Tamayomi

As of last year I have become a big fan of sports anime! The passion, the drive to move on when your at your limit, the speeches about friendship/hardwork/not giving up, the budding friendship between team members, and just how amped it gets me to want to better myself like they do!

A good sports anime can put my butt in gear fast!!!!

Now, I say this with a heavy heart filled with disappointment, this anime sucks so fucking hard. The story is predictable which many sports anime are so that's fair. But the story is also very boring and doesn't hold a candle of ... passion compared to most sports anime.

The characters are all one dimensional and just uninteresting to watch. They play their roles in the game but nothing leads me to care about one more than the other in any scenario.

And then we talk about the animation. Awful 2-3 minute segments of them being in 3d for no reason occur every episode. Its just vile. One minute you have mediocre traditional anime and then the next you have this nasty 3d nonsense just out of the blue. Its just bad.

This anime was not for me at all and I will tell my friends to stay clear of it. Its just not worth someone's time.

<3

Being the first show to go out with a "bang" with *yet* another paltry season, I will say this: this formula has been done time and time again, and apparently Japan LOVES anything when it comes to sports, especially baseball (since it's the talking point of the Japanese that extends to its rich history). So when I sat down to watch this show for the first time...ohmygawd. The memories of watching Hachigatsu no Cinderella Nine flashes me back to really average shows that don't make a ton of sense adapting into an anime (save for the Major franchise, which still IS the best representation for ... baseball anime of all time).

Don't get me wrong, I DO love any CGDCT series that have unique twists with their plot, but Tamayomi here...just proves that the only thing going for it is basically what Cinderella Nine had in its plot (just copy-pasted over): character development and traits that make each and every team member stand out in both skill and personality. Cinderella Nine had 9 members (it's in the name), and Tamayomi had 10 (because an extra player is always the best exposed-but-unwritten strategies against better-skilled opponents).

In the meantime, I'll take this chance to just say that you've never heard of Mountain Pukuichi before, she made short stories, albeit Yuri-ish ones (that's where the Tama x Yomi ship has been sailing, and since it's in the title name anyways that flexes the stand-out). But the outlier is scriptwriter Touko Machida, whose works have always been little hits and as much misses under her direction, and Tamayomi adds a +1 onto the "miss" section. To quote somebody: "It feels like you've watched nothing but you've watched something."

As I wonder to myself, if this was just a carbon copy of Cinderella Nine, how bad could it be? I mean, girls with thicc thighs and asses playing baseball is a nice twist onto the overly male-sexualised preferred cast is always a visual treat. Oh, and also the various girlish teammates that are the "same same but different" cliché troupe that always are a fun twist to break off the monotonous feelings when baseball isn't the centerpiece. I reiterate again, all these aren't great, but aren't bad. And just for the record, please do away with make-believe characters that are always a chore to watch and sit through.

And the derogatory award goes to studio A-CAT for making stale animation, and sprinkling in the poor artwork with 3DCG (which in defense, was overly repetitious, but not as bad as you might think, just mediocre). Definitely never have heard of this low-budget studio, but the works they churned out definitely spoke for themselves. It was a horrendous start (not to mention Episode 4's "greatness" of shoddy unchecked work done) that eventually was a "sacrificial lamb" to get to the end point. Point is, less action, less repeats, but with smeared mediocrity across the board.

Sound-wise, it was pretty decent though. The OP was very meh, but I did like the ED from the baseball girls as a whole team together in unison, that was really nice. Not to mention the background music was filled with both easiness and tenacity when scenes are called for it. One of the better aspects of the show IMO.

Despite this show being a turn-off, I'd come out to say that while it was a nice relaxing watch, it's just plain-ish decent-to-poor. Maybe I should say that if you're a serious watcher, then this show is definitely not for you. But if you're looking for a show to just watch "girls just wanna have fun" antics, then I can recommend this...to just binge it one-way through and forget about it as soon as you're done.

Before I begin, I should put out a disclaimer that I do not play or watch baseball at all or am completely familiar with its rules. That said, I believe that if a show is good, it means it's good even if you are unfamiliar with its content. After all, aren't sports anime about the hot-blooded action, the thrill of a near miss, or the catharsis of a narrowly won game in spite of the odds?

Well, Tamayomi isn't like many sports anime, at least with regards to the shows I've watched. It's the Sega Football Manager to EA's FIFA. Despite the name, the actual main ... character in this is Yoshino and her managerial strategies in leading Shin Koshigaya to victory, with statistics and probabilities and studying histories taken into account. Even Yomi's magic pitch is hardly used throughout the duration of the show. It's a surprisingly straight laced take on the genre and unfortunately, it makes for a very boring show if you're not familiar with baseball.

The lack of character focus apart from Tamaki, Yomi, and Yoshino is to the show's detriment. I typically enjoy sports shows because of all the tropes and cliches and the heart-pounding chemistry behind it all. What's here is incredibly weak by comparison, and by and large most of the characters just blend into the background for me, and I'd be hard-pressed to name all of them if given the task.

I have to address the elephant in the room by now, and it's the artstyle and animation of the whole thing that really undermines the whole production. Faces consistently look off model somehow, never quite capturing the manga's style nor seeming quite right by any standards. The animation isn't particularly good most of the time, and the frequent use of 3DCG, some of which are improperly incorporated into the scene, brings me out of the action each time they appear. I should stress that I generally enjoy A-CAT's CG work in Frame Arms Girl and 1/6 Choukadou Girl, so one wonders if they would have done a better job if the whole anime was 3DCG with some exception as in those shows. The visual presentation is undoubtedly the show's weakest point.

