Ranked #89

One Outs

So, One Outs is an anime about sports, right? Hell no! Its about Tokuchi owning everyone and kicking their asses! Its very similar to Akagi, so if you enjoyed that the chances are VERY slim that you wont enjoy this one as well!

Story
Well, the story itself isnt really anything special, Its about Tokuchi Toua who is a genius pitcher. He kinda gets forced to join the lowly ranked Lycaons baseball team. Of course his goal is to make their team start winning their matches. So the basic story is pretty ordinary as you can see, but there are two things that makes the whole thing a lot more interesting. The first is how the matches are played. The Lycaons opponents always have better players overall, or some kind of ace up their sleeve and one team is even cheating. Now its Tokuchis job to destroy these opponents using his brilliant mind. Thats right, One Outs is actually more about strategies and mind games than actuall baseball.

The second twist is that Tokuchi gets 5 000 000 yen for every out he pitches, but loses 50 000 000 yen for every point he gives up. And the Lycaons manager cares more about making money out of Tokuchi than winning the actuall games, so he tries to make his own team lose! So outsmarting the other teams is not enough for Tokuchi, he has to fight on two fronts also preventing the manager from ruining the games with his interference. This puts Tokuchi in all kinds of impossible situations, but he always succeeds in coming up with a counter-strategy, and watching this is a blast! The best part is that all of Tokuchis strategies makes perfect sense after they are explained! You never feel like the creators are cheating and leaving out unexplained or logically invalid bits and pieces.

Art
Not a particularly interesting point. Its good, it does the job, it doesnt bother you.

Sound
Not that this matters or affects the score in anyway, but Ill still say it: The OP was pretty good, I actually watched it which I often dont. But of course the important stuff is the bgm and the voices. And well, I have no complaints, they were both very good. The music fit in great with the intense and exciting atmosphere.

Character
Ok, Tokuchi himself is awesome. He is one of the most badass characters ever. Nothing ever fazes him. Even if the situation is looking extremely bad he still remains cold and calculating, soon to be delivering his new plan that will eliminate all his obstacles. The thing is that the other characters are not even half as interesting. They are either tools for him to use, or obstacles for him to completely destroy, using these tools. And thats pretty much it. Of course it doesnt really matter seeing how the point of the show is watching when Tokuchi kicks ass.

Enjoyment
This show never really gets boring. You know Tokuchi is always going to win, but it doesnt matter, because seeing him in action is just too freakin awesome. Also, finding out HOW he will to get out of all the imossible situations and what kind of strategies he comes up with, is another important part. The only complaint here is that it is a bit slow sometimes, but you get so caught up in it that it doesnt really matter at all.

So, One Outs is a show about mind games and tricks more than baseball, and if you like that kind of stuff you must try this one. And yeah, if you like badass characters owning everyone then thats another reason to watch this. Even if you dont give it a try, because its awesome! read more

Oh boy, where to start. Well, to begin, if you enjoyed Kaiji and/or Akagi, you can stop reading this right now and go watch this show. If not, well, let's get down to it. One Outs is essentially a gambling show revolving around baseball. This would seem boring normally but the production team is apparently able to make even rock-paper-scissors exciting, so baseball can't be too bad. Though a generic sports anime on the surface, it shines in its characters and extremely unique approach to creating suspense. Hell, there's an episode where both teams have to LOSE the game in order to WIN it. It's only 11 episodes in so far but it's by far my favorite show this season. Go watch it. read more

One Outs is a sports anime based on the long-running manga of the same title by Shinobu Kaitani, one of my absolute favorite manga artists. To call One Outs a sports anime is a little misleading. While it does revolve around a baseball team, the anime is more concerned with the psychological workings of its main character, Tokuchi Toa.

Tokuchi is a gambler by nature. At night, he can be found playing a very popular game called One Outs with a platoon of stationed American soldiers. The rules of the game are simple: pitcher versus batter. If the pitcher manages to strike out the batter or make the batter hit the ball within the infield, the pitcher wins. If the batter manages to hit the ball outside of the infield, the batter wins. People place bets on either the pitcher or the batter, and major money is on the line.

Tokuchi is always the pitcher.

Always.

And he’s remarkably good. While he only pitches roughly 75 mph (slow in comparison to most major league pitchers), his record is practically flawless. He strikes out batters like nobody’s business and is an arrogant prick about it too.

Enter Hiromichi Kojima, a famous major league baseball player in Japan comparable to Sammy Sosa out here in the States. However, in all his long years of playing baseball with Lycaons (a fictional baseball team) he’s never won the championship, despite his individual prowess on the field.

