It sneaks up on you. You come in braced for a moe gag reel and end up leaning forward during a fifth-grade half-court set, actually caring whether the pass gets there. Season 2 is where the basketball stops being a premise and becomes the point: real footwork, real screens, real coaching decisions from Subaru, who has to figure out how to teach kids who suddenly have rivals good enough to punish a lazy rotation. Tomoka's drive, Airi's shooting, Saki, Hinata and Maho each getting a piece of the game plan, and the animation finally keeps up with the choreography instead of cutting away from it. Yes, it's an ecchi-tagged show about elementary schoolers and that will be a hard wall for plenty of people, no argument, and it assumes you already sat through season 1. But if you did, this is the payoff: the fun-first sports anime that quietly knows the sport.

Subaru Hasegawa returns as coach of the Keishin Academy girls' basketball team for a second season of sports comedy with ecchi touches. Still stinging from their defeat by Suzuridani Academy, Tomoka, Maho, Airi, Hinata and Saki throw more time and energy into getting better every day. Fresh fifth-grade opponents who may outclass them soon show up, along with new friends, and the five girls have to pull together to grow both on the court and as people.