Gyakkyou Nine volumes 3 & 4 manga review

AwwwRIGHT! Things are getting better and better! Gyakkyou Nine is only 6 volumes long, so that means Shimamoto has to pack a lot into those pages, which means a lot of hot-blooded action in every chapter. I always pick it up intending to read just a few pages and end up reading half the book.

I’m not going to give a blow by blow of each volume. I’m too lazy for that. All you have to know is that after the fiasco where Toshi ditched his baseball team for a girl, they were really, really mad at him but eventually forgave him when Hagiwara (replacement pitcher with the blond hair) goes through almost exactly the same thing but busts his arm and is forced to rely on Toshi’s pitches.

All good right? Nope. It’s clear that Toshi is wavering between his love for the girl and his love of baseball. Meanwhile the Zenryoku team is scheduled to go up against Hinodeshou High for real this time, and Hinode just blew out their opponents by a ridiculous score. The whole Zenryoku team is down and only Toshi can inspire them… but only if he can sort out his own feelings once and for all!

Volume 3 is a good one just because I like romance and drama, plus it’s fun seeing Toshi deal with adversity that isn’t directly related to baseball. That and it’s funny how his family sticks their nose into everything. Anyway, once that whole crisis is over, the Koshien qualifier finals take place, starting from the first chapter of Volume 4. Toshi gets on the mound full of pep and vim… and is knocked out like a light by a liner from the very first batter. It knocks him out so hard that he lies where he fell in the right field until the 9th inning. Then he wakes up and takes a look at the score. 112-3. Could any team possibly bounce back from such a deficit?

Hoo boy. Now I have to read volumes 5 and 6 to find out. If the Gyakkyou Nine were any longer I would be worried about how much longer it would take to get through it all, but one of the nice things about short series is that it’s easy to keep the fire going and your enthusiasm up because everything happens quickly. Win or lose, it won’t take long to find out!

Ikkyuu-san volume 4 manga review

After a bit of a break I tried to get back into Shinji Mizushima’s Ikkyuu-san, but I think I’m going to end up dropping this series after all. Volume 4 and (most likely volumes 5-8 at the rate this is going) covers the winner-takes-all practice match between the first and second-string teams of Kyojin High School, but it’s just painful to read because Ikkyuu sucks so, so badly.

He himself might have an excuse for being so bad since his coach pretty much left him to his own devices, but there’s no reason why he still, after 4 volumes, doesn’t know many of the most basic rules of baseball like forced plays. And the coach puts him on third even though the poor soul can’t catch the most basic grounder — because you didn’t teach him, you idiot!!!!

What’s worse, even after it becomes clear that the opponents are aiming exclusively for Ikkyuu, the other team members don’t budge from their positions to help him out. There’s no law saying the shortstop or the left fielder or the whole team can’t move closer to third base to help Ikkyuu defend, is there? Instead they just stay where they are and whine and complain. The pitcher isn’t off the hook either, since he’s throwing balls that are so easy to hit that that the other guys got 10 runs in one inning without really trying. It doesn’t matter if Ikkyuu can’t catch if the enemy can’t hit your pitches, right?

So everybody sucks and I’m annoyed. At the end of the volume Ikkyuu FINALLY managed to catch something and the sides change, which was like PHEW! Obviously it’s going to turn out that this was all part of Coach Iwakaze’s master plan to awaken Ikkyuu’s true powers, blah blah blah, but it’s going to be a while before I return to Ikkyuu-san to find out what happens next. No wonder this series is so much shorter than Mizushima’s other stuff: it’s really, really frustrating!

Gyakkyou Nine volumes 1 & 2 manga review

Yuup, you guessed it! Another baseball manga! I haven’t dropped Ikkyuu-san entirely, but volume 4 was rather boring, so I started something else on my list. I meant to just read a chapter or two for a change of pace, but before I knew it I’d finished the first two volumes of Gyakkyou Nine.

Gyakkyou = adversity. Nine = the nine members of the baseball team. This super hotblooded shounen manga is all about a baseball captain named Fukutsu Toshi (i.e. Indomitable Fighting Spirit) overcoming all kinds of far-fetched trials to keep his team intact and get them to Koshien. First he has to keep his team from disaster long enough so they can face the best team in the prefecture, then later on he has to study hard enough to avoid remedial classes… only to find out that most of his team didn’t pass the exams either… so now he needs to recruit a new team… and then he injures his arm… It just never ends.

