Category: Cross Game

What an amazing episode. It’s installments like this that really show why Cross Game is such an excellent slice of life series, it was constantly playing with the set-up of the arrival of Wakaba II (who turns out to be named Akane).

The entire episode was one big tease. To start with, you know how Kou said “Wakaba”? That sequence got repeated about three or four times? Well, it turns out that it was also imprinted on the bag she was carrying. A bit long to get to that punchline, but well worth it. For the rest of the episode, I was really looking forward to the next time she’d show up again, but the creators had other plans, and instead showed some very good slice of life scenes instead, preparing for the upcoming festival and the anniversary of Wakaba’s death (if I understood correctly).

Only in the final quarter of the episode, she appeared again, and the results were amazing. Everyone who ran into her had the same reaction: “what’s a ghost doing here!?” The look on everyone’s face… it was just priceless.

Oh, and as an extra bonus, my favourite minor side-character got some attention again: Momiji. Especially now that she has reached the same age as Wakaba did when she died, she’s hopefully also going to start playing a larger part in this series.

And that’s what I think is the biggest difference between Cross Game and Touch: Touch was far better with its baseball matches, while Cross Game’s baseball is the least interesting part of the series. However, Cross Game is far superior when it comes to slice of life, in which Touch was a bit too long-winded. With the exception of two notable episodes, of course. those who watched Touch will understand which ones I mean.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

This could very well be the best recap episode ever.

So basically, before the second half of this series starts, Aoba looks at Wakaba’s portrait and the episode then commences to recap pretty much the first episode. And oh my god, the nostalgia!

Because we now have gotten to know the characters, despite this being a near-exact copy of that first episode (if my memory doesn’t deceive me), it stands out as ten times better than what I remember it to be, and even then I already was impressed with that episode. It was so awesome to see Wakaba back, along with the younger versions of the cast. And of course, the point at which Wakaba eventually died hit even harder.

This episode was pretty much a filler, but I don’t care. It was awesome.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Well, for a moment it might have seemed that the excessive hinting from the creators would ruin the surprise. I’ve said this many times before, but the baseball matches of Cross Game just don’t match up to those of Touch, in which you hardly ever knew how a match was going to end. Cross-Game instead just kept hinting at how this match was going to end throughout the first half of this episode, but nevertheless the eventual result hit hard.

So yes, Kou eventually suffered in his left arm, causing him to miss the crucial pitch that gave away the game. With this, he finally became a mortal again. Granted, that new pitcher was entirely fresh, and had only been playing for two rounds, but it’s nevertheless a mistake that could have happened with any other batter. And there’s the strength of the team they had to face: they didn’t just have good batter and pitcher, they had two of each. Individually, these people don’t match up to either Kou or Azuma, but when their strength is divided over half a game, they become a very formidable opponent to beat.

The aftermath was well delivered. You can see that the creators really took some time to let this sink in, and show Kou’s disappointment in his loss, even though nobody really blames him for it (after all, he did nearly win from the top-rated team in the area). It was also hilarious to see Senda, having been abandoned by the bus. ^^;

And at the end of this episode, we finally see Wakaba 2.0, and with that we move to the second half of this series, if I’m not mistaken. The characters really have been fleshed out enough by now. It’s time to develop them!
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Yeah, this was by far the best baseball match of Cross Game, in which Kou and Azuma finally get a real threat posed to them. The matches still are nowhere as intense and exciting as in Touch, but it’s getting there. If the second half of the series can further develop the fact that Kou and Azuma aren’t perfect then we’re in for a great series.

For once, Kou didn’t give away a point because he was playing around, lazy or otherwise intentionally not focusing. The way that Keitaro just whacked a home-run out of Kou’s pitch caught him completely off-guard and Azuma too for once just hit a regular pitch, instead of a home-run. I also like that Senda, despite his portrayal as a seemingly useless character actually gets to bases at times. That’s more to say from Akaishi: there’s this theme with him, never being able to score any sort of solid hit: he either hits very hard, only for the ball to get caught, or he just completely fails to hit the ball in the first place.

Aoba again acted completely different from how she usually does, and turned into a bit of a fangirl for Kou, which of course clashed a bit with her tsundere-side. Yeah, at this point the arrival of Wakaba-lookalike seems about right to develop their relationship a bit more.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

And so, the time has finally come for Kou and Azuma to take on the most challenging team of the preliminaries, including the player whose name Azuma could remember. The question is of course going to be whether the next episode, which is going to focus on the real meat of the match, is going to be able to deliver. The build-up in this episode was very fine, but the baseball matches in this series have always left a strange bad taste after their end. Let’s hope that this time the creators can avert this.

