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.
I ended up reading the manga lol… And I don’t regret it at all^^. Now, I can wait patiently for the weekly anime release :D. Psgels, the anime will only get better