Kojima challenges Tokuchi to a game of One Outs with “their arms” on the line. If Tokuchi wins, Kojima will give him a ridiculous amount of money. And if Tokuchi wins, Kojima gets Tokuchi’s arm. Tokuchi Toua will be forced to join the Lycaons.

Now I bet you can all guess that Tokuchi loses. After all, the show would be pretty damn boring if Tokuchi won a butt load of money and went off to buy a yacht or whatever. So now Tokuchi has been thrust into the world of professional baseball and is pitching for the Lycaons.

The main device of this story, however, is Tokuchi’s contract with the crooked manager. Tokuchi believes in merit equaling pay-out. To that end, he sets up this deal:

“For every batter I get out, I get 5,000,000 yen. But for every run I allow, I pay you 50,000,000 yen.”

The manager thinks he’s struck gold when it comes to this dumb rookie pitcher. But Tokuchi’s skills prove otherwise, and the manager has to think of dastardly ways to take down the miracle newbie.

The show follows Tokuchi’s adventures with Lycaons baseball team as he tries to protect his yearly salary and make a killing in the ultimate gamble. He comes up against a variety of tough opponents, each one needing to be outwitted or outplayed.

One Outs is an interesting series to swallow. First of all, you don’t necessarily need to like baseball to like this show. In fact, if you’re a baseball fan, you may find this show hard to stomach at first. (I know I did.) There are things about the way these guys play baseball that is just not realistic. In fact, some stuff is just plain ridiculous. But if you ignore the glaring flaws when it comes to the baseball logistics, you can actually really enjoy yourself.

Tokuchi is an interesting main character. Not necessarily likeable, as he pretty much is entirely self-driven and seems to only care about money. Still, his selfish motives end up helping a lot of other people out indirectly, so you can forgive him for that. He’s also disturbingly anti-social and kinda scary to look at. However, he is just a bit of a genius, and watching him take out his opponents one by one is both frightening and exhilarating.

The supporting characters are somewhat well done. Unfortunately, most of the time, they exist to simply explain Tokuchi’s genius and stare dumbfounded at just how damn smart he is. Kojima is redeemable in the fact that he’s the only one on the team who doesn’t positively fanboy over Tokuchi.

Ideguchi, the catcher, is another story. He’s pretty much Tokuchi’s number one fan, and while he’s certainly likeable (rookie catcher = kinda adorable), he hardly ever gets to do anything cool himself. Most of the time, he’s just following Tokuchi’s instructions. Then again, he arguably becomes Tokuchi’s best friend on the team (catcher and pitcher relationship for the win!) and you forgive him his initial ignorance as he matures and wises up over the course of the show.

There are few characters who are purely comic relief, but they do it well, especially considering the main character of the show is about as funny as a petting zoo catching on fire. After so much “bazball iz seriuz bzness!” you need a bit of a break, and these guys provide it just fine.

Tokuchi’s opponents are actually very well done. They’re not complete dopes at all. In fact, most of them are quite skilled and give Tokuchi a real problem to work his way out of. I wish the final opponent had been a bit more threatening and epic, but eh, twenty five episode anime is twenty five episodes.

The OST is generally pretty good, although the opening and ending themes leave something to be desired. The actual BG music in the show is pretty good though. I wouldn’t mind DLing it and giving it another listen for nostalgia’s sake.

Unfortunately, the anime becomes very “villain of the week-ish” after Tokuchi joins the Lycaons. Don’t get me wrong, the baseball games last more than one episode – in fact, some can span as many as five or six. But the formula is more or less the same for every single opponent and Tokuchi never really grows as a character. In fact, no one really grows that much. The Lycaons decide they actually want to win, but other than that, no single character really discovers anything about themselves. The main device of the plot is Tokuchi and his money. Which can get a little old after awhile.

Visually, the anime is pretty stunning. It followed Kaitani-sensei’s original designs pretty well, adding in a bit more detail and attractive coloring to make a generally great looking show.

The anime, unfortunately, is only one season long and cuts off before the original manga ended. So the ending is not exactly unsatisfying, but incomplete. Sports animes should end with the team winning the god damn championship. That’s how it works. Unfortunately, time constraints meant that this anime would have to settle for ending after a semi-important game.

Overall, One Outs is one of those shows that you watch purely for fun. If you enjoy puzzles/psychological thrillers/sports/blonds, then you’ll probably enjoy this show. I’m a fan of sports anime and of psychological stuff, so this one was a winner in terms of enjoyment for me. Is this one of my favorite animes? Eh, not really. But it was fun while it lasted. But having a main character who is hard to relate to can isolate audiences. If you can’t find a reason to like Tokuchi, you won’t like this show.

