Glad to see that throughout the tournament, there still is plenty of time for a bit of slice of life that this series is so good at. The first half of this episode was that, combined with a bit of building up for the upcoming match, which started in the second half of this episode.I do ope though that this match isn’t going to drag on this series.
But yeah, the gist of this episode was: Kou should have practiced more at fielding. The opponents in this episode did their homework, and managed to find out that Kou relies on his high pitches too much, and so they just bunted everywhere in order to confuse him, which indeed earned them a point in the first inning. Their mistake however was to assume that Kou had no stamina… which didn’t turn out to be the case.
It’s not like Akaishi and Aoba didn’t think of ways to counter Kou’s weakness, so the opposing team ran a bit behind the facts this time, though they were helped by how Kou just forgot to practice fielding. Still, for such a team they did pretty well: instead of randomly playing, they really took their time in analyzing their opponents, even though the persons they used to spy on Kou’s team were… unsubtle to say the least.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Cross Game – 25
I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure Kou was just playing along so that he would get more chance to practice, and that in the process he managed to screw up and give seinou one point. I’m pretty much clueless about baseball so some of the dialogue goes over my head (even if I lookup some of the baseball words).
The opposing team (seinou) pretty much underestimated how good Kou really is since they only worked with their data from their teams practice.
What they say at 19.58-20.30 should be enough to prove my point. Kou was just throwing slow balls so they could score hits and he would get more chance to practice on the field, rather then just throwing strikes all the time. He did make an error however throwing that “wild pitch”. When throwing that wild pitch he Kou also said something like “I think he would have hit If I had thrown half-assed”
Yea agree with aegd there. Kou just has too much pride and Aoba knows it. They make a great couple 🙂