Review of Stars Align

I've never watched sports anime for sports. It's always been for the characters and story. I've never been athletic or showed much interest in sports, so I rarely gave sports anime a try but I have managed to fall in love with a couple (Haikyuu was the gateway drug) Stars Align had been on my radar for a while and I was not disappointed by it. It had a great representation of LGBTQ+ people and as a Non-binary person myself, I really appreciated that. I know some reviewers have complained that every character seems to have some sort of trauma or abuse in their lives,which I personally didn't have a problem with. Instead of cramming all the trauma and abuse onto a couple of characters, they spread it out, showed what different types of abuse and trauma looked like in different people.

There course some flaws, such as I think the pacing was a little off at times and sometimes the matches bored me but I think that's just a personal preference more than anything else. I did think the tennis scenes were a little repetitive, but that's the case with most sports anime I've watched.

I also think the people giving it 1 star are being a little harsh. Yes, it's not perfect, but I don't think it totally failed or bombed at what it was going for. I think with more episodes, it could become a really well-rounded anime. They cut it from 24 episodes to only 12 so that makes sense. Still, if a season 2 does come out, I'll be watching!!

I thought the animation was nice, it was simple, but I like simple so it didn't bother me much.

I know some people like to shit on dubs, but the dub was quite good, not many complaints about it.

This review is purely opinions, like most reviews although people like to pass them off as facts. If you like it or loved it (like me) that's fine! If you didn't like it, that's fine too. I'm not an elitist so I have no objections.

The ending was so damn shocking, I need a season 2, just for closure, it can't end like that.
I can't wait for season 2! It's going to be great!