I’ve been looking forward to watch the Major series for a while now, and with this I finally managed to check out the first season. The baseball series form a truly underrated genre in anime, with most people getting turned off because they don’t know anything about the games. Well, let me tell you that I’m in no way a sports fan, and yet I’ve enjoyed myself quite a few wonderful baseball series, and I was hoping to add Major to that list. Well, that’s definitely taught me not to get my hopes up too high before starting a series.
The premise seems solid enough: this season shows a young boy of nine years old named Goro as he challenges the little league with his team, and the succeeding series will show him as he slowly grows up into adulthood. It would have been a fine series if it wasn’t for the damned cheese that this show overflows with. I know that passion and manliness can spice up an anime, but this show is really taking that way too far.
This series just tries way too hard to create as much drama as possible. Just as an example, they really try to make Goro’s past as sad as possible. Whenever things are looking a bit too happy, you can bet your hat that very soon something unexpected will happen that will put everyone in despair. The characters are always eager to angst, and especially the way in which Goro just keeps yelling and whining at everyone really doesn’t help anything.
This would have been excused if it wasn’t for the other flaws of this series: the characters. There’s definitely development among them, but it’s handled so badly at times that it gets really hard to take this show seriously. The worst example of this is the bullies: one episode we see a bunch of bullies turn one of their classmates’ life into hell, the next episode we see Goro yelling at them and suddenly they’re begging for forgiveness, professing their love for baseball from out of nowhere and completely change character.
And this formula really appears pretty often, by the way. Whenever a side-character is feeling down of has his issues, then within an episode we see Goro yelling at them and giving a speech about the power of friendship and they’re completely healed again. In the second half of the show, a bit of pointless romance also pops up that never gets anywhere, and especially since we’re dealing with nine year-old kids here, I really wonder why the creators bothered with it anyway.
Then there’s the baseball. Granted, it’s not the worst part of the show and the creators are able to create some interesting situations and fun games… but the fact remains that the matches are just too forced. This isn’t the first time in which a baseball series has an incredibly good pitcher as a lead character, but even when taking that into considation, Major is really stretching it with Goro. He needs a team full of incompetent idiots in order to prevent him from God-moding himself through every single game with ease. Within six months, he transforms a team that started out with a bunch of random kids with no talent for baseball to the best team of their age in Japan. All through the power of friendship.
It’s therefore no wonder that the baseball matches become utterly predictable, in a bad way. Characters become incredibly good or bad, depending on the writers’ wishes. Even though all the opposing teams use interesting strategies, the only tactics in Goro’s team are ad-libbed. But the worst thing is that every single game is set up exactly so that Goro is the one to save the day, by scoring a point at the very last possible moment.
Usually I can excuse a flaw here and there in a series, but Major just has way too many of them, not to mention that Goro himself is completely unlikable. He really is your typical shounen lead character with a dark past and a simple mind, and really doesn’t do anything to diverge from it. Most of the opposing teams would have been more interesting if they didn’t simply turn into stereotypes. There are some interesting characters, like Joe Gibson and Shigeno, but the two of them hardly ever appear.
And as for some positive comments: the baseball matches are definitely exciting. when you watch them for the pure entertainment value and don’t mind how it ends, then they’re going to keep you busy, because there is lots and lots of passion in this series. The graphics look simple, but the animation and music also do their job and don’t stand in the way of anything. But the thing is that there are many baseball shows that are so just much better than this one. Try Adachi’s works, or if you want more excitement there is also Princess Nine, while for the tactics you can go to One Outs and I’ve also heard that Ookiku Furikabutte is awesome. I’m just not going to bother with Major anymore.
| Storytelling: | 7/10 |
| Characters: | 7/10 |
| Production-Values: | 8/10 |
| Setting: | 7/10 |
What it was a great show!!
Ookiku Furikabutte is indeed a very good baseball series. You definitely have to pick it up once you get the chance. |D
I dont know if you can judge this show by plopping down and watching all 1xx episodes in a row. The weekly wait between episodes really adds to the series. But if your gonna sit there and go through 18 diffrent story points in less than 2 hours itll seem excruciatingly cheeztastic. As a person who’s been following it from day 1 season 1, I can tell you every time goro throws that ball, I feel excitement rush through me.
go & watch nana instead of this shit xd!
Decent show, i would recommend watching it till he gets to High school. The little league half is way better than the rest.. Then it starts to get redundant.
Ookiku Furikabutte is way better. The characters are just awesome. I love the character development of Ren-Ren great. Not to mention his mannerisms are hilarious.
Weird that there’s such divergent opinions… I actually enjoy Major from the second season onwards. While the story doesn’t ever change, it just seems more fun when he’s in high school than when he’s a little kid.
Ookiku Furikabutte is great, and so is One Outs, so you can’t really go wrong either way (though Oofuri ends too early, so I’m stuck waiting for a new season, and One Outs feels sort of forced, and also seems to end too early). I wouldn’t give up on Major yet, but if you’re not a huge sports fan, I guess it can’t be helped.
