This episode: the try-out for the girls’ team that Aoba has finally decided to get into. Even though it had it coming, it was still fun to see Aoba pwn that arrogant female batter. I know that such a trick should get old pretty fast, but I still loved it. It was also very refreshing to see Aoba among other girls again. You can see that she’s a totally different person when she’s not amongst Kou and the others, . This was a well directed episode overall.
But yeah, Aoba’s talent has been well built up. Azuma played a big role in this: after trying to get past his brilliant hits, there’s hardly anything anymore that can surprise her. And yet, the creators made sure to hint that there are other talented players around.
But yeah: then there was that thing at the end of the episode… with Aoba collapsing and all. While it looks to me that it’s a simple sports injury that she’ll probably get over after a few months’ rest, let’s not forget that this is Adachi. He’s been known to kill off people before, and I don’t think that I remember any time in either Cross Game or Touch in which an injury did not have a major lasting effect. At this point, I’m very worried about Aoba because of this, especially because it happened so sudden: it was nothing like Adachi to pull such a thing so directly, so I have absolutely no idea what he’s aiming for.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Well, if they go into the same direction as they did in the manga, Aoba’s injury will provide some nice relationship developement. Let’s find out whose 🙂
Yeah that ending was so sudden. I was surprised even though I felt that she probably wouldn’t even join the team because she seems to really want to stick with Seishu. It was predictable that she would best the other pitchers, I mean even Azuma is surprised by her, and that is saying a lot!
psgels, I’d like to start watching Touch one of these days. Does it have good dialogues and do the characters have an original sense of irony like in Cross Game? Till now which are you liking better? :O
andrea: the thing with Cross Game and Touch is that while they may look similar, they excel at completely different areas. Cross Game has better slice of life, however Touch has better character-development and baseball matches. On the other hand, Touch is twice as long as Cross Game, so it does have its moments in which it takes ages to get somewhere, and it does not have the typical sense of humour that Cross Game does.
Nevertheles, because of its better development and matches, I do like Touch better.
good episode but I’ve gotta say, Mitsuru Adachi really knows how to make ugly girls. i’m not joking around here, some looked like guys tbh.
Thanks psgels, I’ll probably end up watching both of them 😀
#5: Maybe its in response to the usual trend of making every girl extremely cute.
andrea: I think the sense of irony is also in Touch, but in much less quantity. Touch gave me more realistic feeling. But i enjoy both (well, that can be said about practically all Adachi works).
Psgels the preview of the next episode shows otherwise. Still great cliffhanger ending it was like a big shock to just see Aoba lying on the ground.
A reminder: most of the angle about the female baseball team is all anime-original; it’s not in the manga and Adachi has nothing to do with it. The injury, however, is in the original manga. Adachi has nothing to do with this speculation about how the injury is going to affect Aoba’s chance in the female team, but as you will soon see, he does use the injury to further build up the relationship angle.