Category: Finished Series: Sports

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)