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 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.
More baseball manga! This time from the most prolific and best-known baseball manga specialist in Japan, Shinji Mizushima. He’s the author of such long-running titles as Abu-san (107 volumes and counting) and Dokaben (48+52+45+11 and counting volumes), so while you’ll get your fill of baseball with him, some of titles are rather intimidating to pick up. That’s why I decided to start withIkkyuu-san, a relative lightweight at only 14 volumes. So far, so good.
The story so far: Ikkyuu Sanada is a country bumpkin from Shizuoka who knows almost nothing about baseball. Somehow (we haven’t been told exactly why/how yet) he is recruited to join the Kyojin Academy High School baseball team, the best team in Tokyo, and arrives just in time to start as clean-up in a practice game against Jingu University, the best college team in Tokyo. What kind of impact will Ikkyuu have in this clash of giants?
Quite a bit, actually. For one thing, despite his protests to the contrary almost no one believes he’s really a newbie, so all the things he does by accident – catching a ball with his bare hand, standing still at the plate because the ball is too fast – are taken as signs that he’s mocking the other team, which infuriates Jingu to no end. So much so that by the end of volume 1 they’ve taken out all their second-string members and put in the best of the best against the Kyojin team. Will this turn the tide for them? We’ll see in volume 2.
I’m enjoying Ikkyuu-san a lot so far, though his unbelievable “I joined a baseball team without knowing diddly about baseball but somehow I am so good at it” shtick got old after a few chapters. You can only have so many comical misunderstandings about the rules of baseball before the reader starts wanting something a little deeper. That said, it is quite amusing how the more he struggles, the more everyone else in the stadium is convinced that he’s actually a genius who is just playing dumb. Will they ever find out the truth?
So it’s funny in its own way, but even better it’s got lots of baseball action right off the bat. No time is being wasted with background stories and tears and long tirades, or even lengthy training sequences. Both teams are elite from the start, they know what they’re doing out there and they’re getting right down to it.
The results of this match is something of a foregone conclusion (but I won’t spoil) but the author still takes the time to chronicle every at-bat and show the thoughts of the pitcher and batter and sometimes even of those in the dugout and in the crowd. I don’t know if I’d want that for all 14 volumes, but for the first match of the game it’s a great way to get to know the characters.
This was considered a great beauty in 1974
The art might be old, but baseball is still baseball, the rules haven’t really changed and the action is simply drawn but easy to follow. The only thing that seemed outdated was the super-talented transfer students showing up and suddenly dominating the game tropes. I remember there was an arc in Last Inning dedicated to finding a way to circumvent the fact that schools are now banned from using recruited transfer students for a year in official games or something like that. No such problem in Ikkyuu-san, either because the rule had not been made yet or because the transfer students are first-years (I think?) or because this is a practice game, not an official match.
So it looks like volume 1 was spent introducing the major characters (including a girl who will almost certainly become Ikkyuu’s love interest). I’m guessing volumes 2 and 3 will be used to round up this match and then the story, if it exists, will get underway from volume 4 onwards. If the rest of the series lives up to the promise of the beginning, I’ll be reading all the way through with glee.
Now. Now that I’ve got the ‘review’ out of the way, let me just add as aside that Ikkyuu-san really gets my translator juices flowing. It’s something that would be fun to translate because of all the jokes and comments that depend on the kanji used to write something.
Example: Ikkyuu’s name, 一球 is from the baseball phrase 一球入魂 (put your soul into every ball), so the audience say that to cheer for him sometimes. It would be boring to write reams of text explaining all that, but at the same time I wouldn’t want to leave it in romaji. Would I explain it once then use a replacement cheer every time? I can’t just ignore it because he introduces himself that way.
Reiko, stopping giggling and help me think!
Another example: 一休, meaning ‘a short break’ is also pronounced ‘Ikkyuu’, so his team-mates teasingly call him that a few times. Would I fill the bubble with kanji + text, explaining the joke and thus rendering it unfunny? Do I have a choice? Incidentally ‘Ikkyuu’ is also the name of a monk from a Japanese legend as well as a popular cartoon character at the time. That’s referred to a couple of times too, but that wouldn’t be a problem to express.
