Not RecommendedFunny
Kuroko is supposed to be a sports anime, but it isn't even about the sport. Despite there being basketball games that take place, there is no real portrayal of basketball to be found. It is just a generic rule of cool anime that happens to involve basketball. The concept of superpowers in sports completely takes the point away from the sport in the first place. It makes the side characters irrelevant, and it completely destroys the foundation of the sport. Instead of placing the focus on the intricacies of the sport, we are focused on random superpowers. The characters are bland and uninteresting, and thereare no stakes present in this anime whatsoever because of this.
Characters:
There is no reason to care for the characters on their journey because there is no reason to like them in the first place. We hardly see them in their personal lives, and we don't see them make relationships with anyone outside of the team. They don't have any real motivations except that Kuroko wants to prove that he is valuable to the other members of the generation of miracles for some reason. This doesn't make sense in the first place because Kuroko is constantly asked by the other members to leave the team he joined to join them, proving that they saw him as valuable the whole time. Even if they didn't, he is already one of the 10 best players in the entire world because he was born with superpowers, so of course, he would be valuable. Kuroko is a shy person who goes unnoticed by most of the people around him. This is literally just what his ability is. He goes unnoticed on the court because of the fact that he doesn't do much, and he uses this to his advantage. Except he actually does do stuff on the court, such as passing, so you would think that the opponents would begin to learn of this cliche and not let it happen over and over again, but yet he still goes unnoticed. When your entire personality can be defined in a simple ability like Kuroko's can, that's the sign of a generic self-insert character.
Kagami is just along for the ride and doesn't have many real motivations outside of the generic wanting to be number one by surpassing the generation of miracles. This is literally impossible due to his ability being almost completely useless, if not the most useless in the anime. This would be a fine underdog story normally, but in this anime, the concept of getting better through training is completely nonexistent. This means there is no point in watching this anime because the main character will either achieve his goals through plot armor and bad writing, or he will never achieve them at all since he was born unlucky.
The side characters pretty much have no involvement in the games since all of the main characters have superpowers. This is a terrible way of nullifying all side characters since they were born unlucky, and they are only there as filler players. The games might as well be 2v2 games instead of 5v5. Outside of that, they only serve as comedy and fan service.
The rest of the generation of miracles are just stereotypes with broken abilities with different hair colors. When you pick a favorite character in this anime, you don't pick them because you like their character more; you pick them for their hair color and their abilities. All of the main characters who have abilities are defined by simply having a different hair color from one another, and that's it. Aomine is a poorly written-character as well. He was growing tired of competing since he was better than everyone else around him, so why didn't he just move on and play against bigger competetion? This happens all the time in real life, where younger people play up. It was Aomines choice to play against worse competetion, so why does he still play in the lower leagues? I found myself not caring about a single character because nobody is playing for anything meaningful. The main 2 characters are trying to get attention for how lucky they were for being born with basketball abilities; Kise doesn't even like basketball and also just wants to be cool like Aomine. Aomine thinks he is better than everyone and also doesn't want to play the sport, and we don't even know what Midorima is playing for. The only characters with some sort of actual motivations happen to be the side characters, who will never even be useful on a team no matter how hard they train.
Powers:
The generation of miracles is a poor concept, to begin with. These people all happened to go to the same school at the same time, and all happen to have superpowers? It doesn't make sense that they all go to the same school, and nobody else outside of this school had any superpowers, except Kagami, of course, because of plot convenience. Why are these people even competing at the high school level at this point? Midorima can literally shoot 100% from 3. This is not only impossible but Steph Curry, who is the best 3-point shooter of all time, only shoots 42.8% from 3, so why isn't he playing at a much higher level already? This concept is so poorly thought out, and if the writer wanted to force abilities in this badly, they should've made them less overpowered and more subtle, so it would at least be fair. The players and coaches seem to be self-aware of these abilities, yet they aren't at the same time. They are never implemented into the game plan at all. The abilities are often inconsistent, to the point where even the author doesn't know how they work. There is no consistency or use of strategy integrated within the abilities that add to the sport. You would think that, at least with the power system, the author would include this as a strategic way of playing through the basketball game, but even with these powers, there is still no strategy involved, and it is just random dunks with barely any planning or teamwork.
