A lot of the opening songs are great as well, probably all of them except for the second one in the first season are excellent. Numerous popular Japanese voice actors from other anime give life to the characters from Kuroko No Basuke. The voice acting is incredible with each voice fitting each personality. The second season is the best in terms of animation and while all of the seasons have great music, I can personally say that the soundtrack to the third season is actually the best of all of them. There is a common mix of 2D and 3D during the basketball matches and the studio tries its best to copy the manga per shot. The art style is nothing short of amazing. The basketball game storylines are great and normally last around 3 to 4 episodes per game while the non-basketball game episodes have enough training and backstory to keep it interesting. Teamwork is the weakness of great individual talent when this talent does not care for the other members of their team. With all of these crazy abilities, you want to know how they can be vulnerable and the answer lies within the anime's premise, which is teamwork. Like, how could you defeat them? But that's exactly the point of the anime. A guy could copy your move and do it better than you, one guy could shoot from anywhere, another guy is just simply unstoppable, etc. Execution & DeliveryĬommon First Impression: "An anime about basketball with special abilities? Not my cup of tea."Īt first, I personally felt that the abilities were corny and unnecessary for a story about basketball. It deals about their love for basketball, the importance of their relationships with their teammates, as well as their growing competitive relationships with their opponents. The members of the Generation of Miracles focus solely on their individual strengths to win basketball games, not relying on teamwork. Kuroko believes that teamwork is the key to victory, not individual prowess and talent. The story deals with Kuroko and Kagami's rivalry with the members of the Generation of Miracles which were all teammates before, that have taken their talents to different teams in the present. The talented members of the team were known as the "Generation of Miracles" as they were all fortunately born in the same year. Kuroko No Basuke's (translated in English as "The Basketball Which Kuroko Plays" or "Kuroko's Basketball") premise centers around the relationship of the main character, Tatsuya Kuroko, who belongs to a team of greatly talented (dare I say, superpowered) individuals who split up after middle school (Junior High), and his relationship with these characters as he finds a new teammate (Kagami) with the potential to be on the same level as these talented individuals. So let's see, how does Kuroko No Basuke actually fare against Slam Dunk? I personally watched the anime in English Sub (Japanese Audio, English Subtitles). Kuroko No Basuke is commonly attributed to being the best successor to Slam Dunk in many ways while many Slam Dunk purists do not believe so. The manga started in 2008 and ended in 2014, with the anime's run back in 2012 until it ended this year, 2015. Kuroko No Basuke is one of the top two basketball-related anime along with Slam Dunk.
The images shown in this review are screenshots of the Kuroko V Slam Dunk mod for NBA 2K14 which can be found here.
This is my review on the Kuroko No Basuke anime (also known as Kuroko's Basketball or The Basketball Which Kuroko Plays) originally based on the manga written by Tadatoshi Fujimaki for Weekly Shōnen Jump, animated by Production I.G.