It’s interesting how the past two episodes have subverted a plot device that often caused the baseball series with mediocre matches to write themselves into a corner: why not let the big hitter walk? It’s the result of trying to make the storytelling too shounen, and have everything end with a big showdown between some sort of really good pitcher and hitter, and this is often reserved as the climax of the match, even though they don’t always make too much sense. Take Princess Nine for example: a nice show in many other ways, but one particular match in it made no sense because of this wrong mind-set in which you’re required to have some sort of huge show-down between pitcher and batter.
The rest of this episode was very much typical Ookiku Furikabutte: a ton of strategy, and nearly every pitch outlined, in which we both get to see a lot about the lead characters as the antagonists. Central to the antagonists surprisingly isn’t the awesome batter, but rather the pitcher, who isn’t having his day it seems. I think that the creators meant this match to be for him to find his place in the team, something that apparently his captain has been trying to no avail.
Azusa also subtly gets into the spotlights. He doesn’t necessarily have the most screentime, but you can really see that he’s struggling with living up to the place of fourth batter. The creators are making use of how he’s continually in the shadows of Tajima. I’m interested to see where the creators are going to take this: is he going to develop into someone who knows his place, or do they intend to take this somewhere more complex?
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Did Abe’s dad appear in this episode (he was supposed to show up on the last one). I’m curious as I’ve noticed A-1 seems to like cutting out the dad’s in the series. Well ok we’ve only seen Mihashi’s and Abe’s but I just find it odd that they seem to be particular about not introducing em while leaving as much of the ‘mom’ parts in tact XD.
Machi, Abe’s dad appears in this episode, like he’s supposed to. I remember it’s like that in the manga too.
If you read the manga, you would know hurhurhurr… but the manga spoils you A LOT. So I’m just gonna wait for the subtitles… ^^
Oh he does appear, I was just finding it odd~ Well he would’ve appeared sooner the night before the actual match when Abe did do the grin his mother was talking about the previous episode. Thats why I was wondering if he was going to appear or not, since it did seem like an odd quirk~
On actually commenting on this episode. I’d say one additional point to add is that it does highlight how much the team can work together. Given the injury of one star player, Tajima, they still pretty much manage to stay strong. And even more so that they didn’t necessarily prepare for this team as they did with Tousei it does show Nishiura is above the average team, that they definitely show potential.
@Machi
You must have remembered it wrong then. The first time Abe’s dad is introduced is supposed to be in this episode. He will appear later more and talk to Abe about his relationship with his pitcher. Well, that’s what I remember.
Ah well whatever, its not a major scene and the dad does show up which is all that matters anyways. And yes betawatcher the manga does indeed spoil a lot hurr~