When you think about action-packed excitement in sports, golf isn’t the first sport that comes to mind. But thanks to the imagination of Nakaba Suzuki, audiences can be entertained while simultaneously educated in the new Netflix anime series Rising Impact.
Nakaba Suzuki is a Japanese manga artist known for series like Seven Deadly Sins and Four Knights of the Apocalypse. Another one of his projects, Rising Impact, has joined the anime lineup on Netflix.
Deep in the mountains of Fukushima, we find a young boy who lives with his grandfather. Gawain Nanaumi is a short, energetic little boy who loves helping his Grandpa Taizo and swinging anything he can get his hands on. His ultimate goal? To hit a ball (in this instance a baseball) the farthest distance in the world.
While walking through the forest, he runs into golf pro Kiria Nishino, who’s looking for the inn she reserved. She begrudgingly accepts Gawain’s assistance, and through their walk, a friendship is developed that would change his life forever.
He was just a young kid with a baseball bat who wanted to hit farther than his friends could imagine. His world was flipped upside down once Kiria introduced him to golf. After discovering he could hit a golf ball three times farther than a baseball, he decided right there, that he would become a pro golfer.
The 10-episode series focuses on hard work and friendship with the typical anime quirks. That term was meant to reflect superpowers in the hit series My Hero Academia (also on Netflix). Here, Suzuki and Co. had to focus their creativity on their character attributes about golf. So as opposed to controlling the weather or powering fire and ice (like MHA), golfers like Gawain boasted increased balance, vision, and strength, thanks to his daily routine living in the mountains of Fukushima.
Gawain will join a long list of adorable, tiny anime characters that are the focal point of a series and act as annoying children. Gawain is no different but boasts a natural gift for golf. With newfound friends and a new attitude, the young starlet works hard to make the most of his opportunity at the exclusive Camelot Academy (an elite school for golfers).
Rising Impact gets a 9 out of 10. The TV-14 rating is appropriate. Although it’s a cartoon, there is some coarse language used on occasion and a sprinkling of age-inappropriate comments from Gawain and another child. Outside of that, enemies become friends, children learn the value of hard work, and this really is a great tool if you want to know about golf. The deep dive the series takes into the rules of golf, the types of clubs used, and why those clubs are used is pretty phenomenal.
The full season of Rising Impact is available now on Netflix. Season 2 of Rising Impact will be available in August.
-Jon Jones
Photos: Courtesy of Netflix