It's All About Endurance
Apr. 18th, 2013 01:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
branchandrootYou know what I'm liking about this arc of Kuroko no Basuke? The emphasis on how much difference physical endurance makes. The MiraGen have amazing skills right from the get-go, but they're still twelve/thirteen years old and just plain aren't physically developed enough to play through two games in a day. So, one, I like the realism of that.
What I like even more, though, is the perspective this gives to Kuroko's "weakness". Akashi says flat out that Kuroko's skills and reactions are good; it's his endurance that's seriously sub-par, below that of even his age-mates.
Kuroko's endurance is improving, though. We've had this marked really viscerally twice already: at the start of his third-string training, that level is enough to have him throwing up. (Brief aside: that's usually what happens when you over-do an aerobic activity, not a purely muscular activity, and actually it can happen really fast.) He keeps working and improves his endurance, though, and by the time of his test he can keep up with third-string, and implicitly with second-string, just fine. When he moves to first, though, he's throwing up again. We know, though, that he gets past that eventually, so first-string isn't his ultimate limit either.
Now, by the start of canon year, he can only sustain the concentration required for misdirection on top of the physical effort required to keep up with the MiraGen for about fourteen minutes. (Anyone else think about what that fourteen minute figure means? What it means that both Kuroko and Kise know it so well and assume it's a hard limit? It can only have been the limit of Kuroko's endurance in combination with the MiraGen's level of play, and neither of them seem to make that connection. The MiraGen have become Kuroko's measure for standard play, the level he assumes in the back of his head that everyone will have, the measure that he has to meet and surpass to be satisfied. Kuroko never accepts his limitations, or anyone else's, as a weakness, which is both a blind spot for him and kind of awe-inspiring.) At any rate, we know that he's still having trouble with endurance at the start of canon year, still having to build it slowly, far more slowly than most of the other players, including the ones with considerably less actual skill.
And yet...
And yet, what the current arc really emphasizes, when you think about it, is that Kuroko has been building it. He can play for longer, now, than he could at the start of the year. He's still moving forward.
Kuroko has not yet hit the wall in his development as a player. (Possibly because his response to what most people would consider the wall is to start climbing.) This arc is showing us his rate of progress, and by that measure we can see pretty clearly: Kuroko is still getting stronger.
What I like even more, though, is the perspective this gives to Kuroko's "weakness". Akashi says flat out that Kuroko's skills and reactions are good; it's his endurance that's seriously sub-par, below that of even his age-mates.
Kuroko's endurance is improving, though. We've had this marked really viscerally twice already: at the start of his third-string training, that level is enough to have him throwing up. (Brief aside: that's usually what happens when you over-do an aerobic activity, not a purely muscular activity, and actually it can happen really fast.) He keeps working and improves his endurance, though, and by the time of his test he can keep up with third-string, and implicitly with second-string, just fine. When he moves to first, though, he's throwing up again. We know, though, that he gets past that eventually, so first-string isn't his ultimate limit either.
Now, by the start of canon year, he can only sustain the concentration required for misdirection on top of the physical effort required to keep up with the MiraGen for about fourteen minutes. (Anyone else think about what that fourteen minute figure means? What it means that both Kuroko and Kise know it so well and assume it's a hard limit? It can only have been the limit of Kuroko's endurance in combination with the MiraGen's level of play, and neither of them seem to make that connection. The MiraGen have become Kuroko's measure for standard play, the level he assumes in the back of his head that everyone will have, the measure that he has to meet and surpass to be satisfied. Kuroko never accepts his limitations, or anyone else's, as a weakness, which is both a blind spot for him and kind of awe-inspiring.) At any rate, we know that he's still having trouble with endurance at the start of canon year, still having to build it slowly, far more slowly than most of the other players, including the ones with considerably less actual skill.
And yet...
And yet, what the current arc really emphasizes, when you think about it, is that Kuroko has been building it. He can play for longer, now, than he could at the start of the year. He's still moving forward.
