Category: Cross Game

Well, and so ends the first match of this series. Looking back, I do have to say that I like this series better when it’s just slice of life and building up, but that in no way means that this was a disappointing episode; the slice of life from this show is just simply that good. What makes the matches of a typical Adachi-series is that for nine out of ten matches, it doesn’t matter whether the team wins or loses: life goes on. Whereas for most shows, there usually is some sort of fate of the world that depends on the lead characters or so.

Kou lost in quite an amusing way. He finally managed to get a strike-out from Azuma, and it seems that that was pretty much his motivation to keep pitching so well. So, obviously he becomes way too relaxed after that out and completely screws up with the batter after Azuma. And the two of the teams were on equal scores at that point.

But this episode really was about the third graders, who prety much only had this chance left to play some good baseball, and since there is no way that those guys can become professionals, it mught be one of the last times that they get to play in a real baseball match. And I must say that they closed it off pretty nicely.

Rating: * (Good)
It doesn’t stand out, but a nice conclusion to the match nonetheless.

Well, the baseball matches really are like the rest of this series: very slow paced. This entire episode was simply focused on the baseball match between the good team and the bad team, and the next episode will probably see its conclusion. It was really meant to show that Kou is still inexperienced, despite his talents, and Azuma is just very talented since he just keeps hitting home-runs off the guy.

But yeah, the entire good team really deserves its reputation: even Akaishi can’t get a hit out of that pitcher. This episode also was about the third years: even though they weren’t talented at all, they just want to make some memories during their final year of high-school. Quite charming.

This mostly turns out to be an episode in which we see different sides of everyone. Kou no longer is that confident as we thought him to be, Lisa now that she has lost her lackey suddenly starts behaving entirely different, Senda is becoming less of a loser, and instead just becomes arrogant now that he’s found something he’s good at. Definitely a great building-up episode, though I don’t have a lot to say about it.

Rating: * (Good)
Nice build-up and subtle character-development.

Oh, I must say that after watching the first season of Major, it’s so delightfully refreshing to watch another baseball match in which the lead pitcher isn’t god-moded beyond belief. This episode showed the very first baseball match of this season (a practice match between the good team and the bad team), and I must say that I’m very surprised.

I really was convinced that Kou was hiding some sort of superhuman abilities, but at this point he’s actually worse than Aoba. The thing with him is that he’s got a lot of uncontrolled power, and he lacks a lot of experience when compared to Aoba, who really knows every single detail about the sport (and also shows this in this episode, detailing exactly what the weaknesses are for every player in the opposing team. This power does make him a very good hitter, though, but even with that I may be wrong, since all he did was hitting a home-run off Senda. He has yet to prove himself in front of a real pitcher.

I also love how Senda actually proved to be useful in this episode. From the outside he looks a lot like your typical idiot, but unlike most series who just use characters like him for comedy, he does have his points where he’s useful, and is actually a pretty good short stop. In terms of tactics, this series really pays very detailed attention to every character’s strengths and weaknesses. It’s very ironic how this series looks so childish and simple, and yet it yet again establishes itself as the smartest series of the season.

One thing that I really hope now is to see Aoba in action again. She really showed her experience in this episode despite being so young, and it’d be a real shame if from now on she’d just watch behind the sidelines to see Kou pitch, improve himself and get his power under control. It’s in these cases a huge shame that there also isn’t a girl’s team at the high school.

Rating: ** (Excellent)
First match of the series, and it delivers.

The more I watch of this show, the more I’m convinced: Cross Game is bloody brilliant. It’s really hard to put to words why, but I know of very few shows hat have such a dynamic sense of storytelling as this series has. Every single scene, even the most seemingly unimportant one, feels creative and fresh. Even though no major plot twist has happened at all since Wakaba’s death in episode one, there’s just such an awesome dynamic chemistry between the members of the cast. Not just the important characters, but even the simple side-characters feel like they have their own life. If it goes on like this, then it really feels like this series is going to raise the bar for high school dramas here.

