The season is winding down, so we’re only really getting shorts. Since last Wednesday, all we’ve been given was a single ONA, Busou Chuugakusei: Basket Army. And well, because there’s only one series to talk about, I think I’ll go into depth a bit, 
since this has not only managed to hold my attention span, but it also made me want to see more, with only five minutes of story (well maybe less disregarding introductions to the characters) to pull me in with.
I won’t lie, the story looks pretty generic; middle schoolers sign up for a school to train them for combat, and they’re on the run to protect something. We see these stories quite a lot in the media, be it Japanese or American; personally, I like these types of stories, as long as they’re executed nicely. The fact that each episode is only five minutes might actually be beneficial to this series: with all the cliffhangers and what not that can be offered, you’ll keep coming back wanting to know more, and with only five minutes there isn’t much that can be shown in one episode. Of course there’s the possibility of slow development with that last point, but hopefully things will turn out nicely.
The music isn’t something big in this series, as expected for a short; the subtle background music was pretty nice, but it did feel a tad bit dramatic near the end of the episode. I wasn’t too fond of the closing theme either, but maybe it’ll grow on me. Next up, the characters! They seem decent, but we don’t know much about them yet (aside from what our main character says about them), so it’s too soon to say. There seems to be a large range of the characters in this series, and hopefully we can learn about each of them before they possibly get killed off (series that don’t give the stories of the supporting characters anger me, so if it does end like that I might just rage~). One final thing we can judge now is the artwork; it’s not anything special, it looks like a lot of other animes out there, but I do like how it is adjusted to fit the mood with some filters and darker colors. The animation runs smoothly, and is fairly consistent, so no complaints there.
At the moment there isn’t too much more to say about this series since only five minutes have been shown, but it has been adapted from a novel, so there’s that to look out for. However, I don’t believe it is out in English, so tough luck for us. All we can do is wait and see what journey we’re taken on.