Baby Steps is a great sports manga. That is, if you're only in it for the sports, and not for say, likable characters or drama between them.

Most sports mangas barely even focus on the actual sport, and crank the action up to eleven when they do. It's not about the accuracy of the sport, but it's about the drama of the player, and how their sad little emo back story gives them the will to go through and reach the top.

None of that is in Baby Steps. No drama, thank god. Of course, the drama is what makes a lot of people like sports mangas period, so these people will probably, almost certainly, not like Baby Steps.

I wouldn't compare Baby Steps to Prince of Tennis. POT is one of those 'drama' sports, which cranks up the tennis to eleven, and the further it goes, the more unrealistic it becomes. The story could have picked out any sport and it would still have been the same. Not true for Baby Steps. It's very calculating, smart, and most importantly real. It's about tennis.

The main character is not your typical idiot hero, nor the genius prodigy who excels in everything he touches. No, Ei-chan is someone who's so devoid of any talent, that he's only good at being average or 'good' at whatever he does, but he's not the best or a genius, or excels at something in particular. No, that takes actual effort and training.

No curb stomp battles here, tennis is real and the main character loses quite a bit of matches. Of course he does, he only started playing tennis for a few months, despite his ability to be good all-around (but not anything specific), he still loses quite a bit because he doesn't have anything he's really good at. This is frequently mentioned in the manga, where he's an alright tennis player, he doesn't have any definitive moves, or finishing moves.

About his personality, well he's like an obsessed data miner, and writes everything down in his notebooks. He has big eyes that are always wide open in shock, surprise, or simply from amazement. There's not much to the guy. Really, there isn't.

Any other character doesn't get enough screen time to show their personality, or backgrounds or whatever, just long enough to introduce them to the reader as they have another tennis battle.

Oh, despite what it says as a romantic subplot, that's like saying Naruto has a romantic subplot. I don't even know why they bother with it, because it's so casually mentioned in like a page or two, you wonder if it has any point to it at all.

So yeah, Baby Steps is about tennis. Not about the drama, not about overcoming the battle despite all odds, or about interesting characters, but just tennis.

I personally like it.

This manga is great. It has alot of realism, which I didn't expect to enjoy. Romance in this manga is slow, but it is there. Don't expect much to happen between volumes though since the main focus is the tennis, and Maruo's route to becoming a pro.

Art
The art is very good. At first I couldn't help but keep staring at Maruo's hair everytime it had his face in it. All I could think of is "why a rooster??" But after you get over that (or maybe it's just me) The art in the matches really gives you a sense of the speed and power of the shots or player's movements, or the speedcut for a drop shot.

Characters.
There are some great characters, with a variety of playing styles that Maruo goes up against. [From d3m0naras] "Every time he encounters a new tennis character, he'll lose. After training alot, he tries it again and wins by "luck" "
I disagree with this comment. Maruo comes across a new player with a different playing style. Ofcourse he's not going to always win the first time. You need to gather some information on the other person's playing style, and learn to read the moves. Maruo trains to come up with countermeasures (As would any tennis player in real life) and then applies them to his matches. That is Maruo growing as a player, not him being "lucky". But aswell as bringing in new characters, we get to look into their lives a little, and find out how important the match/tournament is for them, and their career aswell.

Story:
The story is amazingly engrossing, though this may differ from person to person. If you enjoy some realism, the character over coming obstacles (whether they be other players, or his own physique), comedy, a story where the matches will soak you in to the point that you may end up on the verge of yelling "cmon!!" when the Maruo makes a break at a crucial point, or just enjoy tennis. Then this is the manga for you. And if you don't like tennis, then give this manga a shot, since it may just get you into it like it did me.

Looooong story short. This is a GREAT manga. Just because it wasn't to the taste of a few others, doesn't mean you won't like it. So give it a read for a few chapters atleast.


Update:

As of chapter ~200 it seems the mangaka is developing the romance side of things a little further. Tbh I thought the slow development in this area would be something I would mark the manga down for, but the tennis action and story is good enough to have made me not care for that as much.

Art, Story, and Characters are all still well done. There are some long arcs (arcs may take the form of a tournament or in some cases a match) but they are deeply engrossing enough to prevent you being bored (for most of the arc at least). All else from the previous review still holds true.

... Last updated on May 19th, 2014, 3:29pm

This is realistic sports manga at its finest.

If you're looking for exciting, shounen-esque competitions with the protagonists making ridiculously impossible moves that have cool sounding names, Baby Steps is probably not for you. I personally find the matches pretty intense and interesting, but it's definitely not at the level of Prince of Tennis (I don't think anything is quite at that level, actually, thank goodness) or other sports manga in its tradition. So, yeah, Baby Steps is not for you if you're looking for that kind of action.