This series is so full of these simple ideas that at the same time show how well the creators understand their characters. For example at the beginning of this episode, Akaishi sees Momiji for the first time, who is currently at the same age of Wakaba when she first died. And it really strikes how similar the two of them are now that the creators mention it. And it’s like Akaishi said: it’s still hard to believe that Wakaba was such a small girl when she died.

This episode also showed some epic spying skills by Kou and Akaishi. It’s so weird and stupid when you look at them, knowing that they’ve hidden themselves, and yet you really wouldn’t suspect it if you simply were training. The match in the upcoming should prove to be very interesting, because it’s going to feature to teams with a number of talented players (and one disaster of a pitcher) that don’t come together as a team. It’s probably going to come down to Kou’s pitching versus Azuma’s batting, but I’m really curious what the creators can make of it when they’ve already done such a fine job with the building up. I remember how you were hardly ever able to predict how a match in Touch would end, so who knows that Cross Game also has these sorts of nice surprises up its sleeve. ^^;

Rating: ** (Excellent)
Still carefully fleshing out its characters, but it’s subtlety and wit still continue to shine.

At times, it really looks like Aoba is the lead character of this series, rather than Kou. Especially when it comes to baseball, it’s her who keeps stealing the show, while Kou, who is supposed to be the main character, just keeps hiding, watching and staying in the background. Really if it wasn’t for the fact that he gets the most screentime you really wouldn’t suspect that he was supposed to be the central character in this show. He just feels so far away from your average male lead. The only thing he has in common with them is his huge talents.

And yet again, this episode rocked. In the current spring season, there are three shows against which I have yet to find a single significant complaint: Eden of the East, Basquash and this one (Phantom has its questionable portrayal of the mafia, Pandora Hearts has its cheese and Natsu no Arashi had its first episode; all excellent shows too, but these do have their flaws, in comparison to the three mentioned above). This episode shows how the coach of the high school team visits the middle school team, and notices how solid Aoba’s performance is, and so he invites her for a few practice pitches, though not with the best of intentions.

This episode really did an excellent job of making me feel sorry for Aoba. For one, she’s never going to get as good as Kou, she’s not going to have any chance of playing solid baseball as soon as she hits high school, and she was really made fun of this in this episode, even though you can see that she has passion for the sports in the way that she continued pitching despite being terribly exhausted.

Kou meanwhile continues to shine in a completely different way. I absolutely LOVE his sense of humour. This episode reveals that he has yet another talent of impersonating voices of other people, which he puts to great use in teasing the hell out of Senda.

Rating: ** (Excellent)
Especially great episode for Aoba, but all of the characters still rock.

And so it’s finally time for the characters to enter high-school, and this show still is as solid as a rock. As it turns out, there are two teams at the baseball club. The best one consists out of most of the older members and Azuma Yuuhei, it has as coach the daughter of the vice principal and a great coach with the potential to make it to Koushien. Oh, and also for some reason Useless Guy also got a spot in it. The second one has all of the new users, including Kou and Akaishi and some of the worst players of the higher years. They’ve got the old coach and an non-popular yet dedicated manager. I didn’t quite pick up what happened to Aoba, but my guess is that she ended up as the captain of some sort of third team, while she also practices with the lower boys team.

What’s also interesting is Azuma’s habit of not remembering the names and faces of people without talent, and there are four of them whose name he can remember. Of course Kou is one of them, but I wonder about the other three. My guess would be the guy who was yawning in class, Aoba, but apart from that I haven’t seen any hints yet at that fourth one. That’s the sneaky bit of this series: it keeps giving hints here and there but half of the time there is no way to tell what they exactly mean when you see them, and it’s always going to take a while before their meaning becomes really clear. The only reason why Aoba and Yawn-guy stood out to me was because Yawn-guy’s yawn-scene was pretty much parallel to Azuma arriving late, and my guess of Aoba is only because she caught Azuma’s eye when she walked past, possibly hinting at how she’s still sticking to his mind.

