Category: Cross Game

Oh, I love how incredibly subtle this series can be. This episode again was simple slice of life while it developed the various romances around. It’s your average Cross Game episode, but I just can’t get enough of it. A lot of this episode was spent on Kou vs Mizuki vs Aoba, as Kou kept bickering with Aoba, and get jealous of Mizuki, Mizuki tried very hard to make his advances on Aoba while looking down in a superior way on Kou and Aoba who kept bickering with Kou and never seemed to realize that Mizuki has her eyes on her. I especially loved the way the creators showed the bond that exists between Kou and Aoba: at the end of the episode, Mizuki invites Aoba to see a movie. Aoba picks a rather romantic movie which doesn’t seem to suit her tastes, and yet while watching it she’s touched by the storyline. I first thought that this reflected the feelings about Kou she might have, but no: it turns out that that was Wakaba’s favourite movie. Yet, in the end it turns out that she forgot about most of the movie aside from one particular scene. Later, we learn that Kou also went to see the movie when he was a kid (along with Wakaba, obviously), and he too only can remember one scene: the exact same one that Aoba just quoted. They obviously say these things when they’re not together. During the times that they do run into each other, they were constantly trying to out-wit each other throughout this episode, resulting into a bunch of hilarious situations, like Kou mysteriously hanging out at the Four Leaf Clover while Aoba was around (in the end, he was waiting for Aoba’s sister for her napolitan dishes), or the practice match in which Aoba, while often letting people hit her pitch made sure no point made it through, while Kou, who handled the final four innings ended up giving away one point. In other small things, I’m surprised that a rivalry is developing not between Kou and Azuma, but instead between Azuma and Akaishi, who are both meant to be batters, and yet Akaishi’s track record is far from perfect. The romance between Azuma’s brother and Ichiyou is also developing very nicely. Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>

This series just gets better and better doesn’t it? This episode probably featured some new record in terms of amount of subtle jokes and references for this series. There were about fifty hints throughout the episode about Kou’s feelings to Aoba’s childhood friend. On top of that, there were fifty more subtle plot points that ever so slightly developed Kou’s and Aoba’s relationship forward. Did all of that really just fit into 20 minutes? Among the best parts between them in this episode was the way Aoba greeted her new “sempai” as she formally entered the baseball club, the point where the entire school found out that Kou and Aoba weren’t dating, and where the two of them used Akaishi to get each other to the infirmary when both of them sustained a small injury. What struck me the most was the surprisingly innocent way in which Aoba looked at childhood friend (yeah, forgot his name). Is he really going to be just a minor character? We’ve never even her even remotely similar up till now. But yeah, this is really slice of life as it should be. Even without the subtle romance, those small scenes in which Kou and Azuma lived and trained together and the chemistry they have between themselves was really enjoyable to watch. The way they get on each other’s nerves when one of them slacks off is hilarious to see, not to mention how Kou succumbed to food poisoning in a certain part of this episode. Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>

I love how this show at first sight can make it seem that an episode isn’t really going to contribute to the plot, and yet time and time again it proves you wrong. Every single episode, although slow, has contributed to the plot and none of them have felt wasted. This episode too: I first thought that it was going to be a strange filler in which Kou and Aoba’s families spend the Christmas Vacation at some sort of a spa resort. I was wrong. It turns out that they were invited to the place at which Aoba’s grandparents live. They used to play there during summer vacations when Wakaba was still alive, so this was an entire episode stuffed with nostalgia for both Kou and Aoba. And finally we get the first direct and solid clues that they’re into each other! Hah! For both of them this becomes clear through jealousy: Aoba really gets jealous looking at an old book of photos in which Kou and Wakaba are really close to each other. Kou on the other hand gets in trouble when an old childhood friend of Wakaba shows up, and suddenly gets Aoba to smile like she never showed at all. Since we’re talking about Adachi here, it’s very likely going to take some more ages for both of them to realize this, but I really wonder how he’s going to let this play out. Especially since the new guy looks like that second pitcher of Touch whose name I can’t remember, and he turned out to be a challenge for Tatsuya to overcome for completely different reasons. What especially surprised me about him was how Aoba totally didn’t act tsundere when she met him. Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>

This episode was about a strange little side-story, featuring… Risa, the manager, of all people. In this episode, we see her trying to audition for a part in a local movie that seems to be getting shot. She ended up auditioning, and got through to the next round. There is just one problem: the character she auditioned for is supposed to be a female pitcher. So a lot of this episode is spent on her, trying to actually throw a pitch. It’s far from a pointless filler though, because this episode really gave a totally new dimension to her character. We’ve come to know her as that stuck-up princes whose purpose as a manager never really was clear, but in this episode we finally see her working for something she really wants to do. And surprise surprise, but she actually turns out to have a huge amount of motivation and will power. While that last part was a bit exaggerated to say the least, it was definitely good to see her finally with a goal in mind. It’s good that she finally quit being a manager, to chase her own dreams. Oh, and her random confessions were hilarious to watch. Especially since you had no idea what was going on at the time. It’s really typical of this series’ humour. I just have one question: how long are the creators going to continue with that cat drawing at the beginning of each episode? Is it to keep the interest of the little kids that are watching this series? Is it to fill up time? Is it some sort of homage I don’t get? I could understand how it might be a good gimmick for one episode, but we’ve had this going on for what? Four weeks already? Rating: * (Good)]]>

Well, so this was an episode for the romance on the show. The evil coach is gone, and most of his team transferred away again, with the exception of Azuma. The training pitch has become a lot less like a war-zone, and Kou and the others finally can practice in the open, which results the popularity of the main cast members growing quickly, as shown by the countless amount of fans for Azuma, Kou and Aoba.

