I must say, I enjoyed this episode a lot more than I thought I would. The baseball part is still pretty shallow (Kou and the others just blew themselves through the semi-finals without a scratch), the atmosphere was excellent and the different characters were pushed even more forward.
Two annoying trends finally got broken: Akaishi and Senda’s uselessness, as both of them manage to hit a homerun. But a major part of this episode was dedicated to Akane: she’s about to have surgery. While it’s probably going to be just fine, you can see the effect this has on the rest of the characters. Especially Akaishi, as he finally managed to pull himself out of this dip he’s been having.
I was afraid that this series would lose its charms during this final arc, but the characters have gotten more enjoyable than ever right now, even without the usual snarky way of storytelling: these past episodes have gotten much more straightforward than the rest of this series, and yet this series didn’t self-destruct with this change of pace. Now that’s the sign of a good series!
It’s just a shame that the budget was lost in this episode: the match was just a bunch of still frames…
Rating: ** (Excellent)