Otherwise, it's a really, really good sports manga, emphasis on the sports. I'm constantly amazed at the creativity in which the mangaka constructs matches all the while remaining realistic and down-to-earth. It just goes to show that you can still make interesting characters and movesets while keeping some semblance of realism! It's obvious the mangaka really likes tennis and likes writing the matches because the main ones are always a lot of fun!

And one of the really good things about Baby Steps too is that it doesn't waste any time with unnecessary scenes. There are times during a match in which the mangaka will skip ahead a few sets because nothing really happens, and while this might be disarming for some, I personally liked it because it kept up the interesting pace and the realism all without becoming too boring or bogged down. Also, I really like how she describes Ei-chan's training but shows only the select, relevant parts of it. I've always disliked training arcs in sports manga, so I really appreciate Baby Steps' care in making them relevant but not altogether the focus.

The characters themselves are, like everything else, really realistic. But since this is a sports manga first and a character-driven manga second, the protagonist Ei-chan develops really slowly, though he does become really fleshed-out and likable. The side characters also get some slight development/cursory background story, but, while they are well-rounded characters, you don't really see that deep into their histories. There's definitely no cast full of superpowered humans with deep internal angst over tennis, nosiree. Most of the players just genuinely love the sport and want to win because they love it. That's it. And I really appreciate that.

Also, the slice-of-life moments have been really heartwarmingly adorable recently.

So overall this is definitely a really solid, realistic manga that really doesn't have any major, glaring faults that I can see. Of course, it caters to a specific demographic, so not everyone will like it, but it's definitely a well-written piece of work, without a doubt.

... Last updated on October 30th, 2013, 1:20am

I honestly don’t really like sports manga. A lot of them that are super popular (Kuruko’s Basketball, Haikyuu, The Prince of Tennis) just don’t intrigue me. Baby Stepssubverts all of that, making it one of the best sports manga I ever took the time to read.


Good - Great protagonist: Baby Steps follows Eiichiro Maruo, nicknamed Ei-chan because he gets all “A’s” in school due to his ridiculously meticulous nature. A chance encounter with Natsu Takasaki, a girl who is aiming to become a tennis pro, coupled with a desire to engage in physical activity leads Ei-chan to join STC as an amateur tennis player, often playing against grade schoolers. Over time, Eiichiro realizes his meticulous note-taking and powerful vision to his advantage. A growing love of the sport fuels him to practice hard and aim to become a pro.

While all sports manga necessitate that the protagonists have some talent, Baby Steps ensures that Eiichiro’s talents are far from godly; Eiichiro must work hard day in and day out in order to succeed. As a character, he falls into more of the Ippo category, but while he is shy, Eiichiro is not timid or that self-deprecating; he’s a polite young man who wants to win with his own ability. Eiichiro’s hard work and realistic, relatable attitude allow him to carry the manga by himself.


Good - Avoiding the trap: The common trap of a shounen manga is what I call the “power level” trap. When an antagonist of an arc is defeated, how do you top that? You introduce a villain with a higher power level (or a set of villains with a higher aggregate power level). This always ends up deflating any tension in a previous arc: how can the main characters have the same amount of trouble against both villains if one is stronger? More importantly, how can the main characters beat the villain? With a super new technique. This repetitive cycle of shounen manga decrees the final antagonist be Gods, and that can occur in many sports manga. Baby Steps avoids this because it develops Eiichiro within the sense of reason. Yes, Eiichiro gets stronger, sometimes during a match, but that’s because we see how hard he works. He never pulls something out of his ass like “Misdirection Overflow” that doesn't even exist in tennis, always improving in a realistic fashion.


Good - Sense of tension: Have you ever seen a tennis match on TV? Have you ever played a tennis match? Any sport definitely feels different for the spectators than for the players, and tennis is one of the sports that has a huge difference. Shounen manga tend to slow down the action in order to feel the tension, and Baby Steps is no exception. However, over the course of its entire 200+ chapters that I have read, Baby Steps never loses that feeling in any of its matches. It is capable of keeping the tension at a realistic level throughout the entire series.


Good - About men but not manly: Many sports manga have to ignore the female side, and depending on the sport and style of the manga, it can often drip with glistening testosterone. Baby Steps pretty much only follows the matches of guys. These high school guys don’t have low hanging balls like other sports manga characters do, making it more accessible for people who can’t take the sheer manly musk of some sports manga.


