Spike Team
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 Promo pic of the third season.
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Spike Team is a 2010 Italian, 2D animated, sport/volleyball television series. It was created by Andrea Luchetta and the volleyball coach character, Lucky, is based on him. Rai Fiction, Lucky Dreams, and Graphlim co-produced the series. It ran for three seasons of 78 episodes and a special. A live-action film is in the works.
Plot
In Evertown, six, ethnically-diverse, college-aged girls (joined by a seventh in season 2), form a volleyball team and are trained under their coach, Lucky. They partake in a volleyball tournament known as the Alea Cup in an effort to save their college, Spikersfield College, from being torn down, as the antagonist known as Madame A, who has power over most of Evertown, plans to have done. Madame A originally plans to have a hit carried out on the university's owner, Armand Alea. But it's mentioned in his will that before she can seize it, as well as the institute's museum's Torch of Olympia, the aforementioned tournament must take place. The Spike Team: Susan, Mary Ann, Beth, Vicky, Patty, and Jo compete against The Black Roses. As they do so, the Spike Team girls grow along the way as they discover their strengths and weaknesses while each of them collects a gem. There are six gems, each one representing a virtue for each of the girls, and once they're all collected, the torch is finally able to be lit again.
Why It Rocks
- Although the somewhat angular art style isn't that bad, how the characters are animated is a different story, as the way they move is inconsistent from scene to scene.
- It is an inspirational story emphasizing motivation, determination, and encouragement.
- The characters are great, especially Lucky and the Spike Team girls, as they're great examples of character development in one way or another.
- Strong writing in the episodes' storylines and there's no fluff to them at all.
- Humorous moments to go along with the dramatic ones that are full of depth.
- The voice-acting in the English dub sounds decent enough.
- A stupendous, attention-grabbing theme song in the Euro-dance style performed by Italian singer, Jenny B.
- It's one of those shows that has a lot of meaning behind it.
- The lessons and messages in the episodes are well-provided.
- It's an outstandingly done, story-driven show overall.
Bad Qualities
- As mentioned above, the animation of the characters is inconsistent at times for some reason. In some scenes, the characters appear to move more fluidly as expected in a traditionally animated show, but in others, their movements appear to have more of a flash feel (or something similar) to them.
- In the third season, some scenes have the characters switch between being rendered in hand-drawn animation and CG/cel-shaded animation.
- The long hiatuses and delays between productions of the seasons for some unknown reason.
- For some unknown reason, the theme song was sped up slightly for the second season, but it's not too fast to sing along to it (depending on your view).
- In "A Real Team", there are a few times there are problems with the audio/microphone with it being too loud and somewhat distorted, particularly with Jo when she speaks and her voice sounds off a couple times as well.
- The lip-syncing to the audio of the characters' voices and lines of dialogue are off at times.
Trivia
- In the second season episode, "A French Victory", characters from another Rai Fiction show, Teen Days, have a cameo on a T.V. screen in the back of a chair in an airplane.