Sorairo Utility – Episode 1

What’s it about? After the gacha game she’s devoted her life to ends service, Aoba Minami sets out to find a club that will give her that special protagonist feeling. Every single one turns out to be a dud, until Minami happens upon an arrestingly cool girl at a local golf club.

Something I really love about anime is the span of takes you can get on a single concept. In the past few years we’ve had no fewer than three girls-play-golf shows, all of them at least solid: Tonbo! is a straightforward shounen “climb to the top” story; Birdie Wing feels like you made Banana Fish and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure play Mario Golf together; and now Sorairo Utility has hit a line drive into the world of hobby anime. That, and I mean this with zero irony, is awesome. What a wonderful medium; it’s the kind of thing that makes sitting through this sort of shit feel worth it.

Minami is a refreshing tweak on the worn-thin gamer archetype. She thinks of things in terms of RPG mechanics, but the show is judicious in its use of fantasy spots, and Minami can carry on a conversation without constantly referring to NPCs and loot drops. She’s weird and one-track, but in a way that feels human—especially during her club montage, when she immediately gives up on every activity she isn’t immediately good at. My laughter was tinged with a cringing degree of recognition, I’ll tell you that for free. But even if you don’t suffer a bad case of Gifted Kid Syndrome, it’s easy to understand Minami’s plight. Fiction, especially young adult fiction, places so much emphasis on that magic moment of clarity where you know this is Your Thing, and real life so rarely works out that neatly.

Of course, Minami does get her magic epiphany, after a fashion, in the episode’s second most relatable moment: she takes up an activity because a cool, pretty girl said she should. There is no heterosexual explanation for this, though if I had to bet money I’d say this will stay firmly in the realm of “soft yuri”: eminently shippable, emotionally intense, and neither confirmed nor denied by the text. Do It Yourself! vibes, if I had to wager based on experience. Which is fine with me if everyone’s cards are on the table. What matters most here is that Minami and Haruka (that’s Pretty Girl) have good chemistry, and I knew immediately that I wanted to come back and watch them interact more.

As a bonus, the show looks mighty nice. Director Saito Kengo (who also provided the character designs) and series composer Sato Yu are both Studio TRIGGER alumni, and you can feel that studio’s trademark dynamism in the visuals. It’s not a frenetic show, but there is a joyous little bounce to its comedic timing, a pleasant squish to the characters that feels goofy and warm and full of life. Moreover, while the overall aesthetic is cute, it has a sense of weight to its sport scenes. Caitlin put it well as we discussed the episode: when Minami finally hits the ball, she doesn’t just look triumphant—she looks powerful and downright cool.

There are a lot of neat touches like that. The framing of golf itself here is about the many ways to approach it and appreciate it, rather than a singular path to Being the Best. In case you were worried about Minami admiring the cute minidress outfits? There’s a quick moment to emphasize that the girls wear shorts under their skirts. And in addition to Sato, the first episode also has a script credit for Satsuki Aya, the series composer of fellow quality girls’ sports series Ippon Again!. I have no idea how much she’ll be involved with the show going forward, but it made for an excellent starting foot forward. Despite my total lack of interest in golf, this is an insta-lock for my winter watchlist.