Example three: At some point a character compares the three transfer students + Ikkyuu to the Three Musketeers plus D’Artagnan. In Japanese Three Musketeers is 三銃士 (sanjuushi) so they change it to 三球士 (sankyuushi) + 一球 = Three ballsketeers + One Ball (Ikkyuu). It works in Japanese but it’s so wordy and unwieldy in English. How best to convey the idea while keeping it interesting? I don’t want to go the ‘copious footnotes’ route. If anything I’d rather translate it away then add a note at the back with all the boring explanations for the people who care. Or, best of all, I’d like to find a pun that works and can be carried all the way through.
But those are just ramblings, it’s not like I’m going to actually do any of this. But it’s fun to speculate sometimes, isn’t it?
Sometimes it comes as a shock when a manga is cancelled. Sometimes it’s more of a mild surprise, because you could see the series declining but you didn’t think it was that bad yet. And then sometimes, as in the case of Watashi no Koshien, you can pinpoint the exact moment when the whole series began to fall apart. Volume 3 is the clearly the beginning of the end for this series, though it will continue to limp along for another two volumes before the merciful end.
To explain I’ll have to spoil a bit so spoiler warning. So, the Kugunari Nine manages to pull of a major upset at the beginning of this volume, defeating Seiryo 2-1. However the coach of the team they’re facing next was watching the game, and he’s picked up on some of pitcher Kouhei’s habits. While they’re practising hard to defeat Kugunari, Kouhei and his troops have let a little success get to their heads and are spending their days singing karaoke and their nights playing video games.
The problem starts after they (predictably) lose by a called game in the 5th. See they didn’t just lose, they also embarrassed coach Wataya in front of her former teammates, and she is mad. How mad? So mad that she orders them to run 40km from the ball park back to the school. You could argue that she didn’t force them – merely told everyone who wouldn’t do it to quit the team. But why does it have to be an either-or thing? And why does it have to be so radical? What is this supposed to change? There are so many things wrong with that scenario. In the end not a single member manages to complete the course.
The parents are naturally outraged and the PTA bans Wataya from coaching the team any more. But here’s the issue. It would be one thing if this was a deconstruction of the hot-blooded shounen training-from-hell genre, but instead the writers actually try to justify Wataya’s behavior! Forcing tired, out-of-shape kids to run 40 km with no food and no water since morning just because they lost a match and embarrassed you? In a tournament they didn’t even want to play but you made them to? And by her own admission Wataya did it because “she was angry” and because “it’s necessary if we want to go go Koshien”!
Now the “My, not Our Koshien” part of the series title starts to come out – it’s Wataya’s dream to go to Koshien again because of her dead buddy. The team members don’t even know about that stuff. Yet they’re the ones who have to play the game, they’re the ones who have to do the training. They’re just her tools, to be kicked around and tossed aside if they don’t work as she desires. To end to the volume she refuses to apologize because “If I apologize then it means I was wrong.” Uh, but you were wrong. “If I apologize then it means I can’t do it again.” Uh… you mean you want to do it again? Yes, yes she does.
And as I said this is all portrayed as right and proper and necessary if the team want to go to Koshien (which, as I said, they don’t). Some of the team members skip school for the next school days, not because they’re sick but because they’ve got a good excuse to. And that is used as justification to claim “See! It wasn’t that bad, was it?” That’s like stabbing someone and seeing him walking the next day and saying “See, being stabbed wasn’t that bad, was it?” It’s not for you to decide! Then the team manager decides she’s going to run the same 40km course, again to prove it wasn’t that bad. Again, that’s not for you to decide!
I suppose Watashi no Koshien could still salvage itself at this point. Maybe Wataya could learn that Koshien isn’t a dream you impose on people but a dream you share with others. And then they’ll all live happily ever after. The writers could also use this as an opportunity to discuss what, if anything, discipline should be administered to a team that loses because they’ve been slacking (but if they win after slacking then it’s a-okay), how much training is too much, what lengths a coach should go to motivate his/her team and other such pertinent questions of that nature. It’s not going to happen though – if it was certain in-story characters wouldn’t be going to such lengths to defend Wataya’s actions.
