with the personalities of each character reversed. All in all, the dynamic between the two main characters in Kuroko’s Basketball creates a lot of enjoyment for the viewer.

Kuroko’s Basketball has a lot of action, with shocking dunks and overall pro-level plays. If you were to take all of the high points of an NBA game and condense them into a 23-minute episode, you would be left with Kuroko’s Basketball. The characters perform plays that are almost-superhero-like and tend to be animated in a way that shows just how powerful these high schoolers are. Haikyuu’s action is slightly different; while there are still amazing plays displayed with slo-mo’s and emphasis, the plays in Haikyuu are much less superhero-like, which I will get into a bit later.

The antagonists are very clear in Kuroko’s Basketball; from the start, the viewer learns about each antagonist or every character who is a part of the Generation of Miracles, who Kuroko’s team will eventually fight individually. In this way, the show hypes up the bad guys before the good guys fight them, and we have a clear sense of who Koroko’s team will be fighting against, and what their specialties are. In Haikyuu, the viewer is shown clearly who the antagonists are as well, but in the form of flashbacks and reference to backstory. Both shows do this very well.

The first main con I have about Kuroko’s basketball is its realism. In Kuroko’s Basketball, every main character is extremely proficient at basketball, with multiple of which possessing special basketball powers that are highly unrealistic and follow more along the lines of fantasy anime abilities. While this does make the show much more action-packed, it creates a larger disconnect between the characters and the viewer, this is also true of the design of the characters; They are all extremely fit, with big muscles, broad shoulders, and adult-like features, when in reality they are high-school students, this makes it much harder to relate to the characters and see them as high-schoolers at all. In Haikyuu, the characters are skinny with more oversized heads and more childish features, which can easily be separated from the adults of the show. The viewer really gets the sense that the characters are just kids playing sports for their high-school, instead of pro athletes who are skilled in all areas. Haikyuu also keeps the realism of the sport under check; while there are characters who are very skilled in certain areas, their skills are still under the range of human possibility. You could say that “it’s an anime, so why does it have to be realistic?” which would be fair, but the reason it matters is because of the focus of the show, it’s focussed on basketball, a sport played by normal people, and by making it so that the characters have special inhuman abilities, it turns from an anime based on a normal sport to an anime based on a regular thing, that also has unexplained magic. An anime can be set in an ordinary world but also have unique fantasy aspects and work out well, but the key difference is that in those anime is that the focus of the show is generally on the fantasy aspects of the world and how they affect the world, a great example of this is the show Parasyte: The Maxim.

We only really get to know the main characters. We are introduced to Kuroko and Kagami, the two main characters, at the start of the show and are later introduced to a few other main characters (notably those from the Generation of Miracles). We learn more about their personalities and about them as individuals evenly throughout the first few episodes that they are introduced in, but we hardly know the supporting or secondary characters. We barely learn anything about Kuroko’s other teammates, and they seem to be portrayed in season one as fairly default people, without much personality other than their connection to the team. Haikyuu does a great job of introducing side characters, showing and developing the main character’s teammates (alongside other supporting characters) almost as much as the main characters, in Haikyuu we get the sense that the main character is part of a team, he isn’t the main focus of his sports scene and is teammates and opponents are individuals with personalities. Kuroko’s Basketball did this on purpose though; the story is clearly more about two protagonists and their journey through the show, rather than about the characters as part of a team and community, and by doing so, the writers of Kuroko’s Basketball made the good guys obvious to the viewer.

There is a concept of growth and improvement that is lost in Kuroko’s basketball. The characters in Kuroko’s Basketball are already all the best of the best., they are not striving to become amazing players, they are striving to become better than their amazing opponents and hold the title of greatest, they strive for the top and start as the best players around already, without much improvement of the characters being shown in the show unless it is to beat an opponent’s specific talent. The main characters of Haikyuu are shown improving and becoming better in multiple areas as the show progresses, and it is pretty obvious to the viewer that while the characters each are fairly skilled in a certain area, they still need improvement on their specialties and also on their worse areas, again, it is a great form of grounding the viewer and showing that Haikyuu’s characters really are just high-school volleyball players.

My last comment about Kuroko’s Basketball is about something it completely misses the mark on; the viewer never learns about basketball or its rules, sure we see dunks and passes happen, but we aren’t told why this character had to pass then, or why that character went for a dunk there. In Haikyuu we learn about the sport as the characters do, with scenes of the coach explaining a play they were going to go for, or with scenes where a player is helping another player who is confused about a rule. After watching Haikyuu I felt I had a clear understanding of volleyball’s rules and strategies, and understanding which Kuroko’s Basketball just didn’t give me.

Regardless of the show’s negative aspects, I still urge you to watch Kuroko’s Basketball, which Netflix recently released season one of. The show is still enjoyable to watch, and its flaws aren’t a reason to completely avoid it. I also urge you to watch Haikyuu, as I see it as almost a better Kuroko’s Basketball, and it is one of my favorite anime.

I would also like to add that you may see all the negatives I listed as positives and reflective of the type of shows you are personally into and that if this is the case, don’t make up your mind about not watching Kuroko’s Basketball just because of my criticism before creating an opinion of it for yourself.

Rating: ★★★☆☆