By far the most surprising thing for me was how much I actually enjoyed the BGM to the show. For an otherwise mediocre production, the BGM to the show is pretty good and has a nice VN feel to them. It wasn't until quite recently that I learn the music is mostly composed by the same team who usually does the Key novels, but it does explain how the BGM have been consistently good across the series.

In the end, Kirara shows either fall into one of two ends of the spectrum. They are either incredible masterpieces without competition (as is the case with Hidamari Sketch, K-On, Yuru Camp or the like), or mediocre dull shows with nothing much to offer beyond cute girls (the vast majority of their catalogue). Tamayomi unfortunately falls into the latter. Even if the animation had been improved significantly, it doesn't change the fundamental issue with its source material in that it is dull. Perhaps you may get a kick out of it if you were a baseball fan, but I'll take Homer At The Bat over this any other day.

4/10

Ok, after experiencing some of the nastiest lock-down during this Covid-19 pandemic, I couldn't careless as to the quality of this anime, basically what we have here is an anime that was adapted from the manga called "Tamayomi" which basically means "Baseball poem recitation" by IMAO this was more like taken from the 2 main characters of this series whom were TAMAki Yamazaki and YOMI Takeda put the first four syllables from the character's names and we have "Tamayomi" which is a sports genre series which was more like a chore watching it than anything else , cu'z frankly , this works by original ... creator "Mountain Pukuichi" who ever he is wasn't making any successful works. If one was to look at his or her creation one would find a lotta yuri in it and even thought this series doesn't have any yuri in it, it was more like suggestive form so what gives about this anime/manga?

Here's how:

Story- Poor 3: Cu'z despite of it being a sport themed anime everything about it was more like a force drama when two 1st years students in Shin Koshigaya High School decides to revived a club that was due for disbandment when it fails to get more recruits and it's up to a couple of baseball wannabe's to get up and running in which they do......But the problem here was the flow where is runs sooo steadily that one would look at it as more like a chore cu'z it was just soo boring and the whole plot was more on the two characters Tamaki and Yomi relationship.

Art-Good 7: It may not have any fan services that them doggies would howl for , but just the uniform alone whether the school uniform or the baseball uniform were the stars around here. However, the character illustration, welp that part was were it wasn't uniform, cu'z there were illustrations that make the characters have masculine features, and there were angles that basically make each character too identical that one would wonder if that is still the same character.

Sound-Good 7: That was for the opening and the closing cu'z both were a good fit for the anime.

Character- Poor 3: Given that this anime has an entire baseball team as the cast, the problem was squeezing each and everyone of them to have each of their aired time, that simply make this way too complex given that all of them were regulated as tritagonist more of it were on Tamaki and Yomi as the protagonists whom thought it wasn;t metion were more like a yuri couple than anything else , Yoshino and Ibuki as the deuteragonist whom were regulated as the supports with only Nakata shouldering all the antagonist responsibility.

Enjoyment-Poor 3: Cu'z it kinda feels like that I have to watch it when I could've have just dropped it...stupid me.

Overall-Poor 3: Strike three and this is out...season 2????? Foul Ball!!!!!!

Pros: Thicc Anime Girls, Actually Focused on Baseball, Only 1-Cour, Released During COVID-19 Pandemic

Cons: Super Generic Story, Horrendous Art, Constant Reusing of Frames, Very Sleazy Fan-Service

I don't often write reviews, but this one is simple enough. If you've seen one baseball anime, then you've pretty much seen them all, and Tamayomi is no exception. I watch my fair share of bad anime though, so this wasn't too painful.

If you actually like baseball and enjoy thicc anime girls with thighs and big round asses, then you will probably have a good time here. If you are really looking for a truly good sports anime, then this ... will let you down.

Tamayomi will constantly be compared to Hachigatsu no Cinderella Nine, which was more or less the same premise, only released a year earlier. I actually enjoyed Tamayomi a bit more, but both were pretty awful.

Two things really killed Tamayomi for me. The art was terrible. From the reuse of frames, to missing faces, to sheer laziness, it was just bad. The show tried to compensate with heavy fan-service.

That's the second problem. The show went way overkill with its ass and crotch shots. There were some shots of the girls stretching that were super blatant. I enjoy some fan-service, but when it's overdone like this, it comes off as very sleazy. Especially when it involves high school girls.

I pity anyone who took Tamayomi seriously. This was a sexualized baseball anime that you watch solely for the cute girls. If the show had been a bit more tasteful and maybe went a bit deeper on the story... it still would have been awful. But maybe not as awful?

The story plays out exactly like you would expect. I won't "spoil" anything, but damn, you should already know what happens here. Again, the story only exists here as an excuse to draw some thicc anime girls wearing baseball uniforms.

Credit where credit is due, Studio A-Cat completed Tamayomi during the serious global health pandemic, while a lot of other shows dropped off entirely. This gave me something to mindlessly watch, and that's more than I can say for many other series.

But the awful art, lackluster story, and overall sleaziness all leave a very bad taste in my mouth. I give Tamayomi a 3 out of 10. I'd say only watch if you have a thing for anime girls in uniform or thicc anime girls in general, or if you really like generic baseball anime. But for most anime fans, this won't cut it.

Made it halfway through episode 8 before deciding to drop. Interesting enough concept with the unique pitch and classic cute girls doing cute things. However the quality of the art drops considerably after the first couple episodes. Super obvious CGI effects during the matches that looks like something a college student could've done. Character faces on the background characters seems really bland. Normally I follow the 4 episode rule, seemed decent enough but with each episode the quality kept dropping to the point where the cuteness was no longer enough to keep me watching. Character development was sorely lacking after they had enough players for ... a full team. Really hate dropping a series, but in all honesty I feel it would be more painful to force myself to keep watching.