YMMV / Hanebad!

• Anvilicious: You can only be great at something if you love doing it. Ayano's series-long Character Development revolves around her learning to play badminton for no other reason than the love of the game, and several other characters come to this exact same revelation by playing against her.
• Ass Pull: While it's hinted that Uchika might have had another reason for abandoning Ayano, the revelation that she's dying of cancer comes completely out of left field to both the characters and readers.
• Badass Decay: Emi Hashizume was introduced as a team ace on par with Nozomi and Nagisa, and immediately after was also shown to have severe insecurity issues. Then, she loses in both her on-screen appearances, once in doubles largely due to Ayano, and in singles due to being outsmarted and outplayed by Riko. It's no wonder that a lot of fans had the opinion that she was never a credible threat in the first place.
• Base-Breaking Character: Rui is either an interesting and pitiable Foil for Ayano, or an obnoxious whiner with a melodramatic backstory that's impossible to take seriously.
• Catharsis Factor: Very few fans were sad to hear that Uchika Hanesaki eventually died of cancer. If anything, most fans actually rejoiced about it, because of her callous abandonment of Ayano.
• Evil Is Cool: While not necessarily evil, Ayano in this transformation has earned a lot of fans in the series.
• Fan Nickname: Dark Ayano, Darth Ayano, Demon Mode Ayano for this Ayano transformation◊. Bonus points for Darth Ayano since that transformation was after her mother left her.
• Les Yay: With the sports and Improbably Female Cast it was bound to happen.
  • Ayano is very clingy when it comes to Elena.
  • Riko is very supportive of Nagisa in the first episodes in spite of the latter's bad temper. In the manga, one panel has her outright jumping in Nagisa's arms… with a big heart and the word "love" in the background.
  • Connie and her teammates in the baths. That's all.
  • In the manga, the way Ishizawa looks at and responds to Nagisa during their match is more reminiscent of a smitten girl than of a respectful rival.
  • During her "The Reason You Suck" Speech in the manga, Kaoruko outright tells Ayano that as fellow selfish jerks they were "meant to love each other", using a decidedly romantic phrase ("soushi souai", mutual love).
  • Micchi has a massive crush on Rui, but just as furiously tries to deny it. She also gets very clingy around her, to the point where she won't accept any rivals other than her and has her ideal boyfriend (cool headed, but hard to get) pretty much describes Rui anyway.
• Moral Event Horizon: Uchika leaving her daughter without a word makes her irredeemable in the eyes of the fans, a fact that she doesn't deny.
• The Scrappy: The Adaptational Jerkass that several characters went through in the anime adaptation have impacted their popularity.
  • Uchika Hanesaki is reviled for leaving her sick daughter to train another girl and not contacting her for years. It got even worse when Connie was introduced and revealed to have abandonment issues similar to Ayano's in spite of her having been with Uchika for only a couple of years.
  • Kaoruko deliberately passed a cold to Ayano and enjoys tormenting her rivals. Her design is disliked for looking very out of place compared to other characters.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Ayano is meant to be seen as going down the Jerkass route as the story progresses and her teammates believe she makes lame excuses for her losses. None of them ever find out that she suffers from serious abandonment issues.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: A lot of Manga fans find the much more Melodrama-filled anime series to fit this trope.