But I do like Tokuchi. It’s fun watching him pick apart his opponents’ psyches. So I really did enjoy One Outs.

Overall: 8/10

(But the OP really is ridiculous.) read more

When i first saw the poster & i saw baseball i was like hell no i wont watch it. But then since i liked kaiji i said ill give it a try. I was totally shocked that i couldn`t stop watching it. It`s so damn interesting. Makes you want to watch every episode & the way of the game & the way of how the game is going is soo amazing. It doesn`t make it as a normal baseball game. It consist of gambling & predicting.
I really love the way of the story it has a lot of mystery that makes you feel like WOW!
So you should really give it a try & watch at the least the first episode & check it you will like it.
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Okay so ill summarize what this show is in two words, "PSYCHOLOGICAL BATTLES!".

The main character is a pitcher, but not in the way other baseball pitchers are. His fastest pitch is only about the speed a high school pitcher throws, and he doesn't throw super crazy unrealistic pitches either that like movie with his mind or anything.

What he basically does is play mind games against each and every one of his opponents. He throws the pitch you plan to not swing at, but then when you plan to swing at it, he throws the pitch you wont. Its almost that simple, but then again its way more complex.

The story is, this pitcher using his abilities to play in the majors in japan, but not being paid an annual salary like everyone else, instead he turns the whole game into a gambling match. He gains money for each out he gets, and loses money for each run he gives up. The big catch is, the amount he loses for a run much much higher then what he gets from an out.

The show is especially good, because you don't hear the plans from the main characters mind, but you hear the thoughts of the victims. So the whole time you feel as if you are a part of the struggle to get a hit off this pitcher that is playing mind games with everyone. Ill tell you right now, you may think you and your team are winning the battle, but in reality you are sinking in a deep mental trap and are losing the war.

If you like shows like Death Note, Code Geass, Kaiji and others that have a psychological aspect that feels a lot like intense action, you will like this show and be eager for another season of it.

If you like my review you can add me to MAL friends. This is my second review : )

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As stated several times One outs is a baseball version of Kaiji, for the people who don't know Kaiji its all about extremely complicated bets, with a little glimpse into the darker nature of men.

The strategies used in the game are extremely convoluted and cannot be easily figured out, the viewer only figures out when the show gives enough clues and thats the main appeal of the show. The episodes also end with cliffhangers to make you watch the next episode, this is common in most sports/shonens but in this case the focus is so big on the gambling the cliffhangers are poorly written and can actually frustrate the viewer. The extremely complex gambles and tricks can also cause some frustration, even if you figure out part of it, theres always something else, it drags so long it becomes tiring following all the events sometimes.

The story is often bend, specially in time, to advance quickly parts or even entire games that dont matter to the gambles, as result the characterization is mostly nonexistant, with the exception of the two main characters, but even so, we dont know much about who they are, just their current situation, everyone else just gets stapled with common concepts like: the big brute guy, the chicken manager, or the ruthless greedy owner of the club.

Overall the show is interesting and a good watch, the biggest flaw is the complete focus on the gamble, if you dont like it the rest is quite bad, the flaws I mentioned among others will throw the viewers out.
Finally the ending is rushed and obviously calls for a second season. Once again more episodes will just keep focusing on gambles becoming boring, a trait Kaiji also shared.
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Shikamaru (from Naruto) playing Baseball!!!

Characters is wat makes an anime and these people are no joke.

Art is clean ansuitable.

OP was kinda weird but can grow on you.

Cliff hangres drive u from 1 ep to the next!!

I was jjuust minding my own business when a couple of my friends walked into my place and started watching this series to get one of our friends to witness A GREAT ANIMe!

This show is Mad skilled unorthadox gAmbling in a nut shell!!
The music is faine but doestn do much for the anime to make it remarkable.
The characters are the strng point of this series.

The art stye isnt anything special.

This is a very good anime!

The plot is very interesting and draws you in!

At first when I thought it was about baseball I didn't feel motivated to watch it, but when I did, I definitely didn't regret.

The characters in the story are very good and indepth. Great character construction!

The main guy is really interesting to watch, he's as good as L! At thinking that is...

To be honest I was not expecting much out of this anime when I started and ended up getting a masterpiece. I don't believe there has ever been a sports anime like one outs.It mixes gambling and strategy with baseball to come up with something totally new. The main character is a freaking genious. If you love seeing people getting totally outsmarted and assholes getting what they deserve than this anime is totally for you!