What I also like is how Akaishi, Kou and the other one whose name I forgot are pretty much trying to fool everyone with their secret weapon Kou. They even deliberately ended up in the lower team, in order to make as much of an impact as possible and I like how both Azuma and the new coach are starting to suspect that something is going on, but still can’t exactly put their fingers on what.

I’d just wish that there was somewhere a list with characters and their names. Even the official sites lacks it. While all characters are unique, it does remain pretty hard to keep track of all of the names of the side-characters.

Rating: ** (Excellent)
First episode at high-school with lots of things building up at the same time. Still no signs of weaknesses at all.

The thing that really sets Adachi’s stories apart from all other high school anime is the huge amount of time that he devotes to the history of the lead characters in the beginning, when the characters are still just in middle school and the first few episodes simply set all of the stages for the rest of the series. This is obviously such a good way to flesh out the characters in the beginning. Out of all the shows that started airing this season, I feel like I got to know the cast of Cross Game the best within the time-span of only five episodes. Even the characters of Eden of the East are nowhere as likable as these guys.

This episode was even more slice of life than usual for this series, but what a wonderful episode it was. Basically, both Aoba’s father and big sister and Kou’s parents were out of town while Momiji wasn’t feeling well. Kou was asked to keep a bit of an eye on Momiji alongside Aoba. So after Kou’s usual secret training sessions, he visits the local supermarket and brings back food for the three of him, Aoba and Momiji.

Since Aoba never really learned how to cook with sisters as Wakaba and Ichijou, Kou offers to cook dinner, even though Aoba is obviously heavily against it. Also here it shows how Wakaba is still on these youngsters’ minds: the moment Aoba goes too far in her insults the whole mood completely changes even though the reason for it is never explicitly mentioned.

What’s more, this episode also was about a cooking book that Wakaba used to use. Aoba originally intended to use it, but she accidentally lets Kou find it. The result is a bowl of rice that tastes exactly the same as Wakaba used to make it, which is especially tough on Aoba.

Then there’s Momiji’s fever in this episode, which is also used in order to show the downsides of Aoba’s tomboyish character: when she starts feeling unwell, it’s mostly Kou who keeps everything in straight lines and makes sure Momiji’s fever goes down fast. Aoba just thinks too much of Aoba, who really was the type of caring sister (especially since she thinks back on how Wakaba used to take care of her when she herself was ill). It’s the same trick that Touch used, though slightly different: Kazuya was simply better than Tatsuya in every aspect, while Aoba still had sports in which she could stand above her sister.

And on a side-note: I really like Momiji’s character, and how well she and Kou get along with each other. Momiji feels really genuine as a character, and there’s something wonderfully innocent about how she and Kou interact. Of course, the chemistry between a lot of different characters in this series is really good, but the two of them really take the cake in my opinion.

Rating: ** (Excellent)

Short Synopsis: Kou and Aoba find a creative way to catch a burglar.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
It’s interesting that, even though Adachi’s series are all about the same thing (talented guy playing baseball), the anime adaptations of his works all have these subtle differences that make them totally different series (or at least the ones that I’ve seen so far, being this one and Touch). It’s going to be a bit hard to talk about these differences due to my fear of Touch spoilers, but even though Touch and Cross Game look a lot like each other, I just don’t see them as rip-offs of each other, and they both have their own unique parts.

The big difference between the two lead males is that Kou of Cross Game has nobody to look up to: he’s already the most talented at baseball, and instead we see him in this episode pull everyone along, even though he isn’t actively playing baseball, whereas Tatsuya had Kazuya and was only able to come as far as he did because of his brother’s influence. I’m interested to see what’s going to happen when Kou enters high-school, as it seems that he’s going to be joining the same team as that arrogant baseball-guy whose name I can’t find, which seems to suggest that the baseball in Cross Game is going to be much more about rivalry, rather than commitments to the past like in Touch.

