Ace in the Golf Hole:
Birdie Wing: Golf Girls’ Story First Impressions
Grab your irons, hail your caddy, hit the green and get ready for Birdie Wing, your new favorite golf drama.
This article is a part of AniTAY’s Spring 2022 Early Impressions series, where our authors offer their initial thoughts on the new, prominent, and exciting anime from this season!
Birdie Wing: Golf Girls’ Story is a wild, wild anime. I lacked the time to draft this review before the end of April, so here I’ll give my impressions for the first 4 episodes, which I loved. In short, Birdie Wing is a perfectly decent spectacle with strong characters and a well-crafted sport/shonen formula applied to golf. There are light spoilers ahead, so proceed with caution.
Now to the stuff that blew my mind.
I previously reviewed another sports anime, Remain, last year. While Remain was a story of a male water polo team coming together, this show shifts to a more intimate drama about female golfers. Birdie Wing’s subtitle Golf Girls’ Story, is very accurate, as the series features an almost entirely female cast. We follow Eve, a teenager with a dark and troubled past, who supports her found family via legally dubious underground golfing gigs, a sport at which she is somewhat of a prodigy. Golf-hustling one day, Eve meets Aoi, a genius Japanese golfer, who has arrived for a tournament. This encounter sparks something within Eve, and golf shenanigans ensue Birdie Wing is driven primarily by the budding rivalry/frenemy relationship between Eve and Aoi. Eve is a rough, aloof, no nonsense protagonist with a heart of gold, while Eve is the kindhearted but very determined rival. The character writing isn’t overly complex (best friend Lisa, mom figure Clara, mafia boss Rose, and the various straightforward challengers), but it succeeds at crafting a great dynamic around Eve and Aoi. Each girl has her own goal, support system, and (at least suggested) history. They have opposing personalities, and yet they are irresistibly drawn to each other. Each scene fits perfectly into the standard story arc of similar series (drama, fight, resolution) and moves the action forward.
Golfing is a particularly niche sport within the anime medium (no, really), but Birdy Wing nevertheless straightforwardly and efficiently weaves it into action sequences reminiscent of other sports anime.. You will find no POV characters asking about the rules; viewers simply figure out what a birdie is by following the show. This may feel intimidating, for even if golf looks simple, the different clubs and scoring rules are not. But the show works around that, making the stakes clear throughout the dialogues and the characters’ reactions. The short tournament we see Eve and Aoi face off in also serves as our introduction to the sport and what to expect from this anime take on golf. And here, too, Birdy Wing delivers: characters all play with their own style, with or without special moves, which makes the whole thing feel entertaining and engaging. The star of the show is of course Eve’s “rainbow bullet” style, a set of color coded golf shots for every situation. Even there, Eve’s specials work more as a tool to answer each problem posed by the setting. (Need reach? Blue bullet. Need a curve? Green bullet. Need precision? Red bullet, etc.)
The worldbuilding is what sets the show apart, and it presages a lot of fun and wild situations. The start of the series takes place in Nafrece (which is in Europe apparently, perhaps even the EU given the local currency is the euro, sorry, “eurus”), a coastline windy country where the hyper rich and the destitute live side by side. This class aspect is reflected in the duality between the struggling Eve and wealthy, golf royalty Aoi. Eve starts to navigate both worlds with her golfing talent. It is here that the show takes the sport way too far: not only do you have golf courses and tournaments, but you also have a golf mafia, golf business empires, and other shady underground activities. The show plays these straight, and to great effect. Eve is hired to perform “jobs” all throughout the series, all of which are unsurprisingly basically golf matches with varying stakes. The wacky situation thankfully never distracts from the characters.
Finally, a point dear to me: the show respects viewers enough not to distract them with cheap tricks. Not only does it avoid objectifying its female cast, but it also incorporates sexuality advantageously into the narrative. If a character wears something sexy or scandalous, it works with the aesthetics of the part. For example, the Vipère character wears a skin-tight leather suit, which leaves little to the imagination. However, this is framed as off-putting and excessive, not alluring. For a show with so many female characters, there is a great deal of restraint.
None of this precludes the show from dealing with romance. Eve and Aoi share a strong reciprocal infatuation. Eve enters the tournament to face off against Aoi. Aoi challenges Eve to play a rematch. Their relationship is framed as a rivalry, but soon the language becomes more explicit. Eve infers her heart belongs to someone else when taunted by Vipère, Aoi is visibly upset by a missing chance to square off against Eve. Where this will go is not clear, but for a show that has managed so well so far, developing a romance between its deuteragonists could be an exciting way forward.
Music-wise, we have a particularly kickass OP and ED, the gorgeous “Yodaka” by Tsukuyomi. Do yourself a favor and give it a listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPnaeBaIDH8
Title: Birdie Wing: Golf Girls’ Story
Based on: Original anime
Produced by: Bandai Namco
Streaming on: Crunchyroll
Episodes Watched: 1 to 4
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