For those like me wondering what soft tennis is, it’s apparently the same as regular tennis except it’s played with a soft rubber ball and is popular in East Asia. The show Softenni follows one school’s soft tennis team and their path to the championship (well… maybe not). This being from Xebec, I was pleasantly surprised by the (relatively) toned-down fanservice. Most of it occurs in Asuna’s (pink haired girl’s) fantasies and actually serves to parody the usual harem tropes which are thankfully avoided.

The style is reminiscent of Shaft, with interesting shifts in camera angle and random jokes such as a girl wearing costumes to practice, cows eating tennis balls, and girls hunting human-sized endangered salamanders for lunch. In general it’s a major improvement as far as Xebec is concerned, and I’m looking forward to see where they’ll go with it. Not planning to blog it though since everything comes out on Thursday and I’d rather do noitaminA.