Baby Steps: The Best Tennis Anime Yet

gamerant.com:

Sports anime are incredibly exciting, dramatic, emotionally charged and just an all-round great time. Various sports have found representation in anime, with entire narratives being devoted to particular sporting codes.

While one of the most enjoyed individual sports in the world, tennis anime don't usually get enormously popular; however, of the ones that have, Baby Steps (2014) is arguably the best one of the lot. Here's why this anime is particularly underrated, and serves as great representation for tennis within the sports anime niche.

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For those unfamiliar with the series, Baby Steps follows the journey of Maruo Eiichiro (known henceforth as «Ei-chan»), a top-performing high schooler known for his extraordinary organisational skills, discipline, and diligence, who decides to take up a sport because he feels that he needs the exercise. When he sees a flyer, Ei-chan joins the Southern Tennis Club, where he meets fellow first-year high school student Natsu Takasaki, a talented and passionate player who has her mind set on going pro. In contrast to those lofty ambitions, Maruo is simply playing tennis as a means to a relatively mundane end: improved physical health. However, as

Since tennis is an individual sport for the most part, Ei-chan felt that it would best suit his busy schedule, and be a lot less pressure than a team sport. However, Ei-chan soon realises what he has gotten himself into, and even sooner develops an intense love for tennis as he continues to play the game and improve.

One of the things that makes Baby Steps stand head and shoulders above other anime about tennis is the protagonist. Ei-chan is not particularly gifted or especially good at tennis at