And while I can’t say this for sure, since Touch also took around ten episodes for the first real baseball match to occur, but according to the things I’ve heard about the manga Cross Game seems to focus a bit more on slice of life than Touch did, and you can hear that through the music as well: the soundtrack of Touch was very typical for a sports game: fast-paced, up-beat and overall cheerful, while you wouldn’t be able to guess that Cross Game was a show about baseball by solely hearing its soundtrack: the background tunes here more sound like that of a heart-warming slice of life series.

The sense of humour also feels more tongue-in-cheek than its predecessor: in Touch, you knew when to laugh and when to take the show seriously. In Cross Game, you only realize something funny has happened, two second after it’s already over, and it’s another example of the unpredictability of Adachi: while in Cross Game the overall plot might be easier to predict, this time it’s the humour that you can’t see coming.

In any case, this episode was a bit strange; I mean, how often do you see a burglar through a window in a house inside a metro in broad daylight? That thug must have been really stupid in order to allow for such a miss. And yet it had its purposes: we now know that Kou isn’t a complete lazy bum, and for some reason he also always carries a baseball ball with him. Something tells me that he doesn’t exactly know what he wants to do later, which in a way is typical of a teenager his age, especially after he had been scared out of the baseball club like the way he was three years ago.

Short Synopsis: Kou gets invited to substitute in a local baseball team.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
Oh this show is SO good. It may be one of the dark horses of the season, but in three episodes it has already done what most series can’t even do in twice that amount. Don’t get fooled off by the simplistic character-designs, because as a series focusing on middle- and high-school kids it does so many things right. This episode again had such a wonderful combination between subtle humour and drama, slice of life, character-development. There are already so many different characters, and yet all of them feel different with their own personalities.

And even though the character-designs are simplistic and leave out a lot of details, they still feel realistic: the school is filled with all different kinds and shapes of people of which a surprising amount is obese (really: finally after Real Drive we finally have another show that realizes that not everyone has the perfect body). What I also like is the people like the captain of Aoba’s baseball team: usually in anime these guys are the evil punks, who do evil stuff because they’re evil, or they’re especially that exaggerated to make fun of these stereotypes, but this guy feels nothing like that: he’s just a regular middle schooler with a tough physique.

As for the main character, it was of course obvious that he was going to be very talented at baseball, but the writers gave him quite an interesting back-story for it. Like Touch, he never went to join the baseball club in middle school, but unlike Touch this was because of a fight that broke out when he attempted to join it three years before. Instead, he just kept practicing by himself because his parents were involved with baseball anyway. It makes sense: the past three episodes have really shown that he’s a carefree guy who doesn’t like to get into trouble, and yet at the same time you can see how he’s still affected by something that happened three years ago. I don’t recall having seen anyone cry about Wakaba’s death, but you can see its influence very subtly in all of the characters that she hung out with when she was still alive.

Short Synopsis: Aoba thinks back to a game that she played against Kou.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
As for the shows I”m not going to blog:
– Shin Mazinger Z is manly, GAR, fun, epic and a whole lot more things, but you want to watch that series for the entertainment value, not its depth.

There are many reasons for me to blog Cross Game, but the most important one is the cast of characters. It’s only been two episodes, and they’re already very charming and relaxing to watch. This is promising to be an awesome slice of life show if this keeps up. The baseball is just second place for what’s really important here: the character-development and interaction.

And I must say, that it was a very nice idea to rush the first episode through the first volume so that it’d include the big twist of Aoba’s sister dying. this way, the melodrama is gone, and the important stuff that was missed can just be pasted in through flashbacks (which is exactly what this episode did). This really spices up things compared to when the creators would just have chosen the linear storyline, because this way you can really see the subtle character-development and how the big death influenced all of them.

I really like the wit of this series, but what stands out even more is that every single character, even the tiny ones with a few or no lines, have their charms and are interesting to watch, already within two episodes! The soundtrack also excellent, so if you’d ask me we have ourselves a winner here. 🙂