Visionary Nexus Network

OK, not really baseball anime, but remember when Haruhi was actually awesome?

This feeling is just weird because as anyone who knows me can attest, I can’t stand watching baseball. To me, baseball is an absolutely boring sport with very little in the way of strategy to make it interesting. Aside from strategic bunting and sacrifice flies, I mostly see bulked up players who have mastered the art of hitting things really really hard and that’s not enthralling to watch.

So the fact that I’ve been tuned to baseball anime as of late is an oddity. Anime (and any other medium for that matter) has the luxury of being able to dramatize anything (see: Hikaru no Go and Yakitate!! Japan) and I suppose that’s what has helped me enjoy it more. Not surprisingly, of the three baseball shows that I have been watching, only one of them actually has to do with baseball. The other two are character-oriented shows that uses baseball as more of a backdrop than a central plotline; you can substitute it with any other sport and you’d still have an enjoyable show.

One Outs:

Not your daddy's version of baseball...

I think Baka-Raptor’s post on One Outs has gotten more people to give that show a shot more than this post will be able to, but the one aspect that he only hints at lies in the show’s skillful application of basic game theory. The way baseball is set up as a simultaneous game between pitcher and batter and that the pitcher must decide what pitch to throw and the batter has to decide whether to hit it and if so, what kind of hit. It’s decision-making scenarios like this that makes it interesting as well as Toua’s mastery of “yomi” (the art of getting inside the opponent’s head) that keeps me coming back.

Oh yeah, and the fact that the contracts are all performance based (assuming you didn’t click on the link above) makes it really damn entertaining. For every run given up, Toua pays up 50,000,000 yen. For every person he strikes out, he gets 5,000,000 yen. Agreeing to that setup requires nerves of steel, that’s for sure.

Cross Game:

Somehow, these two really do feel genuine.

It’s a show that I had blogged about way back in the day when I thought I had the stamina to do episodic blogging (turns out, I don’t), and it’s a show that’s stayed under the radar but in spite of that, manages to deliver some very wholesome entertainment, especially in the way the characters are fleshed out. As you can probably guess, this show uses baseball more as a backdrop because even if you substitute in a different sport, the character relations will continue to stay as they are, that is, they’ll shine brilliantly. All of the characters are instantly identifiable and although there are a few whose guts you’ll hate (evil coach being one of them), most of them will redeem themselves before they leave the series. And I think it’s important to be able to have characters that you can empathize with, especially with a show that’ll go on as long as this one will go for. But regardless of what happens, I think I’ll continue to be charmed with what Cross Game will serve up week in, week out as I watch the characters’ personalities bounce off one another.

Oh, and the whole thing about the childhood promise too. Yeah, I tend to be a sucker for those.

Taisho Yakyuu Musume:

It's got moe elements, but that's mostly confined to the first 5 mins.

And speaking of charmed, I can’t help but smile whenever I watch an episode of this show. The first five minutes of this show is so enthralling that you’ll be tempted to watch it over and over, but stay to get a basic understanding for the sort of struggles women of that era faced. I’ll confess to not knowing how historically accurate the picture is since the show does toss in some anachronisms (like with the types of baseball gloves that weren’t available at the time), but watching the underlying sentiments of girl power as well as the hilarious character interactions results in an experience that’s sure to be uplifting. After all, they’re trying to go against societal conventions and that’s really not an easy thing to do, so to watch them go about it with a sense of spunk and determination just makes you want to root for them all the more.

It’s more than just ojo-sama’s failing at baseball (anyone who says this is seriously missing the point). Beneath the surface is a mild sort of protest that somehow manages to make me smile in delight every time I watch it.

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