| Average |
8.7 |
| Animation |
10 |
| Sound |
7 |
| Story |
8 |
| Character |
9 |
| Value |
9 |
| Enjoyment |
9 |
| Mihashi was the bane of his middle school baseball team, refusing to give up the mound despite his slow pitching, making the team unable to win any games. Still in love with pitching but with his meager self-confidence now driven to near non-existence, and wracked with guilt about the injustices he so selfishly forced his middle school team through, Mihashi resolves not to play baseball in high school. Of course, he ends up getting dragged into trying out anyway, where catcher Abe promptly realizes that although Mihashi's pitches are slow, he has amazing accuracy and an 'interesting' fastball. All Mihashi needs to become an amazing pitcher is a catcher with the intelligence and strategy to use his skills to their fullest.
Oofuri is certainly an interesting beast. I'm not sure weather to give it a nod for its fantastic baseball games but rate it down overall for its overwhelming schmaltz, or rate it up all the more since, after all, isn't that what we come to sports series for? We want to see the underdogs struggle and fight, working together, bent to the breaking point with strife, but come through it all, amazing everyone and streaming tears from every eye and sweat from every pore. Well, honestly, I haven't watched too many sports series, and I don't know a single other person who has any attraction to them, but this is my general assumption, anyway. And surely it's possible to have a sports series that can be dramatic without going over the top. But in general, we kind of expect it (or, if sap isn't exactly your thing, take it with a grain of salt) as the default, right?
So I guess the question is, is the sap a bunch of unconvincing cheap shots to get some knee-jerk emotional reaction, or do we buy it and enjoy it? Are the characters likable and intriguing?
The plot, of course, won't tell you. All these things sound the same. But maybe this will: The manga this anime is based off of is a seinen series that won the Tezuka Cultural Award and the Kodansha Manga Award, was apparently voted the most popular baseball manga of all time, over even Touch, with the anime being voted the fourth best anime of 2007 at Yahoo Japan. Ok, so...all signs point to yes? Yes. Yes, I think so.
Shall we do the good impressions first?
Oofuri does a great job with characters. Aside from Abe and Mihashi, there are a few other people on the team who are pretty important, appearing more regularly, but pretty much all the characters on the team seem to have their own personality. They add their own flavor to the interactions, not just appearing as anonymous tools to move the conversation or plot. After giving each character a unique personality, I imagine it must have taken some restraint on the writer's part to not hit us over the head with all the character's fascinating qualities and background information like a lot of series do. Each of the opposing teams who play against the 'heroes' have a handful of extremely likable characters as well. The characters don't change too much, but it seems to be more about watching them interact and getting to know them better. (That, and the pacing is relaxed and one season ends up not spanning much time at all.)
There is no romance in the series, with Abe and Mihashi's catcher/pitcher relationship providing most of the interpersonal drama. Mihashi's overly wimpy attitude can be pretty annoying if you don't like that kind of character, but he does sometimes have a clear minded determination that sets him off a little. Mainly for me, though, Mihashi's saving grace was Abe, who while he finds Mihashi's pitching wonderful and generally comes off as strong, independent, and level-headed guy, he finds Mihashi's personality absolutely insufferable, voicing all the gripes the audience may have with Mihashi and then some. Despite it all, Abe pretty much saddles himself with the job of emotionally babysitting Mihashi. The two can be in turns so entirely on the same wavelength it verges on touching, and so completely horrible at interpreting one another's thoughts and feelings it's laughable. They are endearingly dysfunctional. The road to them not driving one another near insanity with worry, annoyance, or fright seems to be a long one, but we get the feeling they are plodding slowly towards it.
As for the games, I can't really comment too much since I don't know a lot about baseball. I don't think understanding all the baseball talk is necessary, though I did find actually trying to understand it made the game even more interesting. The vocabulary is easy to pick up or remember after a one-time look up, but often my mind just needed a little more time to process what was just said than was given. This is of course easier with a manga, but those not used to hearing baseball talk but who want to understand everything for a little extra fun might find themselves pausing now and then. The pacing and tension is wonderful either way, and while you may have some guesses about how a game will turn out, you'd never want to place any bets on how an inning or an at bat will turn out in this series.
Though Oofuri may seem rather juvenile to be called seinen, I think that impression is understandable but mistaken. I haven't read/watched much seinen, but I was expecting a more 'grown up,' less black and white world. Oofuri didn't really give that, besides making the opposing teams likable. However, it does focus more on reaching a goal as a team than shounen series which clearly favor the importance of the main character. The characters are (mostly ^_^;) unbelievably innocent and supportive of one another. It's clearly an idealization of youth, to a warm and fuzzy extent I don't think you'd usually see in a shounen manga. The pacing is also steady but a little slow for a show if it were aimed at children (Guess how long the second baseball game takes? ...I won't give you the answer, though. You really don't want to know.)
So what's not to like? If you hadn't guessed from reading about Mihashi and Abe, Oofuri panders to the yaoi fangirls like no other. Mind, I'm one of them so this ostensibly should be good. But actually, upon first watching Oofuri, I despised it. The main characters had <i>yaoi voices</i>. A deep voiced seme and a wimpy voiced uke. They were obsessed with one another. They held hands all the time. They had a teary-eyed “I like you!!” confession alone in the bushes within the first few episodes. Much as I like slash, this was TOO MUCH. It was laughable, but not even in a fun way, since I had been so much expecting a respectable series. But fine, I was ready to ignore the slash, but besides that the whole series seemed stupid and shallow. The games were pretty good, but the characters' exaggeratedly yaoi-like personalities flattened them out to me beyond any psychological believability.
Seem a little different than what I said before? Yeah. I couldn't figure out why anyone but yaoi fans would like it. So I read the manga. And it was almost exactly the same. With worse art. And I loved it.
What gives? Looking around at other's reactions to the show, it seems like males aren't as bothered by the 'omg u r THIS close to watching YAOI' vibe I was getting. I think in the end, my main problem was the clear seme/uke relationship between Abe and Mihashi. I find such characters in yaoi to often be hollow archetypes and nothing more, and so I immediately wrote Abe and Mihashi off as just that. The voices drove the point home especially. Without them, the emotions in the series are still pretty soap operatic, but they felt more honest. The schmaltz level was still high for me, even for a sports series I was excepting it from, but I could enjoy it a lot more. And then, after reading the manga and going back and watching the anime, I didn't hate it any more either. I enjoyed it almost as much as the manga. Those not used to yaoi may just be able to look past this point. But it might be worth noting for those who will notice it, so that you may brace yourself (or look forward to it, as the case may be ^_^).
I admit I still do feel bad giving this series too high a score, much as I enjoy it now. In the end, I do think the that the emotions can be schmaltzy to a fault, and the beginning may feel weaker to some as they get used to it. But if you aren't bothered by that, or if you can get over it, you might find they aren't as cheap or untrue as you'd expect, either. Personally, I think the overdone drama of Abe and Mihashi's relationship takes some of the punch that a little more subtlety might have lent it, but that doesn't completely rob it of its touching and amusing qualities. With some great supporting characters, all handled wonderfully, and ball games that are almost worth watching the whole thing for regardless, Oofuri is probably worth trying if it looks at all interesting to you. And mind, glancing at other reviews elsewhere, while it isn't as widely watched here as it is in Japan, I think I've just written the most negative review of Oofuri I've ever seen. ^_^ It's just that well loved.
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