NINE_01_058Is it good? So far, it’s definitely amusing. In a trainwreck kind of “Just how bad can it get?!” situation. Everyone reacts in a completely over the top way to the least little problem, and it’s pretty funny somehow. That’s how exaggeration has to be – waaaay beyond the realm of reason, otherwise the reader starts trying to insert some logic into the situation, and then the whole thing falls apart. Kazuhiko Shimamoto avoids that by keeping the manga constantly moving along and making the problems flow thick and fast. At the end of volume 2 Toshi is in yet another pinch: his dream girl asked him out on a date… on the day of his match… and he accepted and ditched the game! How is he going to face his team now? Heh heh, this should be interesting to see.

Despite being a manga about a baseball team captain, Gyakkyou Nine isn’t really a baseball manga, so there isn’t much focus on the game itself. The team does some cursory practice once in a while, and we’ve been shown fragments of a game once or twice, but it’s a manga about a guy who just happens to play baseball, so the sport is just a way to introduce more drama into his life, nothing more. It could be a baseball or a boxing manga without losing much. Which is not to say I hold that against it. It’s a pretty fun and silly manga, and I’ll be taking a break from Ikkyuu-san to finish this off first since it’s only 6 volumes.

Ikkyuu-san volume 3 manga review

Ikkyuu-san is starting to lose steam a bit for me, but most likely volume 3 was the problem and subsequent volumes should be better. Going into the volume I wanted to learn more about Ikkyuu’s background and personality and I also wanted him to get some basic training and learn more about baseball. None of these things have happened. Instead:

– Instead of training with the team, Ikkyuu and his very annoying friend Kurou and some very annoying kids have been doing some very unorthodox training by the riverbank.

– When Ikkyuu and Kurou do show up for regular training, coach Iwakaze just shuffles off and tells everyone to do their own thing.

– We still know nothing about Ikkyuu except his dad sent him to Tokyo with just enough money for a one-way trip. We also learn that he idolizes real-life star Shigeo Nagashima, which is like huh? You know enough about Nagashima to want to be like him and yet you don’t know the first thing about baseball? What, you saw a poster and developed a crush or what?

– Even though Ikkyuu did manage to get some simple training it, it seems he still hasn’t learned the basic rules of baseball. At the end of the volume he doesn’t even know/remember that three outs = a change of sides.

– The love triangle is getting well under way. Pitcher Ootomo likes Reiko, Reiko likes Ikkyuu and Ikkyuu is oblivious to everything except baseball.

The volume ends with the first-string team (with star pitcher Ootomo) facing off against the second-string team. The purpose is supposedly to prove whether coach Iwakaze’s methods were right or not, but most likely the winning coach will take control of both teams since only one can go to Koshien. It will be interesting to see how Ikkyuu’s training has changed him, so I haven’t given up on the manga yet!

Ikkyuu-san volume 2 manga review

Ikkyuu-san is still going strong as of volume 2, but whether this will last till the end of the series or not remains to be seen. I said last time that Ikkyuu’s ‘innocent country boy’ gimmick was getting old, and it most definitely is. The rest of the cast is strong enough that watching their actions and reactions is enjoyment enough, so as long as the focus of the manga stays broad enough we won’t have much of a problem.

The other option would be for Ikkyuu’s personality to gain some much-needed depth. All we know right now is that he’s from the boonies, he somehow managed to grow up as a boy in Japan without even knowing the most basic rules of baseball (?) and he has a sense of justice that comes out as anger when crossed. That’s enough for two volumes, but it’s about time we got to see more to him since the whole series revolves around him.

There’s hope that this might happen though, since volume 2 ended with Ikkyuu’s friend Kurou coming to the ballpark to see him. Ikkyuu is also going to get to meet Reiko, the pretty lady from the last volume who seems to have some sort of relationship with team pitcher Ootomo…? This isn’t an Adachi manga so the non-pitcher actually stands a chance, especially when the manga is named after him. Reiko is as good as ours. So that should help reveal a little more about his background and personality.

With any luck Ikkyuu will also get some basic training in baseball so we don’t have to deal with this “wat is a homerun i dunno duhh’ nonsense any more. It reminds me a bit of Ganbarist Shun where Shun was thrown into a contest without knowing a thing but later became a force to reckon with in the gymnastic world. The parts where he was ignorant were funny, but the show was even better once he did know. I’m hoping that’s what will happen with Ikkyuu-san as well.