This series potentially had all the trademarks of a masterpiece: relatable and truly inspiring main character who just doesn't give a crap and is so deeply devoted to her cause that she's going to do anything in order to realize her goal including beating the ass of men who don't find her worthy of being their opponent because of sexism, good and catchy OST, excellent technical part and in particular painting-alike backgrounds that put to shame more modern CGI barf, classic shoujo elements that are loveable (in particular the tendency of people from all genders to cry like a river, I love it. Crying shamers can go to hell until the end of the time) and engaging (except a couple of suicide innuendos I would have gladly avoided), first half that is a 10/10 with no questions attached, and then...then the rest of the series happens, and the writing passes from good to acceptable (in particular, Kozue is presented with a bit of Mary Suish elements again I would have gladly avoided if possible) to just atrocious in all possible manners, with repeated Volleyball matches that are boring to watch and, as the icing on the cake, hamfisted sci-fi crap that has no reason to be in a SERIES ABOUT VOLLEYBALL and it reeks of your bog-standard mecha affair (Golion King of Beasts and Voltes V I'm looking at you) with the introduction of robot clones of the main protagonist and her team that resound like a complete void of ideas from the production team of this anime (this thing is far more bloody and violent than what American comics from the same era used us Silver Age fans to, so I can't excuse the same here). The question is: why? What's the reason of stretching a series to 100+ episodes if you can't keep a constant level of at least serviceable writing like it happened with other 100+ episodes series (Mahou Tsukai Sally and Saint Seiya, for example)? Why they couldn't give the viewer a rematch between Kozue and her team and the soviets BEFORE the 104 episodes landmark? I don't get it. Really disappointing, I must say. I still give a 7 out of 10 just because of the main protagonist, the magnificent first half (the real highlight of the whole series IMHO) and because in the second part there's still some entertaining bits worth of watching (I stopped watching it at episode 76 anyway), but they should have stopped this thing when they had to without overdoing it.
