And so it’s finally time for the characters to enter high-school, and this show still is as solid as a rock. As it turns out, there are two teams at the baseball club. The best one consists out of most of the older members and Azuma Yuuhei, it has as coach the daughter of the vice principal and a great coach with the potential to make it to Koushien. Oh, and also for some reason Useless Guy also got a spot in it. The second one has all of the new users, including Kou and Akaishi and some of the worst players of the higher years. They’ve got the old coach and an non-popular yet dedicated manager. I didn’t quite pick up what happened to Aoba, but my guess is that she ended up as the captain of some sort of third team, while she also practices with the lower boys team.
What’s also interesting is Azuma’s habit of not remembering the names and faces of people without talent, and there are four of them whose name he can remember. Of course Kou is one of them, but I wonder about the other three. My guess would be the guy who was yawning in class, Aoba, but apart from that I haven’t seen any hints yet at that fourth one. That’s the sneaky bit of this series: it keeps giving hints here and there but half of the time there is no way to tell what they exactly mean when you see them, and it’s always going to take a while before their meaning becomes really clear. The only reason why Aoba and Yawn-guy stood out to me was because Yawn-guy’s yawn-scene was pretty much parallel to Azuma arriving late, and my guess of Aoba is only because she caught Azuma’s eye when she walked past, possibly hinting at how she’s still sticking to his mind.
What I also like is how Akaishi, Kou and the other one whose name I forgot are pretty much trying to fool everyone with their secret weapon Kou. They even deliberately ended up in the lower team, in order to make as much of an impact as possible and I like how both Azuma and the new coach are starting to suspect that something is going on, but still can’t exactly put their fingers on what.
I’d just wish that there was somewhere a list with characters and their names. Even the official sites lacks it. While all characters are unique, it does remain pretty hard to keep track of all of the names of the side-characters.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
First episode at high-school with lots of things building up at the same time. Still no signs of weaknesses at all.
Akaishi (the former captain) is in high school now, so Aoba becomes captain of Seishu junior high’s team, which sometimes the prefab team (which Kou and co. are in) shares the field with.
“The best one consists out of most of the older members and Azuma Yuuhei”
Heh, look like this form doesn’t like some character sequences, so once again :-S
‘The best one consists out of most of the older members and Azuma Yuuhei’
Grrr, sorry, about spam đ
“The best one consists out of most of the older members and Azuma Yuuhei” — It is not true, first team consist almost only from that new transfer students and they are all 1st year, there are only few selected 2nd year from previous team and of course Senda đ
“Whatâs also interesting is Azumaâs habit of not remembering the names and faces of people without talent” — unfortunatelly from my point of view they messed up this part a bit, at this point in manga Azuma only simply stated that he remember 5 players. That flashback to running Kou is anime addition and imho bad, because it lower weight of certain moment in Ep08.
I think it was mentioned earlier that Aoba couldn’t play on the H.S. team because she’s a girl. You could check wiki for the character names but beware of spoilers.
Aoba is a year younger, so shes still in middle school and not high school yet.
I cant wait to the next episode. The next episode feature my favorite scene in the manga :3
âWhatâs also interesting is Azumaâs habit of not remembering the names and faces of people without talentâ â unfortunatelly from my point of view they messed up this part a bit, at this point in manga Azuma only simply stated that he remember 5 players. That flashback to running Kou is anime addition and imho bad, because it lower weight of certain moment in Ep08.
Azuma does talk about remembering seeing Kou running and batting during class break in the manga and that’s also in the anime. So, when in the later scene he is asked about who he remembers by the new coach, there’s really no problem about them showing the flashback of Kou running when Azuma amends the number of people he remembers. Besides, it sets up Azuma nicely as to what kind of person he is – quiet and distant and a man of few words, yes, but also one who is very observant. And now knowing that Kou is in the baseball club but in the “outcast” section, he smells shenanigans and goes to take a look at the end of this episode.