The author was attempting to mix normal basketball play with overpowered abilities, but this creates an infinite number of problems such as: If Midorima can shoot 100% from anywhere on the court (even full-court shots somehow, which is physically impossible), why don't they just set screens or create ball movement in order to get him more open? Why doesn't Kise just copy whatever ability he needs at any moment in time whenever he needs that exact ability? Why does Kuroko go unnoticed still even though people know that his quirk is going unnoticed? Why does Kagami's ability defy the laws of physics? Why is Aomine so overpowered to the point where he can seemingly do anything he wants? The author was attempting to still have the characters play normal basketball even with these broken abilities, but the author didn't realize just how much these abilities change the core function of how the sport is played. Instead of going all the way and changing it fully, he mixes it with traditional basketball, and he uses the abilities as a cheap way to let us know who the important characters are instead of being able to come up with actual crafty basketball skills that normal people have in real life.
Even the Coach has a random inhuman ability for no reason, which normally serves as plot convenience to use it as an excuse for her to know when Kagami should play or not whenever he gets injured. Instead of having a medical team like in real life and having to make a life-altering decision such as deciding whether to risk it all and play for the current time and risk making your injury career-ending or to suck it up and let it heal by ending the current season. Instead of being faced with tough decisions, the coach just magically knows exactly what Kagami's health status is and if he should continue playing or not. Why doesn't she become a doctor or something and actually do something more important than being a basketball coach with an ability like this? Could you imagine how helpful she would be? But no, she is just a basketball coach for a random school for some reason. The powers create infinite problems, and this was one of the biggest downfalls of the anime.
Games:
The games do a good job of building suspense, and it captures the intensity of the games really well at times. The soundtrack also does a great job at keeping the viewer interested along with the overall competitive environment. On the first watch, Kuroko can be thrilling and intense for anyone who manages to care about the characters. However, the games themselves are very uninteresting if you take the emotions out. Rewatching a game in Kuroko is almost completely pointless, and it's just plaing boring unless you're watching out of pure nostalgia. Rewatching a real NBA game, even when you know the outcome is very rewarding because you can dissect so many little things all of the players do and the strategies involved within the game to learn more about the sport and to learn how to get better at it yourself. You can really see everyones intent and purpose in the game. In Kuroko, there is no real strategy. It's just a rule of cool, with random shooting, running around, dunking, and overpowered abilities. This is why it’s so easy to get into this anime for people who don’t play basketball because it’s not actually basketball. The games are too lackluster and don't have enough strategy to be interesting to anyone who isn't just satisfied with seeing random dunking. There are never any stakes because we are never invested in the characters, and nobody is playing for anything meaningful.
In Summary:
In sports, everyone has to constantly work on their game to improve it no matter the sport. This is how you get better than others. In real life, anyone can be as good as they want to be at any sport if they work hard enough at it and learn what their strengths and weaknesses are. This isn't the case in Kuroko because no matter how hard they train, the side characters will never come close to touching the skill of the main characters. Therefore the message of this show is to hope you get lucky and are born with the best genetics. So, if you aren't born as a 7-foot-tall male with a 50" vertical that can also shoot consistently from anywhere on the floor efficiently and play defense at a high level, you might as well just not play basketball in the first place unless you want to be an irrelevant side character.
There is no sense in attempting to get better at the sport, there is no strategy, and we aren't shown the intricacies of the sport in the slightest. I was able to enjoy something like Initial D even though I was never interested in racing in the slightest because the author bothered to show the viewers the intricacies of the sport, and I was able to really appreciate racing once I finished it. I learned a lot about racing after completing Initial D, However, with Kuroko, this isn't the case. The concept of the abilities takes what is good about basketball out and turn it into something it isn't and should never be. If you don't know anything about basketball, don't expect Kuroko to teach you a single thing. Kuroko doesn't capture the struggle of being on a team, having to put in the actual effort, and suffering loss as a team while overcoming that loss and getting better. It fails at even showing the most simple aspects of basketball on a fundamental or rudimentary level, and it doesn't have that much of an interesting plot outside of the basketball games. The characters are bland for the most part, with no real motivations of their own. Kuroko is bad in many aspects, and the only people I would recommend it to are those who enjoy turning their brains off and watching Rule of Cool action. It isn't a complete disaster and has some positives, but there are other anime more worth your time.
