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Otouto Catcher Ore Pitcher de! volume 1 manga review

Mais oui, of course I’m still reading Japanese baseball manga. Ikkyuu-san was a bit of a failure, so I’m reading something more recent now. Otouto Catcher Ore Pitcher de! by Shinji Tonaka started running 2008 and up to 18 volumes and counting. I usually avoid ongoing series because then you get to the end and you’re like WHERE’S VOLUME 19?!! but every rule is meant to be broken once in a while.

The main characters are Ichiya Touma and his younger brother Yoshi. They were a feared pitcher-catcher combo in middle school, but their parents’ divorce forced them to split up. Two years later Ichiya returns from Mongolia to try and reform the Touma battery only to find out his brother Yoshi has turned into a fierce delinquent who absolutely hates baseball! Whatever happened to Yoshi? Will they ever play together again?

Uh, the series has 18 volumes so it’s safe to say the answer is “Yes.” I’ll avoid spoiling what happened to turn Yoshi bad, but by the end of volume 1 he’s slowly (very slowly) rediscovering his love for baseball and starting to (slightly) open up to his team mates.

Not much happens in the first volume since it’s mainly an introduction to the team as well as a chance to get the obligatory “Main character’s team takes on the strongest team in the prefecture” match out of the way. Almost all baseball manga series have at least one such battle, usually in the first 5 volumes or so. I won’t tell you the outcome of this one either. I can’t spoil everything all the time.

My impressions on Otouto Catcher Ore Pitcher de! after one volume? I’m not exactly raring to read the rest, but it’s a definite diamond in the rough. The chief attraction is the cheerful, silly, irrepressible personality of Ichiya, who regularly takes a licking from his brother Yoshi and comes back for more. His love for baseball and desire to keep pitching is also rather infectious. I hope they don’t turn him into the serious, angsty type before too long. There are too many such pitchers in baseball manga.

Apart from Ichiya, the other characters didn’t make much of an impression. To be honest I couldn’t even tell most of them apart, they all looked so similar. Most sports manga at least make an effort to give the main characters unique designs, but Ichiya and Yoshi look just like everyone else. I usually have to read their lines to try and figure out who said what. By the end of vol 1 I think I can recognize the Touma siblings on sight. The team captain has dark skin so I can tell him apart too. Everyone else is just so much ink on paper.

I don’t think too much of the baseball action so far. It hasn’t really been about the baseball anyway. More focus is on getting Yoshi to be the catcher so Ichiya can use his full strength pitching. Yoshi isn’t a particularly good catcher and Ichiya isn’t that good a pitcher, but both of them have been out of practice for 2 years so we can look forward to better things from them in later volumes.

I’ll be reading this slowly on and off and giving my thoughts here and there from time to time. Will I make it all the way to volume 18 or will Shinji Tonaka ruin the series long before that? Stay tuned to find out!

Tonari no Seki-kun anime review

Tonari no Seki-kun is an episodic 24-episode anime about a girl named Yokoi and the inventive boy named Seki who sits by her in class and constantly distracts her with his games. And I don’t mean Nintendo games either, this is far more interesting than that. In episode one he builds an intricate domino setup using more erasers than any schoolboy should normally possess. In several other episodes he plays his own unique versions of chess, shogi and go.

In the early episodes Yokoi always trying to stay aloof from his games and focus on her lessons, only to find herself drawn in against herself. By the end of the show she is an active participant more often than not and seems to get into the games more than Seki himself does. It’s a convincing little bit of character development, where Yokoi learns to be a little less uptight and more playful and imaginative. Or you could look at it negatively and say she has been infected with Seki’s lack of seriousness and has lost sight of what she really goes to school for etc etc but I’m going to look at the bright side for once.

Because the games Seki plays vary with the episode, episode quality tends to go up and down as well. Some of them, like the robot family and the shogi pieces, show up a couple of times so they stick in the mind easily. Others are pretty forgettable and are a yawn to sit through even though each episode is only about 13 minutes long. I’d list some examples, but I’ve forgotten them. The funny episodes are funny, the heartwarming episodes are heartwarming and the boring ones are just meh. At least they’re over soon.

