number24 - Reviews

I don't understand Rugby as a sport after watching this, but what I do understand even more now than I did before is that the relationships you form as a part of a team can be beautiful, complicated, and wonderful. The characters threw me for a loop more often than not, some coming to realize their flaws and doing their best to improve themselves with the help of their teamates. The MC had me laughing all the damn time because despite the fact that he's a little shit, he still cares, and he seems to know all the right buttons to push in order to help motivate someone, even if that means in the end someone gets angry with him. It didn't teach me about Rugby itself, but it did teach me about teamwork and I thought it was just beautiful.

As a side note, I'd like to express something interesting I thought while watching this. There were times when the skinship between the players made me think "Wow this is erotic!" and blush about it and get excited. And there are probably people who will sneer and say "Ew, it's just more of that gay sports anime stuff." and I'll have to say... I think that's just way too narrow minded. If you replaced everyone in this anime with a women, you just... wouldn't get that kind of response. Everyone would just nod there heads and say "Yes, yeah, that's just normal team/female behavior, it's not gay at all." but somehow, men hugging, men being comfortable touching each other in friendly ways, men helping each other, is seen as "Gay" and in some people's eyes that puts it into a "Catagory" and lessens it's worth in their eyes. I think this double standard is shitty, and while as a bisexual lady I certainly ENJOYED the skinship, I don't think it's alright for people to write it off as "Just another gay sports anime". There's so much more to it than that, and I hope that some people can look past the urge to call close or affectionate relationships between men "Gay". Because god damn it, men have feelings to.

I do feel like this is an important part of my review of this anime, because I feel like this type of attitude ultimately causes the popularity or recommendations for this kind of thing to drop, because the only ones who will give it a chance are those that don't have a problem with male-male affection.

Give it a try. Learn something about teamwork. Learn something about friendship. You probably won't learn anything about Rugby, but you'll learn something.

You know me, I’m this website’s resident sports anime freak. I’ve got such a love-hate relationship with this particular brand of anime, that even if there’s a lot I haven’t seen yet, it’s still highly likely I’ve seen more shitty sports shows than actual good ones. So know that, when I say number24 is my hidden gem of Winter 2020, I say this from the bottom of my cynical heart, and with absolutely no hint of irony. I promise. And okay, I might just be saying that because Try Knights was the only other rugby anime I’d seen before this.

But even without that comparison, number24 is still something that’s able to stand on its own, mostly thanks to its unique take on the usual sports series and its weirdly-charismatic cast of characters. For some reason, anime’s been completely unmotivated to take on a rugby-centered series and adapt it well. But with number24, a show about the rugby team’s manager, it’s clear that maybe the focus should have been on the characters all along. Do that, and the story and the ships will sail just fine on their own.

Yes, the ships! Rugby is a man’s sport, we all know this, so number24 takes this to the logical extreme by having its manly, muscular men get huge, embarrassing crushes on each other. Rugby’s still a thing that happens in this show, for sure, but unlike the more traditional sports shows, number24 throws all the usual rule-explaining out the window so it can go all-in on the players instead. But who really needed to know every intimate detail of a rich boy sport anyway, huh?

It's because of this that number24 is able to indulge in its drama and angst – and what dark, depressing stuff they all are. The team manager used to be a player until he got into a career-ending accident. The other player who was with him at the scene of the crash has ditched the sport for good out of guilt. The third member of this triangle is torn between taking care of the team manager and kicking the other guy’s ass for quitting the club. They are all so stupidly in love with each other and watching them dance all over the place in a mess of feelings and hurt was something I never thought I’d look forward to in a rugby anime week after week. And if, for some absurd reason, you get sick of that main ship, then there’s a whole lot of other side characters and ships you can get attached to in the meantime.

So okay, maybe number24 isn’t really a sports anime. But it is extremely watchable and it’s definitely not a bad thing to get invested in for a while. You won’t remember anyone’s names by the time this is over, but you will, for sure, be genuinely sorry to see this one end. It’s goddamn rugby anyway! Everyone knows you can only take a story so far if all the big, beefy men playing this stupid sport ram each other and hold onto everyone else with everything they have for prolonged amounts of time.

i'm writing this review mostly based on the notes i took while watching so it'll only be brief points that i won't explain too much in depht. this review might end up somewhat negative, but in reality it's not a bad anime ! you might still like it so it's always best to form your own opinion before listening to others' <3

i'll start straight away. number24 has somewhat clumsy pacing. it doesn't really get you excited for the games. probably because it Does Not explain rugby at all. it would've been nice to get at least some kind of simple knowledge about the game after watching an anime about said game for 12 episodes. i have no idea about the game rules or positions and that's one reason why the anime felt lacking. it's alright to have a sports anime where the main focus isn't the sport, but that would mean there needs to be another focus. number24 tries to focus on relationships and such, but the large amount of characters and their feelings get mixed up and in the end it's too difficult to follow any of the conflicts or relationships.

this anime has a lot of fanservice. it's clear from the very first episode that it's all just muscles, pretty faces and odd camera angles. regarding the characters; there's a lot of them and many of them look very similar to each other. and besides the 3 main characters, the others don't really get any proper plot. that made it really had to connect with the characters even though there were a few i really wanted to like. 

the story-/plotbuilding was really bad. most backstory was only sidehandedly mentioned in speech even though most of the players had a lot of history with each other. number24 felt like a second season to an anime that never existed. also: the ending scene came out of nowhere, the anime had no foreshadowing.

that being said, it's not bad. it was interesting to see how some of the relationships worked out and conflicts were resolved. is it about rugby? no. will you learn anything about rugby? no. can you enjoy idol look-alike dudes being dudes? yes, to your heart's content.

This is my first review so please bear with me. I know nothing about rugby and I haven't watched many sports anime but I actually really enjoyed this one! I think it had a really good proportion bewteen the story and actual sport. I really enjoyed the realtionships between the characters. The only let down about them was that the anime was too short to show more of those relationships. I wanted to see more flashback stories, more interactions between characters and their personal developments. The main character, Natsusa Yuzuki, was extrodinary. I loved his personality, his story and how he interacted with others. He was pretty funny, petty, sly, yet emotional and very suportive. I feel there is so much more they can show, develope and achieve with this anime so I hope for another season. Overal it was really a good anime to watch. It was really funny and enjoyable to watch. 

This is a really nice anime but I would have wanted to see more episodes about their improvment while practice/training like in all the other sport-animes and more about them as a team. I also want to get to know more about Natsusa and his past (like how he played and what he was like, etc.) So I'm hoping for a second season^^ All in all, I would still recommend to watch this anime!! I learned some rules of rugby and the charakters are all handsome. The story itself is very interesting and kinda heartbreaking :(

Have fun watching it guys!! <3