As you can see from the cover, the title is actually Watashi no Minna no Koshien (私のみんなの甲子園), i.e. Our My Koshien. The main character (?) is putting the “I” back in team by whipping a reluctant team of misfits back into shape to fulfill her dream of taking her school team back to Koshien once again.
It’s like this: Shihono Wataya was the manager of a high school baseball team that made it to Koshien once. After being eliminated they all swore to make it back there again but never did. At some point in time the team pitcher and ace (and Shinono’s boyfriend?) died. 10 years later Shihono gets her hands on a baseball that contains the ghost of the dead pitcher. This prompts her to become a substitute PE teacher at her old school + the baseball club’s coach. Said baseball club has really gone to seed, so it’s her job to get them fired up and ready to go again.
…Which she achieves rather easily in a few short chapters. Though I guess it shouldn’t be too surprising – anyone who would join a baseball team in the first place is at least moderately interested in playing the sport, Even their new pitcher Kouhei, who moved from Tokyo out to the boonies because he was allergic to the word “Koshien” (it’s a long story) gets with the program really quickly. As with most manga pitchers he’s also a highly-talented diamond in the rough who just needed a bit of molding.
Watashi no Koshien Volume 1 
So far the team of Ken Kawasaki (author) and Youji Kamada (artist) are doing a good job of making both the story and the action simple and easy to follow. The art and character designs are very well done, very “seinen-looking” a term that probably only makes sense to me, but it’s a style that makes me think immediately of dramatic seinen manga whenever I see it. I may have read something else by Kamada before. The only thing I can fault him for is that his backgrounds are a bit flat, as the page I posted shows, but since sports manga is more about what goes on in the foreground between characters I guess we can let it slide.
The cast is small, characters who should stand out do stand out (catcher, pitcher, two others) and the rest are clearly relegated to nameless fodder so we don’t waste brain power trying to remember their names. Contrast that to something like Big Windup! where it took nearly the whole show (season 2 included) to learn who was who.
It’s only volume 1 of 5, so it can be forgiven for being a little sparse on content as well. No great rival has shown up, no real problems have cropped up, everyone’s working hard and getting along nicely. So there isn’t much to say about Watashi no Koshien at this point except it has nice art and the story seems quite promising. Will the team make it Koshien where so many other baseball manga teams have failed? I will find out and tell you in due season.
was a laughable affair, with some of the stupidest terrorists I’ve ever seen in my life. So you want to break into the school and steal their secrets? Why do it in broad daylight when nearly all the students are present? Why not go in at night when there’s only security and maybe a few stragglers to dispose of? And once their attack on the school failed, why would they all stay huddled together in one building waiting to be taken out by anyone who cared to do it? Why not disperse and regroup later? Since they were so dumb, Tatsuya gets no points for taking them out.
I hope to be able to review the rest of the series, though I’ll do my best not to spoil the subsequent story because this is something that’s more fun to read for yourself.
‘ that won an award and 
. A law drama doesn’t seem like my sort of thing, but now I have enough faith in his powers of characterization that I’m thinking of giving it a try someday.
(乱入甲子園ファウル) is a seinen high school baseball manga by Hideo Iura. It tells the tale of Naoto Yoshimura, a naive high school freshman who joins his high school baseball team in the hopes of making it to Koshien. Why? Because of a girl. There’s only one small problem: the Irokawa High baseball team is filled with cranks and weirdos of every shape and form. Do they stand a chance in hell?
) because it’s funny and interesting stuff and I particularly like the characters. In most baseball manga everyone feels like an extra except the main character and one or two others, but even though it’s so short everyone in Rannyuu Koshien Foul (except one who is supposed to be overlooked) gets plenty of time in the spotlight.