By far the biggest surprise in this episode was Aoba. I guess that finally the team has to face a formidable opponent, and as the result she was fangirling like crazy in the audience. This episode showed a totally different side of her usual composed and calm personality.

Oh, and the creators have finally scrapped the cat drawing game at the beginning of each episode. Instead, we now have a quiz. Seriously, Momiji asks who the pitcher of the baseball team is and gives three options to choose from. I mean seriously, even kids aren’t that stupid. And seriously, what the heck is up with all that live action in anime this week? First we had that horror of Shugo Chara Party, then Yumeiro Patissiere pulled a few minutes of cheesy live-action at its end, and now Cross Game does it too. Why!?
OP: Some scenes were changed for the OP this time, most notably Wakaba having grown up. Gives a strange effect: what would this series look like if she were still alive?
ED: Hmm, I liked the first better. The vocalist seems to want to try too hard while he doesn’t have the voice for it. Again, grown-up Wakaba gives off a strange nostalgic feeling.
Rating: * (Good)

I do hope that the second half of this series is going to introduce some sort of challenge for Kou, because with this episode, it’s already getting boring to watch these matches in which Kou and Azuma dominate the entire game. I tried to like this series’ baseball matches, but in the end it’s really something that Touch did much, much better. Now that we’re at the halfway point, it’s about time for Kou and Aoba’s relationship to develop again. In this episode, they again dropped various hints that they’re into each other, including Aoba at last getting impressed by Kou’s pitching-work, but we’ve reached the point at which it’s beginning to get repetitive. We need some more conflict to spice things up. This episode finally gave us a good look at what may look like two promising rivals, but the creators still need to put a lot of time in them to flesh them out properly. At the moment they’re nothing really special yet. Rating: (Enjoyable)]]>

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)]]>

I’d like again to hijack this post for a bit to post up some impressions of the past half year of anime. Now that most of the series of the past Spring and Summer Season are about to end, it’s time to reflect on them again, and how they matched up to previous years. My general impression of the past Spring and Summer Season is that they’ve been completely different from those a year ago. The spring season of 2008 was all about fooling the viewer: making the viewer think that the focus of the series will be on something completely different from what it actually is, and this air that you never know what to expect of an arc or episode, for the good and the bad. This spring and summer however, have instead been about consistency: delivering, and doing so over and over. Even the series which focused on surprising did so consistently. Because of this, there’s no way to say “Spring 2008 was weaker/better than Spring 2009”. The individual highlights of the Spring and Summer of 2008 were better than of the current season. As much as I like Tokyo Magnitude, Phantom, Shangri-La and the Guin Saga, their highlights simply don’t match up to Kaiba, Himitsu ~The Revelation~, xxxHolic and Amatsuki. However, at the same time I have a lot less to get angry about this season: 2008 had a lot of disappointments, and series that ended with a bitter taste for me (*ahem*, Allison to Lillia, Soul Eater, Macross Frontier, Mission-E, Nijuu Mensou no Musume, et cetera, et cetera). The current season of course has shows with a lot of flaws, but you could have seen all of them coming. I’ve watched 30 episodes this season, and only one of them was offensively dull (Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei), and the good series have really been consistently good, with hardly any weeks that didn’t deliver. The reason why I’m hijacking this post of all things to write this down is because I’ve had this strange feeling that something was missing this season, and now I finally know what it is. The biggest reason why the Spring and Summer of 2008 were so inconsistent was that they featured a lot of case-based series: in them, characters either had jobs that involved meeting lots of different people, travelled around, or just met different people, allowing these people to tell their stories. while episodic and fillerish at first sight, it resulted into a number of amazing and really well written episodes, and because of that I’ve become a really big fan of those sorts of series. to my surprise, the past half year only featured one such series: Bakemonogatari. And that one turned out disappointing for a whole set of reasons involving Shinbo. Guin Saga and Tokyo Magnitude may seem like it, but the people that the main characters run into don’t really get an in-depth look, and their main purpose is instead to bring the setting alive, rather than standing out as a character with depth. And really, while there are a lot of very enjoyable series currently airing, I’m missing these quick series in which you never know what to expect. It’s those kinds of series that I’m going to look for especially in the upcoming fall season. Anyway, to segue back into this episode, the epitome of consistency this season is of course Cross Game. This episode shows the first matches of the local tournaments, that will eventually lead to Koshien. However, I KNOW Adachi: Kou isn’t in his final year yet, so they’re going to lose at some point. The question is: when? I liked how this episode also subverted a very common trope: “prettyboys are awesome”. This episode really proved that that isn’t necessarily the case, and it’s really good to see a group of people with normal looks in the centre, rather than a bunch of bishies or overly moe girls in the spotlights. Other events in this episode showed a small glimpse of what happened to the members of previous year’s baseball team. They’ve all picked themselves back up in other teams, including Miki who’s looking much more healthy. This episode also marks what would have been Wakaba’s birthday, so Kou is out to collect another birthday gift for her. One thing I didn’t like about this episode is that it was a bit too un-subtle about the Kou vs Aoba relationship. Especially the point in which Aoba looks at the camera and a soft wind conveniently starts blowing… that could have been done more subtle. Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>