This paragraph contains a MAJOR Touch SPOILER, so look away if you haven’t seen it yet. And so, it was inevitable for rumours to start wandering around, in true Adachi-fashion. This time, it’s spread by Akaishi who feels that the two of them would make a nice couple. but the big difference with Touch at that point was that Minami was already in love with Tatsuya while Kazuya was still around while Kou and Aoba only got closer after Wakaba’s death.

This episode also showed a potential girlfriend for that guy whose name I can’t remember. It’s very nice to see this series break through a flaw that a lot of romance series seem to suffer from: the “only main characters may fall in love”-syndrome, in which the side-characters almost never seem to get hooked up themselves, amidst the romantic adventures of the lead characters.

The rest of this episode was filled with the banter between Kou and Azuma, who seems to have moved into Kou’s house since losing his scholarship. The two of them work surprisingly well together in these light-hearted moments. I’m really glad to see that even after seventeen episodes, this series still hasn’t shown any sign of losing its wit. My personal favourite still remains Akaishi. I just loves how innocent he tries to look whenever things don’t go his way.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Do not ask me why this episode started with that strange drawing of the Tsukishima cat. I’ve seen them before in Kodomo no Omocha and Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei, and never really understood what they were about… They were kind of charming in Kodocha, but here in Cross Game, I’m not so sure.

But nevertheless, this was one awesome episode. After the first baseball match of this series, I was really fearing for this episode, but it was over within just one episode, and that really made sure for an exciting episode, even though you could see the ending coming from miles away. It’s episodes like this where everything really comes together in terms of character-development, with some awesome results.

The evil coach was indeed your typical evil coach, and yet he struck me as an ambitious character who probably once loved to play baseball, but over the years became too obsessed over going to Koushien, so that he failed to see past the plans of Kou and the others that made them seem like a bunch of weaklings (the five games they lost were all against teams that previously ranked among the top 8, and they didn’t really lose that badly anyway). The final nail in the coffin for him was the identity of the mysterious old guy with the hat, as he turned out to be the actual principal of the school.

I have to wonder why this principal decided to disguise himself in the first place, though. If he was around the area, why didn’t he just come and show himself instead of being all sneaky? He definitely had his reasons for it, so I’m curious to find out about them.

This episode also brought Kou and Aoba a bit closer together. Despite their bickering, they really work together as a team. I loved how Aoba kept scolding him at the beginning of the game, because she knew that he could do much better. The next thing that’s going to need to happen is for Kou to stop trying to look mature in front of her, and instead start treating her normally. Due to Wakaba, the two of them have grown into an awkward relationship together, in which it nearly seems that they purposefully close each other off whenever they get too close to each other.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Okay, so this as an episode that set up the next baseball match, but boy was it an exciting one. The nature of the upcoming match is going to be much more than the first one: the fate of both teams are at stake, one of the coaches is going to get fired afterwards, if the Farm Team loses it’s going to be disbanded, Aoba has offered to become the Farm Team’s Right Center and at the same time Azuma isn’t going to be playing. With this, it can really be anyone’s game.

It’s a shame that the character pages of Myanimelist are evil and full of spoilers (seriously, a bit of spoiler warnings would have been preferable!), I already received enough hints to know how that match is going to end when I tried to look up the names of a few of the characters a couple of weeks ago, and besides I also don’t think that it’s going to be that hard to predict how the match is going to end anyway. As long as the creator keep the length of that match a bit under control (and not like last time stretch a simple match for more than three full episodes…), it’s going to be very interesting to see how it’s going to play out.

And in any case, this was an excellent episode for the character. It really allowed us to see some different sides of theirs. I loved those little touches of the old guy, noticing that it’s the task of the manager to do a team’s laundry. That guy turn out to be the Farm manager’s grandfather, by the way. At this point, I have no idea what the point of this guy in the story is going to be, especially since there have been plenty of hints that this guy is obsessively hiding something.

KouxAoba also continued in this episode. It’s always small things that show them how much Wakaba is still affecting them. This time, it’s the remark that Kou made at a certain point, quoting how she would say that she’d rather die than give up, which has him worried. The chemistry between the two of them really revolves a lot around Kou taking light sayings like that seriously. Since Wakaba died in such a simple accident, it’s indeed no wonder that they’re like that.