Honestly I’m not feeling very motivated to continue. But there are only 2 volumes left to the end (cancellation?) so maybe I’ll see it through. I’ll decide later.
Happy New Year! Out with the old, in with the new! Which is why I did my best to finish watching The Irregular at Magic High School before the end of the year. Didn’t want to drag something like that along with me into the new year. Thanks to the regulars at Animesuki Forums, I’ve been given lots of suggestions for good, clean anime to watch this year, so there’s no need to hang on to stuff that’s not working.
So how was the final arc of Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei? Do I need to say it? It was bad. Really bad. The problem with this show, as with many light novel adaptations, is that the writers focused too much on adapting the light novel and not enough on actually creating a good anime. You know how whenever a book is turned into a movie the fans come out of the woodwork screaming about how X was left out and Y was changed, this director is the worst in the world, and so on and so forth? I’ve been guilty of it myself, but that doesn’t mean all changes are necessarily wrong. Sometimes there’s plenty of room for improvement in the original material.
The other problem with the arc was the same one all along: the enemies are really dumb and really weak. It seemed all along that the aim of the evil Great Asia Alliance was the Magic Thesis Competition, but then it turns out that they were actually after the Kanto Magic Headquarters all along.
If that’s the case, why pick a time of the year when security is relatively tight because of the competition? Why pick a date when the most powerful high school students in the country will be gathered a short distance away from your target? And why bother attacking the competition center and other parts of the city instead of throwing your full firepower at your target from the start?
Actually there are a ton of questions left over from that arc. I suspect they wasted far too much time animating unnecessary scenes from the LN (e.g. anything with Honoka, anything with Naotsugu/Shuu, anything with Iso-whatshisname and his girlfriend, the scene with Jiro Marshall, the stuff with the girl that wants revenge, anything with that Zhou-sensei guy since nothing came of it, a hundred other scenes) just to please the fans instead of focusing on telling a logical, coherent story. That’s why the last arc seems so rushed and nonsensical… is the most benign explanation I can come up with.
In the end the day is finally saved by (guess who?) Shiba Tatsuya, dressed to kill in a Venom suit that requires him to thump his crotch repeatedly to fly. Regular watchers of Japanese media might know this already, but the Japanese have funny ideas about what is ‘cool’ and what isn’t. Anyway, Tatsuya eventually blows up the port of Zhenhai and probably the whole city of Ningbo along with it and that’s the end of the evil Chinese invaders, any resemblance to living figures is completely coincidental heh heh heh.
Since Shiba was going to save the day all along and we knew it from the start, why did the writer bother building up the rest of the characters? The cast was entirely too large. If you needed a few students to defend the defenseless, you could have just stuck with Leo, Erika, Saegusa and Watanabe, making room for tighter storytelling and less time-wasting. After all they only really exist to make Tatsuya look good by taking lots of time and effort to do what he can do in a flash. Oh, and to get injured by being stupid just so Tatsuya can show off his l33t healing skills.
The whole thing is muddled even further by the characters lacking any clear, defining attacks. “Everyone can use magic” just makes everyone interchangeable. To the end I still had no clear idea what Saegusa’s magic really was (something about smells?) or what, if anything, glasses girl could do in battle, or what made Kirihara any different from Leo.
…Not that it matters since Tatsuya beats them all anyway, but this was one area where they could have taken a leaf from the better sort of shounen fighting manga. A smaller cast with more clearly-defined roles and abilities would have gone a long way towards making the show easier to enjoy.
Well, that was that. I was warned that The Irregular at Magic High School was rather bad. I refused to listen and I got what I deserved. I’ve seen worse, of course, but I tend to like high-school series and I tend to like fighting series and I tend to like magic series, but when you put them all together and get a complete mess like this? Sad. And this is one area where “the light novel is better!” excuse doesn’t cut it, because the anime did nothing to suggest that or generate any interest in the source material. It didn’t leave any mysteries about what would happen next either (Tatsuya will continue to dominate everyone forever) so I think I’m done here. On to better things!
, 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.
, a relative lightweight at only 14 volumes. So far, so good.
is the clearly the beginning of the end for this series, though it will continue to limp along for another two volumes before the merciful end.
