Birdie Wing: Golf Girls' Story

somaisbatman★ 9

This show is good enough that it got me to round up my lesbian friends and play mini-golf. That’s the short review, but I can go long as well. You should know going into this that I despise real golf and everything it stands for. But lucky for me, Birdie Wing is not a show that respects its sport. In the very first episode, our main character declares “I don’t play golf. I hit a ball with a stick for money.” She's so stupid. This *show* is so stupid, the kind of stupid you get out of 2000's anime and can't help but adore. It's alsothe most fun I've had out of a seasonal in years. Birdie Wing’s production details have been a hilarious mystery to unravel. Original sports anime are quite rare, so I was baffled as to how this show even got made until I started digging further. Bandai-Namco is our production company, which quickly becomes evident with the tongue-in-cheek Gundam product placement. But behind the scenes, Birdie Wing is inexplicably being financed by HTC’s virtual reality branch. On top of the anime, this partnership will result in a “metaverse museum” and a Nintendo Switch game. So how well did they use their VR bucks? Well, Birdie Wing’s production values are never excellent, and CG is understandably used to cut corners on the golf courses. However, the character designs are superb, with plenty of unique outfits for the main duo. The animation can be limited at times, but it hits when it needs to, with absurd golf swings and imposing shot angles. The Osamu Dezaki-styled dramatic watercolor freezeframes are an excellent homage. It’s pretty clear that someone on the production team has a waifu, as Aoi is animated way better than everyone else. Perhaps the greater miracle is that Birdie Wing is good. Everything I mentioned above ends up being a pretty sketchy foundation for a show, and since it’s an original, the screenwriter attached to the project matters a lot. They ended up bringing Yosuke Kuroda on board, whose writing credentials include girls-with-guns kinda-yuri Madlax and the extremely pornographic combat definitely-yuri Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid. So we’re getting lesbians, and we’re getting ridiculous over-the-top action scenes. Somehow, I think he was one of the best possible picks for this. His script does the impossible and makes golf entertaining. We get a main character who despises her sport and tears it apart with brute-force power and precision. We get a seedy underground golf mafia arc. We get a roulette of increasingly depraved older women in said mafia. We get golfing abilities described with brazenly pornographic innuendo, delightful over-the-top melodrama, classic sports anime rivalry, and maybe even an assassination or two. And most importantly, we get delicious, delicious yuri-bait. Look, I’m a lesbian first and a golfer last, so I’m going to be real with you. This is a “show, don’t tell” kind of yuri. There’s plenty of plausibly-deniable romance scenes, but you won’t be getting any confessions up-front. However, actions speak louder than words, and when Eve hits a ball so far that Aoi can see it from her flight about to take off, and Aoi makes vows to meet her again while wearing a Char cosplay on a VR golf course, that’s the kind of stuff that counts for me. If I’m reading the foreshadowing right, there’s a nonzero chance that they’re going to be revealed to be sisters in the second season. It would be a laughably bad move, but given the unavoidable skeeziness of some of Kuroda’s works, I can’t say I wasn’t ready. Also this show does the delightful women’s sports anime thing where most of the side characters pair cleanly off with each other. I’m so glad this show exists, and that it’s somehow the opposite of a soulless money-grab given its circumstances. I could care less about the planned tie-in content landscape, but what matters is that Birdie Wing the anime is made out of love. In my ideal world, we would have one of these every season. Sports yuri is the good stuff, and I can’t wait to see the golf butches being teased for Season 2 in action.

Marinate1016★ 10

If there’s anything that can make golf enjoyable, it’s anime. Cute girls, over the top golfing scenes and great character interactions make Birdie Wing a fun watch for even the biggest of golf haters. Admittedly, coming into this season when I saw the promo art for Birdie Wing, I was not sold on it. Yea there were cute girls and some nice art, but who the hell wants to watch golf, right? Boy was I wrong. Like 99 percent of seasonals, I tuned into Birdie Wing and from the very first episode I knew we had something special brewing here. The epic and tense golfing matches,the drama, the stakes, the waifus, etc. It was all just everything you need in a sports anime. I instantly fell in love with Eve as an MC and she quickly became one of my picks for waifu of the YEAR, not just season. She and Aoi’s rivalry was a treat to watch develop and even made me want to go out and learn how to golf. While I did really enjoy the story, just when I thought I was getting the hang of this show, it throws a literal curveball at us with an absolutely ridiculous(in a good way) mafia plot which culminates in a pretty surprisingly dark end to the first 75 percent of the show. There’s so much wacky action in Birdie Wing that makes it a glorious and fun journey. My honest recommendation is to turn your brain off and try not to think too much about it. Enjoy the ride and try to learn a thing or two about golf! Eve and Aoi are amazing characters and they’re both top 10 waifu material for me, but the other characters in the show are great as well. All bring a little something special to the story and help Eve to grow whether as a person or golfer. I think as an anime original show, it can be difficult to have a really all around solid cast, yet Birdie Wing managed to pull it off along with an engaging story. Credit has to go out to Banco for the job they did here. I really hope that we get a manga adaptation or a gacha game or something to expand the story of the girls. The anime started a tournament arc right at the end of the season which was really not enough time to adequately wrap everything up as well as tie up the loose ends that Eve left as a result of what happens at the end of that mafia arc. It’s rare that anime original stuff get second seasons and I don’t think Banco animation are known for it, but I would absolutely love to see more Birdie Wing in any capacity as it will no doubt be one of my top shows of the year and one of the best sports anime I’ve seen. I will certainly miss Birdie Wing Tuesdays. Birdie Wing gets 10 Blue Bullets out of 10. Edit: Looks like Banco have all but confirmed a second season, let’s gooooo