Good - Not afraid to make its hero lose: Not really spoilers; Eiichiro does not win all the time. He’s no loser, but it’s not completely uncommon. Sometimes he is crushed; other times it’s a fluke; and other times it’s because his opponent is that good. Losing is a part of life, and Eiichiro is no stranger to it. Unlike Ash Ketchum, however, Eiichiro is amazing about learning from his mistakes, and whenever he surfaces at a new tournament, all of his previous opponents note how much time he spent to provoke insane growth.

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Mixed - All tennis, all the time: Baby Steps excels in not succumbing to the problems of other sports manga. One of the huge problems that can occur with a sports manga that has its characters in school is that it makes the sport a school sport, intertwining the two. This leads to a multitude of cliché school life drama or slice of life scenarios to pad the time in between matches, as well as giving a bunch of side characters too much screentime. This often adds unnecessary weight to a sports manga, making you wait with begrudging anticipation for the next match. Baby Steps avoids this by making the tennis tied to professional tennis clubs as well as the pro scene, ignoring any school life tainting of the sports formula. But at what cost?

Baby Steps goes to an extreme to solve the problem I just laid out: it’s always tennis. If Eiichiro’s not playing tennis, he’s training for tennis, or talking about tennis, or thinking about tennis, or taking notes about tennis. This manga is probably written with the blood, sweat, and tears of actual tennis players. Having the sport is good, and I’m more invested in the manga because of it, but what about the characters? Apart from Eiichiro, I’m barely invested in anyone, because I know comparatively little about them.

It makes sense for me to know less about certain characters, like many of Eiichiro’s opponents; I know them through the “in-match flashback,” and that’s often enough; giving the characters some dramatic backstory would put a damper on any realism they have. They love tennis, and the manga brings out their personality through their playstyle and monologues. It’s not perfect, but it’s serviceable.

The one important character who doesn’t receive this treatment (and definitely should) is Natsu, the female protagonist and Eiichiro’s love interest. Natsu’s a very cheery girl who plays an instinctive tennis, opposite of Eiichiro’s, and she aspires to be a pro. That’s pretty much it. Natsu is super likeable and doesn’t fall into any typical tropes for a heroine, which makes this hard to notice, but we know so little about Natsu, except how Eiichiro likes her.

The best way the manga could fix this is to give focus to matches that Eiichiro is not playing, but rather follow the matches of other characters and get inside their heads as they go against each other. Unfortunately, that’s also a way to kill the manga; focusing too much on the side characters can devolve into a Bleach situation, where we barely see the main heroes but always see 300+ minor characters’ battles. It’s great that Baby Steps avoids this pitfall, but can’t we see some more Natsu?


Mixed - Passage of Time: For the most part, Baby Steps takes place during the times when tennis is played. That’s part of the reason why it’s all tennis all the time: it doesn’t really try to give a plot during the times when tennis isn’t played. So, through a montage (yes, training montages), the manga skips the drivel and goes straight to the next tennis season. But is absolutely nothing important? It often follows the trend that Ei-chan loses, there are a couple chapters about his tennis, and then it’s the next tournament or next year or something. You sometimes see what the characters are up to during short side chapters. Baby Steps could put in some padding to make the passage of time seem so much less abrupt, and develop its characters! It skips the vast majority of filler and makes you like the characters more!

The other time when "fast forward" is implemented is during a tennis match. Tennis is a long sport, after all. Do we want to see Eiichiro own worse tennis players? Not particularly. We’ll see some frames and then the score. That’s fine. Do we want to see every single return? No, of course not; each arc would be the length of a One Piece arc if we did that. So fast-forwarding is done to prevent us from getting really bored. Unfortunately, it is typically handled in the least graceful way possible; through a bunch of omniscient text boxes. Used sparingly, this is acceptable. In Baby Steps, it utilized to the point that over an entire set of a match can be *explained* that way. It’s far from awful, but manga should take advantage of the fact that it can simply show with characters and facial expressions and not always have to tell. More annoying is how Baby Steps sometimes wraps up a tense tennis match with a text box explanation, instead of us seeing the characters react and think as the Match Point is playing out. In the interest of expedience, it detracts from us connecting more with the match and the characters at crucial times.
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Baby Steps is a phenomenal sports manga. It’s always engaging and keeps you on the edge of your seat since anything can happen. If you need a sports manga to read, you really can’t go wrong with Baby Steps, especially if you love tennis.

Story: 9
Art: 8
Character: 7
Enjoyment: 9
Overall: 8.3
This review was originally posted on MAL.

It's all about tennis world, like a guidebook from amateur to pro tennis player.
1000% more realistic than POT, it have some good jokes, especially when the ei-chan makes weird faces.. lol, it also have a little bit romance in some chapter, good enough for refreshing..
Overall, a must read sport manga..

