Anime: Rising Impact 4w473d

Rock solid sport shounen. It has that little extra that the best shounen shows have, those special moving, heartwarming moments that make an anime memorable. While there are some weaker subplots, they do not waste much runtime. As for golf, it obviously has more of an over the top nature, but given its genre I think this is excusable as long as it stays entertaining. And for me it definitely did. Loveable characters, exciting matches, great soundtrack.

If you can look past the weaker aspects, it is a must see to all shounen fans, and strongly recommended to sport/golf fans. Also recommend it if you are in a bad mood. Rising Impact has strong positive vibes from beginning to end. Check it out.

[For S1 & S2] Such an unexpected traditional sport anime, wrapped in modern/fast-paced standard.

It's quite difficult to define this. I've watched almost every sport anime there is (2005+), but this managed to be very similar but fresh in a lot of ways. The MC is your typical energetic/positive one, but he's different. The rivals are cold and strong, but they are presented differently, too.

And even plot-wise, they are exciting, with usual shounen-like progression, but they managed to make it still unexpected in a lot of ways. The major weakness is that they might've peaked the MC too early that I can't even imagine they continue without doing some major power downgrade later (or making the power scaling basically out of control).

S2 is much better than S1, where the last competition being the best. A lot of the subplot might've been way too useless.