And so it has begun: the next one of the gruelingly long baseball matches of this series. However, that’s exactly the reason why they stand out: the creators skip hardly any of the pitches. Even the unimportant innings are fully animated. It really makes the matches much more unpredictable than your usual baseball matches.
And like with the first season: the creators waste no time in fleshing out the team that the lead characters have their match with. They gave all of them so var a personality, even the ones who aren’t ace or pitcher. Take that batter before the ace, for example: it’s a small touch, but having him feel a tad under-appreciated under all of the attention that their ace is getting is a nice touch. We also get to know the pitcher a bit more, who seems to be a person who likes to be in control. It’s interesting how he feels like that team’s Abe, and the Ace feels like their team’s Mihashi.
Also, while I am a baseball noob (all of the things I know about the sport are from playing softball in high school at PE (and sucking at it) and watching anime as a student), I’ve been wondering something: why is the fourth position so often reserved for the team’s best hitter? I mean, it only works in the very first inning, when one of the first three batters manage to score a hit. At the rest of the innings, it’s completely random how many people he’ll be able to bring home as a cleanup hitter because all of these games can progress so differently. To me, it actually seems the most logical to stuff the best hitters at the first place: this way they get as many chances as possible to get a good hit out of the pitcher, and score a point.
Also, is it me, or does Ookiku Furikabutte really have the best animation of this season? I mean, it doesn’t have the eye candy of Sarai-ya Goyou, nor the money shots of Angel Beats nor the background art of Senkou no Night Raid, but there are no still frames, and there really is a ton of movement in this series. And not just that, but the characters all just move naturally; more naturally than anything else I’ve seen this season so far. Also take a look at those far-away shots: in most series they’re used as a bit of a cheap trick: people far away require less detail. With Ookiku Furikabutte however, the creators grab their chances to up the frame-rate even more: the animation at these parts is incredibly smooth and realistic.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
The traditional lineup has your best batting average/speed guys in the first two spots and then your two best overall hitters 3 and 4. The idea is that your fast slap hitters will get on and then your best hitters can bat them in.
Runs. Not points. Runs.
Even if they can get a hit early on it won’t necessarily equate to a run. It would be a waste to put a good batter 1st in the line-up because then a weaker batter would have to try to bring him in. By putting him a little later you maximize his chances of getting a run.
I don’t know about that dude, Angel Beats looked really freaking good this week. And when you add in the incredible use of music, it has the best overall production values of the season. The animation isn’t always extremely smooth and natural, but damn does it ALWAYS look good. And the “money shots” wow me weekly.
Also, it isn’t so much about batting first every inning as it is about having the batters in a certain order, so that a strong hitter will almost always have somebody on base to bring in
Pretty much as people said its so you can get runs in assuming the previous hitters on the 1st and 2nd spot managed to make a hit an get one base, or even better the 3rd one as well – not as if people can just hit a ball then its a homerun. Hence, the clean up hitter’s job to get those runners home, since as you’ve seen with Oofuri its very rare for anyone to actually hit a home run just like that.
I love this. There’s an entire community of Oofuri fans out there who know more about baseball than I do. Can we start a forum?
The 1st person up has to be able to get on base a lot, and be fast. The 2nd guy has to have a lot of bat control, and be able to place the ball for when a hit and run or other plays are called. The 3rd hitter is usually the best overall hitter on the team, and will be the best run producer. The 4th batter usually has the most power on the team and have the most homeruns, therefor he is the biggest “threat”. The 5th and 6th hitters are usually also pretty good, and is typically a future number 3 hitter who hasn’t developed yet, or an older player who is more reliable. The 7th, 8th and 9th hitters are the weakest on the team.
An ace nigh-always refers to a pitcher.
I love this series and this episode reminds me why. I hope the higher animation quality will continue (as I recall, the end of the 1st season used so much okay-ish repeated footage I was a little bored). Just really excited to watch this one every week. The matches are always long, but there`s more than enough character substance and strategy in there to keep me interested.
(wow, everybody who commented knows a lot about baseball…) But it’s true – the animators really have upgraded the quality of this series. It makes every second of that 300+MB video worthwhile to watch… =w=
Reading a hellish amount of arguments with fansub and its effects on anime budget and quality yesterday, i’m starting to fear that stories with quality like this will become a rare sight. (if i could show my support by buying the DVDs I would’ve, but ;A;)
the animation for Ookiku Furikabutte is indeed nice and yeah it does look like one of the best for this season. As for Senkou no Night Raid and anime no chikara in general I don’t think all of them got big budget to begin with, but with them being creator-centric productions you do expected people involved put more effort toward it
heroman also well animated, but its being corny in action sequence and story surely doesn’t help