This is off-topic, but I must say that your time-management skills must be amazing! How do you manage to watch so many episodes of so many series, when I have problems just keeping up with about 15 shows from the current season? How many episodes in total do you watch every week?
I also recommend Ookiku Furikabutte . Although I have to admit I do find the lead character frustrating at times. The other characters make up for that though.
hi, i have to say major is the best baseball series so far among all those I’ve watched.
please trust me on this and try to watch
later seasons as well.
goro grows up and u can’t help but root for him even if he can be annoying at times.
the anime is definitely flawed,
but after more than 100 eps and i’m still looking forward to new releases every week.
one thing i can say for sure is that
it’s definitely a better show than One Outs.
=]
Well Oofuri ends at a pretty high note, and I think it was a good conclusion (even in the manga that goes on they still haven’t been able to top the first game they had in the tournament) so I wouldn’t be turned off by it not having a second season in the corner (any time soon from the looks of it. Though I do think the first episodes may be somewhat tough to go through but as it sinks into the first game of the team I’d say the series begins to shine at that point, though I do think the certain erm battery moments may be off putting and the main character does seem too jittery (though you get used to it) but then again all the characters in that series had their quirks to help them stand out.
As for Major… well its a guilty pleasure that is all I can say about it. I do agree what your comments, even I who has been following the series since season 1 have to agree its not outstanding at all perhaps it is worth seeing if you want your adrenaline fix. Otherwise if you’re looking deep into quality you don’t find it, I think the biggest flaw of the series overall is that Goro keeps getting stuck with crappy team mates (save in season 5) and whats worse is for 3 seasons he had to keep re-learning the importance of team work~. Despite that I do still watch this, mainly as my guilty pleasure, I guess the pleasure stems from how freakishly good Goro becomes that its just fun to see how he can overcome the next hurdle, I guess the most notable praise I could give this show is at the very least despite Goro’s absurd skill he and his team has in most instances (save one) never won the championship. Which is a praise as its thanks to that, that Major never falls completely into the realm of like say Yugioh or other franchise shows (though Major never was really much of a franchise show).
Ookiku furikabutte portrays baseball the best. I love Cross Game (for the characters) and One Outs (for the thrill), but seriously, after watching Oofuri, I can’t take the baseball aspects of those two seriously anymore (especially the team play part, the two series don’t even bother introducing the lesser players from the protagonist teams, which really upset me, so much for the team spirit). Watch Oofuri, and you’ll see that super talented characters are not needed to make a sport anime interesting.
@Anon: I agree with you too. I am a huge sports anime fan and I followed Major since season one, but Oofuri definitely took my number 1 baseball place with Cross game coming in close because of the fleshed out characters and likable characters.
I definitely recommend Oofuri if you want realistic high school baseball.
@Anon: It may be going a bit too far to say that a super talented character isn’t needed for a sports anime when one talks about Oofuri. Even that show falls prey to the talent of certain individuals the only big difference with Oofuri from the formulaic talented main character is that the team isn’t crappy, and thus they don’t rely heavily on the talent of pitcher alone to pull the entire weight as we see in Major (well they have a talented batter as well). I would say that Oofuri among the baseball anime’s would be the only one so far that has presented a TEAM with great potential that their wins are entirely plausible. And it helps that talent isn’t monopolized by one member in the team but is spread nicely among the pitcher, catcher, and clean up hitter. Moreover, while the other members may not be as gifted they certainly aren’t incompetent and can contribute well to the win.
@Machi: we have different definition of “super talented”. I agree whole heartedly with what you say. When I say super talented, I mean a character that excels in everything.
Kou from Cross Game for example, is a super fast pitcher, an amazing batter, plus a fast runner to boot. I believe that even in Cross Game world, the characters call Kou, a one in millions talent. In realistic baseball, a good battery and a good batter rarely comes hand to hand (like only 1 person in 100 years) because the practice time gets halved.
So, in my opinion, Oofuri has talented people (as in talented enough to be a pro), but not “super” talented people (as in the 1 person in 100 years).
So much love for Oofuri. I tried reading the first volume of the manga. I can’t stand the annoying wussy pitcher, and the blushing while holding hands and saying encouraging things to each other. I guess I’ll try again if so many people say it’s good.
@kirk: Like I said the first episodes, in manga terms the first volume, can be off putting mainly due to those reasons but eventually you’ll get used to it or rather tend to just not mind it as soon as the first game begins. After that I think you’d be pretty much used to those quirks that I think you can look past it.
@Anon: Thing about Mihashi is though he may be a crappy batter in relative comparison to the team he has a freakish amount of luck… So he still manages to hit in critical moments, though he doesn’t hit home runs just a hit strong enough to advance a person.
Hi all. We’ll I do agree about all the things psgel said I must say that as a baseball or sports fan, I enjoy Major a lot, even though I know it can be irritating. So, yes, it’s a guilty pleasure. About Cross Game, well I’ve read all of Adachi’s work and I must say that at this point they seem so similar that it has been difficult to distinguish them from each other, thus, I have no intention of watching Cross Game.
As for Oofuri, after I got passed on the overtly mushy moments, the story really got going. It’s really a very good baseball anime.