Sometimes, when I put on an older anime for the first time, I find myself approaching it primarily as I would a historical document. What animation techniques are utilized, and how does that compare and contrast to what animators today use? Are there any significant staff members who shaped anime into the medium as we know it? How have the genre conventions echoed and evolved through the decades? I can't be the only one who thinks this way, right?

If you're going to do a reading from this perspective, Aim for the Ace! is a great starting point. Fifty years after it first aired, this 1973 television anime has been released in English for the first time with a sumptuous high-definition restoration courtesy of Discotek. Shojo sports anime with majority-female casts have been practically nonexistent for a long time, but it's fascinating to see the similarities and differences in the structures here and modern series like Haikyuu!! and Chihayafuru. Osamu Dezaki directed it, one of the most influential anime directors of all time, the man who invented the “postcard shot” as a way to both save budget and emphasize key dramatic moments. And if all that weren't enough, Gunbuster, titled Aim for the Top! in Japanese (which will also be getting its own first-ever official English release in a couple of months!) is a play on it, with its story and characters in direct conversation with Aim for the Ace!'s own.

Yes, Aim for the Ace! is a fantastic time capsule of the anime of the 1970s and a great origin point for tracing 50 years of anime history. And yet, to examine it solely through a historian's lens would be a great disservice because, as it turns out, it's a great story on its own merits that holds up well to modern storytelling conventions.

At the start of the series, the protagonist, Hiromi, is very much an ordinary girl. She has no grand ambitions toward greatness. She looks up to the team's top player, Reika “Madame Butterfly” Ryugazaki, but mostly she wants to play tennis, hang out with her best friend Maki, and have a good time. Those humble plans end up thwarted when the team's new coach Munakata marks her potential and chooses her for the competitive team, displacing more skilled second-years who are, naturally, none too pleased about this turn of events. Hiromi isn't particularly happy about it either and tries to fight against the placement.

It's a classic sports anime setup because… well… it's a classic sports anime, and if there's anything you've seen before, it's probably because this one influenced them. Hiromi is an engaging protagonist, likable and easy to root for as she grows throughout the series. She moves smoothly through her character arc, from a child looking to enjoy her girlhood to a serious and devoted athlete. At the beginning of the story, she's mostly interested in hanging out with her best friend Maki, and she resents Coach Munakata for what he's putting her through. Her bedroom is where she can decompress and express her feelings in private, but as the episodes wear on, she spends less time weeping on her bed and more time practicing alone and alongside her peers. Her growth is natural and subtle, without calling attention to itself until you realize you haven't seen her lying in her bedroom alone for several episodes. I wish she'd stop taking out her feelings on her kitten Goemon. It's a weird slapstick bit in an otherwise grounded series.

Sure, the emotions are a bit heightened and melodramatic, but it's within the realm of what's believable for high school, a time when whether or not you make the team can feel like the end of the world. This isn't Dear Brother (another Dezaki shojo drama that I highly recommend getting your hands on), where something truly wild seems to happen every episode; here, the most over-the-top things get is Hiromi contemplating taking a pair of scissors to her racket, or characters choosing to play through potentially career-ruining injuries. Dezaki's signature directorial style certainly exaggerates the highs and lows the characters go through, but it works primarily to create a sense of emotional stakes that feel worth getting invested in.

Perhaps Aim for the Ace!'s greatest strength lies in its pacing. Rather than being divided into discrete arcs, like most shonen-based sports series nowadays, each plot point flows smoothly into the next. Friendships, alliances, and rivalries shift around as Hiromi faces one trial after another, but in ways that feel very fluid and naturalistic. It contributes to the grounded feeling that permeates throughout the story, keeping the melodrama from ever becoming overwhelming, even in moments when Hiromi is weeping against her bed.

The show's greatest weakness is, by far, the animation. I do not begrudge it – in 1973, anime as we know it was a fairly young art form. Budgets were low, and shortcuts were frequent. Still, don't come to Aim for the Ace! expecting heart-stopping tennis action. A handful of well-animated cuts, particularly of serves, get reused several times throughout the show's run, often multiple times within the same episode. Don't come to the show expecting a highly technical representation of the sport or even to watch it to see some cool animated tennis. This is all about the human drama, and while I wouldn't call the tennis “set dressing,” it's all processed through the lens of how it affects the characters and their relationships.

Some viewers may also be put off by some of the characters' attitudes and expectations. I'm unsure if “rest” is in Hiromi's vocabulary, and she and her teammates frequently risk serious career injuries for the sake of a high school team. Munakata asks Hiromi to make sacrifices in her personal life that no modern high school coach would dream of… or maybe they would. I was like the least athletic person in the world at my high school. Regardless of realism, some may struggle with the sense that Hiromi is giving too much of herself to tennis, leading to a level of obsession that isn't healthy.

Aim for the Ace! is an excellent show with much to offer modern audiences, not just as the predecessor to a popular modern genre but as a strong story in its own right. Older series can be a hard sell, but if you're on the fence, go for it.