Franconator

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.