Basquash!

Basquash!
Promotional poster for the television series
バスカッシュ! (Basukasshu!)
Genre	Science Fiction, Sports, Mecha, Real Robot
Anime television series
Directed by	Shin Itagaki (1-20) Eiichi Sato (10-26) Shoji Kawamori (Project Director)
Written by	Tatsuo Satō (Series Composition) Yuko Kakihara Yuki Enatsu
Music by	Audio Highs Kei Yoshikawa
Studio	Satelight
Original network	MBS
Original run	April 3, 2009 – October 1, 2009
Episodes	26 (List of episodes)
Manga
Written by	Tetsuya Hayashi
Published by	Kadokawa Shoten
Demographic	Shōnen
Magazine	Shōnen Ace
Original run	January 26, 2009 – September 26, 2009
Volumes	2
Manga
Basquash! Eclipse Stage
Written by	Kagemaru
Published by	Kadokawa Shoten
Demographic	Seinen
Magazine	Comp Ace
Original run	April 25, 2009 – September 26, 2009
Volumes	1

Basquash! (バスカッシュ!, Basukasshu!^?) is a sports and sci-fi anime which aired on Mainichi Broadcasting System. It involves characters playing basketball while riding mecha. The series premise was created by Thomas Romain and Shoji Kawamori, with the animation produced by Satelight. Shoji Kawamori handled the project direction, while the series direction was done by Shin Itagaki and later Eiichi Sato. The series was planned to be adapted as a remake that would have been targeted to children and sport fans. There has been no new information since then.

The story takes place in the world of "Earth Dash", an alternate, futuristic version of Earth where human society split between the far more advanced lunar society and that of the planet's surface. A popular sport is BFB (Big Foot Basketball), where players ride mecha called "Big Foot" and play basketball in a giant arena. In the city of Rolling Town, Dan JD and his companions take the sport to the streets, rename it "Basquash", and then embark on a journey to overcome their past hardships and make their dreams come true.

The main protagonist, Dan is a young boy who loves basketball but despises BFB due to an accident that crippled his sister. His attempts to demoralize the sport ended up making it more popular when he invaded an official BFB game and awed the crowd with a highly skilled demonstration under his alias, "Dunk Mask", on his own Big Foot which he named Dangan. As a result of the widespread destruction, he is imprisoned for a year and charged with a massive debt, numbering 5.3 billion Rollings (the local currency). This event, as well as Dan himself, has since then gained the status of a legend, and inspired the sport Big Foot Streetball. His dream is to make enough money to pay for his debts and send his sister to the moon to treat her paralyzed legs. He has developed a strong rivalry with Iceman, as an opponent and as an ally. Near the end of the OCB tournament Dan realizes Rouge's feelings for him, after she played against him without reinforcement medication, in an attempt to keep her play honest, which resulted in her losing consciousness in the middle of the game. As she left for the moon, he made a promise to eventually travel to the moon himself, asking her to wait for him, hinting that he may have developed feelings for her. Dan is able to throw a "thunderbolt ball", a basketball that shines with a 'radiant light that traced a shape of the heavens creation'. For this, he is believed to be the Legend, the one destined to save Earthdash and Mooneyes. At the end of the series, it is revealed that he is not the Legend; everyone who is a 'basquasher' (a term for Basquash players that he coined) is a part of the Legend. Using their combined skills and their own 'thunderbolt balls', the 'basquashers' reactivate the ultimate in Mooneyes, by throwing a 'final dunk', bumping Mooneyes back into orbit, effectively saving Earthdash and Mooneyes, as they were previously in a collision course with each other. In the aftermath, all that is seen of Dan is him about to play basketball with Iceman, affirming that he will continue to play, and that he has not lost any passion in basketball, and possibly Basquash, either.