Kuroko has not yet hit the wall in his development as a player. (Possibly because his response to what most people would consider the wall is to start climbing.) This arc is showing us his rate of progress, and by that measure we can see pretty clearly: Kuroko is still getting stronger.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-20 12:36 am (UTC)I was wondering where you got the number 14 minutes from? I'm just wondering if I'm missing something, as I can only recall them being very vague with the period of time, only that it couldn't last for most of a match and it would end sooner if Kuroko was pushing himself.
(This arc is so much fun - I've been looking forward to seeing this part of the story for /ages/. XD)
no subject
Date: 2013-04-20 12:40 am (UTC)In that first practice match with Kaijou, they both mention 14 minutes as his limit. It's never /mentioned/ again, but if you watch the times, Kuroko has been playing, and keeping up the concentration for misdirection, longer and longer.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-20 12:13 pm (UTC)He just isn't naturally that good at sports. So his spirit, his determination if you will doesn't only have to be strong, it has to have the type of endurance to still believe even when it is hard. And in so many ways the GoM, and especially Aomine had to be taught that, I think.
But man, this arc is just so very interesting on a character level for me, because in some ways we were led to believe that the kuroko we meet at the start of the series is the way he just is that he just is the type of person to be non-committal and dead pan. And this arc just shows us that no, he is such a passionate expressive person who changed himself to reach the goals he wanted and thought that he had to. I'm never sure if Teikou (at the start) was good for him or not.
On the one hand they showed him that he could be good at the one sport he loved the most, that he is special and that his love for it made him have a place in it. On the other they contributed so much to him thinking that he can't show emotions that he needs to be analytical and detached in a way, even though, I think his temper is probably the worst (and I have been rereading a few arcs and you don't know how much I just love that scene where Aomine tells that one guy that they will lose because he pissed Kuroko off^^)
no subject
Date: 2013-04-20 02:06 pm (UTC)This. Because they're having to work at it, now they're in competition, but it isn't /hard/ for them. Certainly not the way it is for Kuroko. And I think we should take it as an indication of /Akashi's/ limitations, at this age, that he thinks Kuroko hasn't gotten any results. Akashi, like the rest of them, only really identifies results as something sudden, noticeable, flashy. So of course it's only the misdirection and disappearing that get their attention, that /they/ think are results. But that's not really Kuroko's "natural" way; he just keeps working step by small step.
And, of course, it's that boundless determination that lets him turn himself cold on the outside, but it's /powered/ by all the passion in the world. (And Kuroko, that way, is the absolute epitome of how Himuro says a person should play, but he's opening up a little for Kagami, to be Kagami's partner. I saw what you did there, Fujimaki.) I love Kuroko's temper, I absolutely love it.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-20 06:19 pm (UTC)The question though is, what with Akashi's relentless opinion on "victory" if he would see that now?
Though if you take "endurance" as the thing that defines Kuroko the most (even if he himself might not think so) Seirin really is the perfect choice and not Teikou (I see what you did there Fujisaki). Because as much as he may have thought that "winning" defined him at that point the Seirin team showed him that endurance and determination is what he actually values because its such an integral part of his own experience that the GoM couldn't understand the same way that Hyuga for example might.
I love that we see Kuroko in some way going back to a more open person because of Kagami. It makes sense, because his partners are this important to him and at a point where he was still experimenting with himself and his style Aomine started pulling away and into himself (even though that only happened in the second year, I think?)
While Kagami is such an outward person. Though I still love that part of "learning" or "getting to know" Kuroko is that just because he doesn't show it doesn't mean he doesn't have a lot of passion inside (I recently re-read "moment to arise" and that scene where Kagami and Aomine talk about Kuroko being so passionate may just be my favourite), while he also shows him that its ok to show it some time.
I think in a way Kuroko had convinced himself that he shouldn't have a passion for the game himself and Kagami with his relentless belief in the fact that of course Kuroko would try to be better of course he'd evolve his game to a point where he could actively contribute and not only be a shadow gave him the permission to feel his love for the first time in years and not only know it is there.