The ending theme is funky, the opening theme is catchy and the background music doesn’t get in the way. The art is rather simplistic compared to other contemporary shows and there isn’t much animation to speak of, but it’s not a very ‘action’ kind of show so it isn’t that noticeable. There’s almost no objectionable content in this show except in the feverish imaginings of one side character who only shows up once or twice. It never made me laugh or cry, but it was an above-average show in general. The endless inventiveness of Seki always kept me on my toes, at least.

I recommend you do like I did and watch just an episode or two a day to keep things fresh. Otherwise Yokoi can get a bit annoying as she just keeps panicking and won’t shut up. A good but not great show.

No Game No Life anime review

File this one under “Stuff I watched and now I’m sorry I did.” In theory No Game No Life contains a lot of elements I like in an anime, including a fantasy world, invincible protagonists, and the whole “thrown into another world” trope.

The problem is, this time it comes mixed with main characters I don’t like and can’t root for, plus a whole lot of over the top fanservice, plus an inconclusive final ending because the light novel series is still going. This is why I normally stay away from light novel adaptations. It’s just getting harder and harder to do so because there’s just so many of them these days.

The story according to Wikipedia:

Sora and Shiro are two hikikomori step-siblings who are known in the online gaming world as Blank, an undefeated group of gamers. One day, they are challenged to a game of chess by Tet, a god from another reality. The two are victorious and are offered to live in a world called Disboard that centers around games. There, a spell known as the Ten Pledges prevents violence and enforces the rules and outcomes of games. The two travel to Elkia, the nation inhabited by humans. They participate in a tournament to determine the next ruler; after winning the crown, their next goal is to conquer all sixteen species in order to challenge Tet to a game.

But by the time the anime ends, they’ve only conquered one other species in addition to the humans. It was okay when they were fighting to help the people of Elkia, but the whole “beat everyone so we can play with Tet” thing is kind of hard to get behind. Okay you’re bored with life, we get that. Okay you think you’re smarter than everyone, we get that too. But that doesn’t mean we have to like you.

Apart from the sketchy motivations of the protagonists, No Game No Life also suffers from the problem that tends to plague most Overpowered Protagonist anime shows – a complete lack of competent opponents. Sure the show states right away that Blank never loses, but no one even gives them a hard time – except maybe the living chess game, but even that was very brief and possibly feigned.

Slightly higher-res than the featured image

Even when they seem to be in trouble like in the last game, they’ve actually thought 200 steps ahead. “Haha! I went behind you going behind me going behind you!” It was pretty obvious too, since butt monkey Steph had completely disappeared even though we knew she was going to play a part in how things worked out, etc. That’s a bad thing, because the fun of Overpowered Protagonist shows is figuring out how they’re going to win, so when the enemies are far below their level and you know how things are going to play out then, welp, what are you watching for? Thank goodness it was only 12 episodes, that’s all I’ve got to say.

So to recap my opinion of No Game No Life, I liked the setting and the premise, disliked the protagonists, was disappointed by the low level of the opponents faced and absolutely abhorred the over-the-top fanservice. I’m sorry I pushed through the vulgarity in the hopes of getting a good show and ended up with just an average one. At this point I don’t even care how it ends, I’m just glad to be done with it. Next time I’ll note the early warning signs and avoid, avoid, avoid.

Hetalia: Axis Powers volume 1 impressions

I’m calling it ‘impressions’ because I only read about half of Hetalia: Axis Powers volume 1 before dropping it. Cute art I like, whitewashed history not so much, and series where a doofus makes a nuisance of himself I just can’t stand.