I thoroughly enjoy this manga! It's one that I'd love to buy just to have it if I could get it here in the States. I like reading it so much that I go back and forth (much easier if it's on paper) between the pages and read them again and again. This is a very well written manga.

Responding to the main character being "weak", as one reader wrote:
I read the comment that one reader wrote that he/she thinks the male protagonist is 'weak'. I completely disagree. Just because someone takes notes and follows those notes does not make them weak. This is the same character that immediately started physical training so as NOT to be weak in the game, so I have to disagree with you. Look up V.A.R.K. Some people learn by seeing something (Visual). Some by hearing (Aural). Some by reading &/or writing the information (Reading/writing). And others by hands-on (Kinesthetic). Most people are able use all of them to some degree but most lean to one or two preferred styles - because that's the way we're made. It's how our minds are wired to learn and process information and everyone's brain is wired differently. It has nothing to do with weakness. Ei-chan (Maruo) would be a Visual and Reading/writing learner. He learns by seeing and by reading/writing. And he internally processes the information learned. It's why he does well in school. A Kinesthetic learner would have to do what that other reader suggests because he would have to externally, physically, 'do' the plan first to visualize it and learn it because that's how he learns and processes information - externally. Have you ever met someone who's great at sports and terrible in class? That person is probably not lacking in ability to learn nor in intelligence. He/she is probably just a Kinesthetic learner and unless they receive help, Kinesthetic learners frequently struggle in school regardless of their level of intelligence. So the next time you encounter someone whose learning style is different from your own, remember that a particular learning style doesn't have anything to do with either intelligence or strength.

... Last updated on May 9th, 2011, 9:28pm

Starts a little bit slow but once it gets into tennis, it shines. I like how you can basically see all the inner thoughts of the protagonist during a match as he tries to come up with legit strategies and counter-strategies. The character development has been good and am looking forward to reading more. Gratitude for all those scans!

The title of this manga is pathetic. But it's absolutely nerve wrecking. I read it in only two days. It's completely awesome. If you think "oh it's sport manga - not interested" you should really reconsider. I never had interest in tennis and I encountered this manga just because I wanted something to fill the void of my free time. This is a manga that absolutely sucks you in and doesn't let go until you reach the final chapter and then notice it's still ongoing .... Please for the love of god - if you are looking for romance or sport manga this IS the manga for you.

Character: 10 - I love it. I absolutely love it. The guy is not badass (which my favourite type of guy) but is extremely hard working and I envy him for that. To see his progression you actually start to reflect your life and say "oh my god ... I didn't even try my best at things I thought I was". The girl however doesn't have much character progression but the story is about the guy not the girl. The girl however has a lot of influence on the guy and has more balls than he does.

Story: 10 - You've got to be kidding. This IS the manga for the story. Absolutely nerve wrecking, tension never lets go, author is not afraid to make the guy lose (which in turn makes his character progression absolutely amazing).

Art: 9 - I love it. No comment here - easy to read.

Enjoyment: 10 - I was sucked in .... until I reached the end of translated manga. READ IT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD (and I am an atheist).

Overall: 9 - Why isn't it 10? Because there is ALWAYS a room for improvement. Really can't recommend this manga more than I already do. Forget the title. Read it for the sake of reading it.

It's really a good series, especially if your into spots manga, this one is very realistic in what they do, the Main character's personality is very enjoyable and its just an awesome read! Its my favorite spots manga, that's for sure! X3

I got thrown off by some of the bad reviews from the start, but this is a manga that has none of the superfluous BS from POT.

The main character has quite a bit of charisma once you get to know his nature of working hard towards his goals. Not many people dislike others who work hard and doesn't brag about it. In regards to Liquidsin comment, I read up to volume 14 so I will like to point out some things.

- Ei works hard and manages to get a reasonable body that lasts just enough for 1 full tennis match. He even lost a long match due to lack of stamina.
- He has a great personality. He told his parents he wanted to stop studying for cram schools for a full year to concentrate on Tennis alone. How many 16-17 year old teens you know will do such a thing?
- He does gather data outside of the matches, but more than anything he does it in game against a strong opponent to reflect upon his mistakes and come up with a strategy for lack of experience.

Reading until this far, I felt that the pace is slightly slow and think that the rivalry section isn't right there yet. Looks like it will be really baby steps for a pretty long while.

Edit: Read up to volume 19 (with some really shoddy japanese knowledge). This manga is really quite awesome and makes you sort of cheer for the main guy. Can't wait to see more. Ahh, but it best be reading 10 volumes in 1 shot. This manga is slow...

... Last updated on December 16th, 2011, 9:23am