I also like Miki a lot. I at first thought that he was just going to be another one of those stereotypical evil teammates that needs to be overcome, but the past few episodes have shown that he definitely has his heart in the right place. Despite his rather serious look, he’s one who wants to play baseball for the fun and teamwork.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
The introduction of the next baseball match and lots of potential character-development

So yeah, I was a bit lazy today so this post is a tad on the late side, apologies for that (*glares at Julian*). In any case, this was a pretty silly episode, but again it added so much to the series. First of all we see the introduction to two new characters, who both have their parallels in Touch: the annoying guy who keeps pestering one of the females and the captain of the boxing club. The differences here are that the annoying guy happens to be Azuma’s brother, and is bugging Ichiyou instead of Aoba. Aoba on her turn gets bugged by the boxing guy, who pretty much is the complete opposite of Harada in terms of personality.

Another parallel with Touch is the way that the baseball matches are built up: it’s his first year in high school, and instead of getting an early shot at getting to Koushien, Kou isn’t involved at all with this tournament and instead is in the middle of summer camp in order to get his skills at the correct level. Azuma at the same time fails to get to Koushien in this episode, which makes his desire to get there even bigger. I must say that this episode did a good job of subtly showing his frustrations. He’s never been a guy to openly show his emotions, so he just takes them out on some unfortunate baseballs at the Tsukishima batting center.

And so this episode also took place in the local pool for a while. It was pretty amusing, and this is actually a good example of how there can be much more to fanservice. From the outside this might seem like yet another pool episode, but this also gave the creators the opportunity to show how the characters are not just mentally starting to mature, but also physically: they’re not the naive children they were at the beginning of this series anymore. The ED showed this even more, and I believe that it was exactly for this purpose that they made the characters look very mature. It may even be what they’re eventually going to look like, when Kou is in his third year.

And by the way, I also loved how Momiji kept driving the annoying guys away from her sisters. She doesn’t appear often, but she’s such an adorable character when she does.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Excellent pool episode with very amusing chemistry between the characters.

So, this episode is the classic “gasshuku”-episode, that every sports series seems to have, but the creators really made excellent use of it. This episode was everything that makes this series so enjoyable to watch: subtle characterization, plenty of character-development, very witty and well-built up jokes…

Speaking of which, the humour was… interesting… This episode has to feature the most disturbing gender-ambiguous character I have seen in that old guy. He’s definitely an eccentric, first fooling Kou about Aoba (who was just taking shelter from the rain at his place), then filming the entire process of Kou, frantically looking for Aoba after finding the shoe that she lost, and never even revealing that he dresses like an old lady…

Meanwhile, it’s interesting how Azuma and the other guy aren’t happy with the work that their coach is putting off. The other coach, in the meantime, shows a completely different side of his during the gasshuku, and reveals him to be the evil trainer from hell, training his team to the limits. It’s also interesting how the previous match has given the team some real motivation to start training and get better. After nearly beating Azuma with a pretty much imperfect team, they really seem to be motivated to get better on their own.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Excellent summer training camp episode with a number of great jokes. And a rather disturbing one.

Ah, the match is over, and Cross Game is back to what it’s best at: Slice of Life. After sitting through an entire baseball match that lasted for three full episodes, even though it was just a practice match, showed me that that was the flaw of this series: during these matches, there simply is no room for this series to show what it’s really good at, and when this continues for three episodes in a row, it does get annoying. And I think that that was the main difference with Touch: Touch excelled in its matches, while its slice of life moments are vastly inferior to Cross Game’s.

And that’s why I’m really glad to see the slice of life back, because it really is as witty as ever. We get introduced to a new character, one of Senda’s childhood friends. It’s good to have this guy growing into something more than a comic relief character, and this episode definitely portrayed him as a real person. Definitely a plus. Anyway, that friend of his keeps bugging Aoba for a match, even though Aoba really doesn’t care. It’s also interesting that Aoba has no intentions of joining a high school with a girl’s baseball team. I really wonder what’s behind that, if she’s so much into the sport.

Another running thread through this episode was Wakaba’s birthday, and Kou and Aoba are the ones who still remember it, both in their own ways. Aoba has bought some flowers to put on her grave, while Kou seems be completing a list of birthday gifts that Wakaba compiled when she was still alive, apparently. The problem however is that he doesn’t have enough money, and so we see him throughout the episode accompanying the baseball manager and her friends in order to get his hands on the item Wakaba wanted.

What this episode also did was make the town this series plays in feel alive. They’re these nice touches, like when Daiki came out of Wac Donalds and saw Kou as a passer-by, or how there are at least two high schools in the area. Alone they may seem pretty insignificant, but when all combined together, they give a pretty good feel of the place that Kou and the others live in, and you can see that when characters aren’t the main focus of the screenwriters, they still are doing things on their own, instead of waiting for the camera to focus back onto them.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Thankfully the baseball match is over and this show has returned to where it’s best at.