The gimmick behind Hetalia is anthropomorphized world powers like Germany, Italy and Japan all hanging out together and totally not fighting a war in which millions died (same with USA, England, France, etc). Since the author is not interested in depicting the war with any semblance of reality, it follows that the characters don’t have much to do except sit around and bicker all day, showing off stereotypical traits of their respective nations (e.g. France and Italy are ladies men, Germany is strict, etc) and making unfunny jokes… wait, were there any jokes at all? It’s supposed to be a comedy so I’m assuming there were jokes, but I don’t actually remember any, or any amusing situations either. It’s just the same pattern over and over again: Italy does something stupid and Germany or someone else reacts in exasperation. Rinse and repeat until the reader runs out of patience.

If you like bokke-tsukkomi/Straight Man & Funny Man kind of humor, maybe Hetalia might be your cup of tea, I dunno. Personally I suspect the series’ popularity is just because it came along at a time when the whole yaoi fangirl boom was taking off and yaoi fangirls were looking for something to yaoi fangirl over, Right series at the right time, kind of thing. Even then I dunno, what with the chicken-scratch art and the identical-looking characters, what’s so special about this? Fangirls gonna fangirl, I guess. Apart from that I don’t know what anyone sees in this manga. Insta-dropped.

Gyakkyou Nine volumes 5 & 6 manga review (ending spoilers)

It’s been a while since I finished a series that was longer than 1 volume long ^.^ And it’s probably been even longer since that ending was an actual good one. Of course given the nature and message of the series, the ending of Gyakkyou Nine was a given from the start, but the whole point was to see them overcoming all kinds of challenges and adverse conditions on their way to victory.

It seems like the author had to overcome some sort of adversity himself around the volume 5 point, because both the art and the story took a sudden nosedive in quality. It’s pretty obvious he’s cutting corners in a lot of places, and a lot of the characters – Fukutsu Toshi in particular – look seriously off-model half the time. Things improved somewhat in volume 6 (or my eyes got used to it). Note that Toshi cuts his trademark hair at the start of the volume!! It’s really weird seeing him without the hair, but like all other things I adjusted.

Story – volume 5 can pretty much be skipped IMO. Naturally Toshi fights back against all odds to take the team through to Koshien. The only thing worth noting is that Sakakibara-sensei leaves, since he was originally a substitute teacher to begin with, and the original useless club adviser comes back. The only reason to note this is so you don’t get confused when you see some blonde bimbo in volume 6.

Most of volume 6 has the Zenryoku 9 blowing away all their opponents thanks to Fukutsu’s unhittable ‘otokodama’ pitch. But it isn’t Gyakkyou Nine without a final challenge, is it? And so disaster strikes! Right before the finals! Fukutsu fends off a final approach from Kuwabara-chan only to run into the opposing pitcher Muteki, who is like him in every way, but better. And he has an ‘otokodama’ too! And they’re being coached by Sakakibara-sensei, who has told them all the weaknesses of the Zenryoku Nine!

But it gets even worse when the taxi Fukutsu is riding in collides with a truck and is totaled right before the game. I was afraid Shimamoto might pull an Adachi and kill off his hero for the tearz, but luckily Fukutsu survives… with amnesia! Can any team possibly pull a win out of these impossible odds?!!!

Haha, if you’re still wondering at this point then you haven’t been reading the same series I have. It’s pretty cool how at the very, very end, the final adversary Fukutsu and the team have to conquer is ‘Adversity’ itself. Fight on, team! Makeru na!

Now it’s done my final thoughts on Gyakkyou Nine are highly positive, the slowdown in volume 5 notwithstanding. The earlier volumes are the best because the team faces the greatest challenge then – their sucky selves. Once they become a team that’s actually good, the problems they face become ever more far-fetched and the hot-blooded speeches ever more long-winded. It’s still fun to root for them and see how they resolve situations, and the series is pretty good from start to finish.

As a baseball series… well, this isn’t really a baseball series. It would work almost as well with just about any other team sport, so there isn’t much focus on the actual play-by-play aspect of the game. But it’s plain to see what the point of the series is from the very first chapter, so no complaints here. Gyakkyou Nine is a good series. If you can’t find the manga, there’s a 2005 movie which is supposed to be very funny. Either way I recommend the series.