Shakunetsu no Takkyuu Musume Episode 10 Review – “My Brand of Table Tennis”

The fated showdown between Koyori and Kururi is finally underway! Who emerges victorous?

(Spoilers in this review)

We get an explanation regarding Kururi’s signature move, the curve drive! Basically the huge amount of topspin and counter-clockwise spin makes the ball go way off to the side when her opponents hit it. As a result, you look like you’re playing against a tornado.

While she struggles to fight back, Koyori decisively loses two games to Kururi. Suzumegahara Junior High is on its last legs here, folks! However, Koyori refuses to fall into despair, which slightly rattles Kururi.

It turns out that Koyori has been slowly adapting to Kururi’s favorite stroke and is trying to smash the ball with her racket’s sweet spot. Apparently, hitting the ping pong ball with the sweet spot will make it travel farther and accelerate faster. Forcing the ball in despite the insane spin is her answer to the curve drive!

Also it apparently feels really good (to hit the ping pong ball with said sweet spot). After Koyori let it be known that Agari has been helping her practice, everyone starts jumping to conclusions.

Well, Koyori manages to start smashing with the sweet spot since it’s Koyori. To be fair, she threw away two games in order to be able to start consistently doing it. This in turn, however, gets to Kururi, who really loves the curve drive since it was a stroke that she and Zakuro developed together. Seeing her favorite move be defeated over and over gets her shook.

Incoming: a gallery of pics showing Kururi breaking down.

Thankfully, Zakuro encourages Kururi to stay true to her own brand of ping pong. As a result of her waifu (as well as Koyori’s passive ability that basically fires up people to the point that they care more about having fun instead of winning or losing) Kururi regains her footing and tries to do a sweet spotted curve drive. She kept failing but she kept trying until finally…!

I have to say, the final moments of their match were intense to the point that it almost felt like the show switched genres. It certainly lived up to the name, “Scorching Ping Pong Girls.” As I watched this beautiful battle conclude, I was thinking, “So this is where their budget went! They even sacrificed some moments in this very episode in order to polish this scene (lol).” My GIF program was not cooperating with me today, but it wouldn’t have done the exchange justice, I think.

Incoming: another long gallery that also doesn’t do the scene justice.

Koyori wins, so Suzumegahara wins. You know, I didn’t really notice that Kururi and Koyori had such similiar sounding names until this moment, haha.

Thankfully, some waifu healing is in order. Kururi looks good with twintails. She also stops having the dull eyes of despair as she acknowledges that her ideology about ping pong and friendship was completely wrong. Zakuro is the best waifu friend Kururi could ask for and there was never a need for a friendship fee to keep her around.

Before the schools part ways, they all mingle and exchange friendly words. Seems like Koyori was able to change Kururi for the better by getting her heart to race, too. All’s well that ends well.

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Finals Thoughts

While I love watching this series, I am a bit worried about the show’s pacing. It’s been 10 episodes and every episode, while very engaging, is spent on a essentially one or two ping pong matches. I’m scared that this series will just end up abruptly, leaving me unsatsified. The episode count according to MAL is unknown, however, so I have hope it’s not just a single cour.

Next week’s episode is going to have the girls go to a training camp. I think some new characters are introduced, too, yay! See you next week!