Okay, so now that this series has also delved into baseball for all-female teams, I just can’t help but hijack a part of this post for some comparisons on that other baseball show that’s airing this season: Taishou Yakyuu Musume, because this episode pretty blew all of its focus on baseball away. In a way, Taishou Yakyuu Musume and Cross Game are quite similar: both are slice of life series at heart, with a bunch of characters who just happen to play baseball. TYM plays in the 1920s, while Cross Game takes place in what I guess are the 1980s (due to the lack of PCs anywhere…), and both are feminist in their own ways, without shoving “women rock” down the viewer’s throats. TYM has one advantage over Cross Game: none of the characters are naturally born talents, destined to be among the nation’s best baseball players. Instead, what keeps the team together is the passion of the central characters to make the team they compiled together, and show that girls can just as easily do sports that were meant for guys. But yeah, Cross Game pretty much owns it in every single way in terms of development. I’m still not sure how the girls of TYM became this good at baseball within only one year of training, considering how they started with absolutely nothing. Cross Game meanwhile first establishes its characters as people with extraordinary talents and then develops them utterly flawlessly. This episode really had the best baseball match of the series for me so far: we know that Aoba is extraordinary talented, and she worked hard to hone her talents all through her childhood. And yet this episode showed that she’s not alone, and even though she’s able to bring an entire team together and significantly improve its performance, this episode really showed that there are many other different kinds of talented players out there. I remember how Major also tried to do this, but instead of creating formidable foes, it instead came with a bunch of shounen-esque villains: a bunch of one-trick ponies who only had one thing they were good at and that’s it. And in that way, Taishou Yakyuu Musume does shine: even though it has lots of characters, it does care for its characterization and uses its limited time to move its characters away from their stereotypes, instead of the overblown melodrama that turned me off at Major, where I really didn’t like the overly cheesy drama. Anyway, long story short: this episode rocked. TYM pales in comparison, but still is pretty nice slice of life. Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>

A big episode for Aoba this time. Up till now we have really seen both her and Kou acting as directed Wakaba’s dreams, rather than for their own. And while that indeed is important for both of them to deal with her sudden death, it also really gets in their way at times. Especially in the case of Aoba, who despite being technically superior to Kou is doomed to stay in his shadow because he just happens to be able to throw faster. In this episode, she finally did what I’ve been hoping for for a while now: participate in an actual game. In the past few episodes, you could really tell that she was pissed off being seen as inferior to Kou. She kept teasing him about how he was a year higher than she was, and was very sarcastic whenever she talked to him. There is such a thing as a lovers’ quarrel, like you often see in anime, but in Aoba’s case it’s much more than her simply being a tsundere. Especially the new batters, who kept comparing her to Kou hit hard. But yeah, in this episode, Senda(what happened to the guy, by the way? We haven’t seen him in a while, have we?)’s friend pops up again, with a proposal for her to join the baseball team of her school. Obviously, she did this without the consent of the rest of her team, but in the end Aoba gets a part of a stand-in. Which of course is logical: the teamwork would have been completely disrupted if the pitcher were to change to some girl nobody heard of. And you know, it’s still pretty obvious that Kou and Aoba are into each other, but after having seen a genuine smile from Aoba a couple of times now, I’m starting to think that the two of them really should spend some time away from each other. Something tells me that when they’re together, they only remind each other of Wakaba: I suspect that Kou keeps seeing Wakaba in Aoba, and he continues to put up a strong image in front of her. Aoba on the other hand is constantly reminded of the guy Wakaba was in love with when she was still alive, and therefore still feels hurt when remembering her. In fact, have Kou and Aoba actually talked about Wakaba when they were together? This may be my memory, but it seems to me that the topic of Wakaba has become some sort of a taboo between the two of them. Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>