Birdie Wing is the hot-blooded lesbian romance golf mafia battle anime of the spring season

Stills alone do this show no justice

(Note that I waited for the end of the season to write up all the anime TV series I was watching, all in a row.

It is difficult to write about TV anime as it airs because you truly never know what is going to happen. One time I recommended Gamers! for Polygon and turned in my final draft the week before the show revealed the main character’s 12-year-old little sister who hates clothes.

This time I’m going to try an early recommendation, for a series that’s already gone so far in its first four episodes that it’s worth watching no matter what follows.)

One of the many reasons I love anime is that only anime could give us Birdie Wing. This modern-day sports fantasy soars past the real in all the best ways. Having too much fun to care about looking cool, the show just does not quit.

Simply saying that the series is about underground illegal golf matches in the criminal underworld leaves out so much. The magnificence of Birdie Wing is not so much in the ideas themselves— sure, it’s crazy, but it’s standard Shonen Jump material, right?— but in the sheer intensity of its execution.

Homaging the late, great Osamu Dezaki’s famous “postcard” stills for emphasis. There’s so much in this image. I strongly recommend Dear Brother.

The heroine Eve is a brutish underground golf pro who’s known in the scene as the “Rainbow Bullet”. She’s the kind of larger-than-life figure who in anime/manga is typically a male heroic lead, like Ryoma Nagare or Kenshiro. Eve lives on the edge, brute forcing her way through the golf world with the seven-colored secret techniques of Rainbow Bullet-style golf, and doing it all for The Children.

Dave. Only My Choice. @sasuraiger

anime rules

But let me show you instead. This is our heroine’s first glorious feat against a hopeless opponent, that genre hallmark. And what drama! What direction! It’s classic anime spectacle with just a little extra, from the way the camera zooms in to Eve’s blood cells to the way her shot makes a discarded rake flip through the air and sink into the ground like a samurai’s katana.

Showing off theatrically like this is in anime/manga’s blood. Whether it’s samurai, hot chefs, or little girls playing mahjong, the flashy presentation is the point.

Birdie Wing knows what “normal” cool is for anime— you gotta have a cool ritual and a special move— and it consciously takes a couple of steps past that.

And this is Birdie Wing, so the indulgence doesn’t stop there, no sir. Minutes later we get a full-on music video with Eve moping to sepia-toned memories as she practices her shots. Restraint? this show asks. What the hell is that? And it’s right. This is total escapist fantasy, so why hold back?

Another homage, this time to to animator Masami Obari’s classic “sword perspective shot”. This is followed up with a reverse version of the shot where Eve “stares down the barrel” of this enormous golf club with shock. (The symbolism is, uh, apparent.)

Fast forward a little bit, and Eve has made a rival in classic shonen style: the “Innocent Tyrant,” Japanese pro Aoi Amawashi, femme to Eve’s butch, and a genius technical golfer at odds with Eve’s raw power.

Whether intentionally or not, it’s very common that the intense, long-term rivalries that form over the course of shonen epics start to feel romantic in nature. From the armored brothers-in-arms of Saint Seiya to Naruto and Sasuke’s tumultuous friendship, series display deep affection between the characters and leave it to the viewers to carry that into plausible romantic love. This is textbook stuff, and the author of your favorite series knows it.

The rival who becomes your buddy and drives a cool classic car

But Birdie Wing is no coward. It cashed in on this angle this past week, in which Eve faces off against Vipere, an astonishingly campy and sexually aggressive vampire-fanged snake woman. “There’s only one name in my heart,” spits our unimpressed heroine… and we know that there wasn’t one last time.

Can I go back to the snake woman for a second, though? This lady appears on the screen and 60’s horror movie music starts to play, as she immediately starts hitting on Eve and her mafia handler. Her voice actress (Kaori Nazuka) is having the time of her life playing the horniest voice she can muster. Vipere is a simple “filler villain” who exists solely to focus us on the romantic subtext of Eve’s growing affection for her new rival, which is precisely why she’s so ridiculous.

This is a Bandai-Namco produced show so there’s a lot of product placement for their own products. Namco is as ever trying to make Pac-Man a thing, so in this show he’s Aoi’s spirit animal. Meanwhile Eve’s caddy is a Gunpla-loving weeb

Later this episode there’s a romantic, bittersweet goodbye as Eve, having stood up her golf date with Aoi due to mafia golf showdown, drives to the airport¹ that Aoi is flying out of and offers a farewell by hitting golf balls at the plane mid-takeoff.

A weeping Aoi yells “Liar! Liar!!” from her seat as the ball zooms by the window of her private jet on a rainbow streak. Can Eve hear her cries? Not in our world, she can’t. But this is Birdie Wing. I bet she can.

So that’s Birdie Wing in a nutshell: it goes big— real big— and if you ask me, that’s what anime is for. Watch out for this one.

1. Or more specifically, she makes Vipere drive her after winning; queen shit