You see the thing about this all is that this series is basically a coming-of-age story.
We saw this with Konatsu. She was going to graduate and could not sing in the choir, but she wasn't allowed to. She wanted to experience the stage once last time before she grew up so she made the club. She did not want to spend the rest of her days regretting her inactivity so she pushed forward with this crazy idea. She wrestled with the question of how far she wanted to go with singing, and in the very ending episode it looked like she might even continue on with it in college.
Wakana is pretty self-explanatory I would hope.
Sawa dealt with the nature of chasing a dream she might not even be physically able to do. Eventually she decided that she wanted to give it her all and decided to move away to a jockey school in America.
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So what about the guys?
Did Taichi have any serious issues he wrestled with? He was a badminton freak at the start, never had any serious doubts about his goals (One episode where he was shown losing a match and they brushed over it quickly), and he continued on with what he's always been doing to the end. I guess he had a crush, which ended in ambiguous terms, but again this is never really delved into. His character felt extremely shafted to me, even though he seemed like a good character to explore.
And Wien? The totality of his development surrounds trying to be a superhero for Jan. So he had a momentary doubt about himself because his letters never made it to Jan
. He often acted more as a comic relief, good feel character to balance out the drama in the show than actually acting as a character with real depth or complexity whatsoever.
Personally I never felt the guys really "moved" anywhere in this story. There was no coming of age story with them.
Does this send the message that the guys don't have legitimate issues worth exploring?
I sure think so.