Review: Ballmastrz: 9009 “Onward, True Blue Friends Win Eternal; Paladin of the Heavens, Start Today!”

Overview(Spoilers Below):

The Leptons are now championships of the season, but before Gaz truly has a chance to celebrate her successes she’s forced into a difficult situation from her father. Gaz’s father threatens to tear apart the Leptons and reduce her friends to misery if she doesn’t return to the posh, affluent life that he represents. Gaz doesn’t want to turn her back on her friends, but her father blackmails her into leaving behind everything that she’s grown to love. Just when Gaz begins to accept a false life of malaise, an apocalyptic level event takes place that throws the world into chaos and the Leptons may be the only hope for the planet’s survival.

Our Take:

“Paladin of the Heavens, Start Today!” begins hot on the heels of the Leptons momentous championship victory at the end of the previous installment. There’s still some residual Ace and Gaz tension that’s present, but Ace quickly deflates it and Gaz even becomes inspired to better herself for the next season. It’s nice to see this issue get put to rest right away and the episode instead turning to Gaz’s loyalty to her team. Both Ballmastrz season finales deal with Gaz’s allegiances, but explore the topic in very different ways. Gaz has changed in significant ways, but she’s unfortunately pushed out of this happiness against her will.

Gaz is able to find a strange serenity within her life, but her father storms in and threatens her to return home to the family business or he’ll ruin the Leptons in the process. Ballmastrz has teased Gaz’s father earlier in the season, so this appearance isn’t entirely out of nowhere. Ed Asner plays this conniving man with a real devilish glee. The scenes where he and Natasha Lyonne are just going back and forth at each other are really incredible and a strange showcase of these talents within this weird show.

Gaz isn’t initially worried over her father’s threats, but he poses a very real danger when he announces that he actually owns the Leptons and can easily trade every member off to teams on the opposite ends of the universe if she doesn’t comply. As much as Gaz hates to concede to her father, she comes to terms with how she has to return to her old life that she hates so much, rather than destroy the joy that she’s been able to help foster within her teammates. This entire season has been about family in different capacities, so it’s only fitting that it returns to it in a very big way here. The first season finale of Ballmastrz may have solidified the Leptons’ as a team, but this entire season has looked at how being a family is something that needs to be worked at and can’t be taken for granted.

One of the most impressive things about this season finale is its grand scope and how much time it covers. The episode easily could have ended on the cliffhanger of Gaz leaving the Leptons (and that’s essentially how the first season finale does play out), but instead that’s only the halfway point here. “Paladin of the Heavens, Start Today!” doesn’t torture its audience and instead speeds ahead to half a year later to detail how much this new life has weathered down the resilient Gaz Digzy. In spite of how Gaz has submitted to her father, it’s immensely endearing to see how worked up she gets to simply watch her former teammates engage in battle. Her enthusiasm to watch her team apply the lessons that she’s taught them is so sweet and really demonstrates how far Gaz has come as a character.

It’s very touching to ultimately see Gaz consider the Leptons to be her real family over her biological roots, but it’s at this point that the finale takes an unbelievable left turn, shows off its true hand, and effectively sets up one hell of a third season. Aliens attack the Consortium and annihilate much of the planet’s population in the process. As everyone flies into panic mode, Crayzar reveals the grand master plan behind the Consortium and what the point of this sport really is. It turns out that this isn’t some kind of entertainment, but actually a covert training program that Crayzar has devised to find Earth’s best warriors in case of an invasion. This twist is exceedingly brilliant and there have actually been clever hints of this throughout the season (Crayzar offhandedly refers to Ace as a “soldier” in the previous episode, for instance).

What follows is honestly kind of startling as the Leptons reassemble as a spaceship crew, led by Crayzar, and head into intergalactic battle. It looks like season three of Ballmastrz: 9009 will basically be Space Battleship Yamato as the team prepares for all-out war in space. As ridiculous as this pivot is, it’s also crazy how naturally the show has built towards this point. This season has increasingly shifted more towards battle sequences than sports scenes and the idea of a show that’s even further away from its sports roots seems plausible at this point. “Paladin of the Heavens, Start Today!” largely becomes an episode that’s setting up what’s to come, but when that setup is so tantalizing that’s hardly a bad thing. If anyone was ever on the fence about checking out this series then that should be the new coat of paint needed to bring on fresh eyes.

The designs of the aliens that invade have a very different style than the typical enemies and they truly do feel extraterrestrial in their foreign obelisk-like appearances. There are some fun theatrics in play when the Leptons face a team that are based off of canned goods. There are plenty of solid jokes that get crammed into a short span before all hell breaks loose. It’s still impressive that in an episode that largely deals with emotional family issues is still able to showcase some gonzo animation and some brutal genocide sequences. It’s very appealing to think of what other rules this show can break when it leaves the limits of the Earth’s atmosphere and tackles cosmic Armageddon.

This season of Ballmastrz: 9009 was borderline perfect, but next year is already set to be so much better that a season three renewal needs to be announced immediately (it would have been incredible if it was actually announced at the end of the episode, like in the fashion of so many anime season finales). This finale has the perfect mix of emotion, action, and surprises and the new heights that it’s willing to push all of this is genuinely exciting in a way that the series has never been before. This show is really ready to go nuts and it deserves the chance to bring this unique brand of chaos to outer space.

Hang onto your balls, indeed.