Tribe Nine

Fed up with society, youngsters all around Neo-Tokyo formed tribes to find their place in the world. However, group loyalty among them grew fierce and often led to violence. As a countermeasure, the government implemented the XB Law—stating that the tribe conflict is to be resolved through Extreme Baseball. From players using extendable bats to pitchers wearing special equipment, Extreme Baseball is a futuristic version of the sport with modified rules, less restrictions, and bizarre applications of technology.

When a group of youngsters bullies spineless Haru Shirokane, he is saved by an unexpected pair: Shun Kamiya and Taiga. As it turns out, Shun is a star player of Extreme Baseball who leads the Minato Tribe, the top-ranked team in Minato City. Meanwhile, Taiga aims to defeat Shun in hopes of becoming the strongest in the sport. In a string of spontaneous events that allow Shun to discover their potential, Taiga and Haru are roped into joining the Minato Tribe.

As the tribes across Minato City face a new threat led by the mysterious Oujirou Otori, the Minato Tribe might just need the power of their two new rookies to overcome the clutches of evil.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kamiya, Shun Main

Ishida, Akira Japanese

Aoyama, Kazuki Main

Chiba, Shouya Japanese

Arisugawa, Saori Main

Fuchigami, Mai Japanese

Taiga Main

Sawashiro, Chiharu Japanese

Shirokane, Haru Main

Horie, Shun Japanese

Mita, Santarou Main

Tamura, Mutsumi Japanese

Daimon, Manami Main

Ochiai, Fukushi Japanese

Otori, Oujirou Supporting

Suwabe, Junichi Japanese

Yukigaya, Enoki Supporting

Kondou, Reina Japanese

Otori, Tenshin Supporting

Naka, Hiroshi Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Abe, Kengo Producer

Yamaoka, Yuuki Producer

Kanda, Ryouta Producer

Reviews

Mar 28, 2022

matthewp118

Recommended

I was hyped for Tribe Nine since I heard about its release a few years ago now, and I can start by saying I am still excited for the game. I am writing this review fresh off the last episode, and I can say I am overall pretty satisfied with what we got. I wasn't expecting anything revolutionary, and they pretty much delivered where I wanted. Keeping out spoilers I can say this anime will leave you surprised at some of the plot developments which is somewhat expected of this team.

The story wasn't anything special somewhat generic at times, and downright boring other times. The ... plot can be summarized as bad guy does bad things for no real reason other than "power." With that being said the art, and sound are on par with expectations they did a good job in that department. The theme and sound will have you forgetting how silly some of the plot actually is. The characters make up for a somewhat lacking plot, but not to the same degree as the art and sound. The characters range from interesting to downright annoying.

One notable example is one of the characters Santaro basically only serves the plot as a goofy character. Which is fine, but some of the other characters even part of the main cast in the Minato tribe have a significate lack of presence. Haru and Taiga are decent enough showing good growth throughout the running to balance things out a bit. Overall the characters are somewhat inconsistent with some of them having very little depth. In my opinion I can as most people see this work a lot better as a game since plot elements can be somewhat shrugged off.

Despite my complaints I did actually enjoy this anime since I think the visuals where well done. The concept of extreme baseball, well somewhat inconsistent in the anime would be pretty cool if made into a game. The anime did what it was supposed to for me since it got me interested in the game. I don't know if they will continue the anime to any degree, but if they did I would hope they expand on the world of Tribe Nine, and perhaps flesh out more of the established characters. I could add a laundry list of plot holes, or unexplained story elements, but I will leave it at well at least it was fun.
-Thanks for reading

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Mar 28, 2022

Pyro81300

Mixed Feelings

I’m a huge Danganronpa fan, and while I didn’t catch Akamatsu Drive I figured I’d check out Tribe Nine this season. Unfortunately, this promotional anime is as the kids these days say “mid”.

So what about the good stuff? Well the music is great at least, Masafumi never disappoints with his compositions. You still have the excellent bops you have in other games he’s worked on, but the OST is definitely closest to Danganronpa’s. The character designs by Rui are also still real unique and have that edgy, rebellious style that works great with this series. Also sometimes, the animation genuinely is good and there’s one ... big twist around ep 3 that I did not expect.

However past that, the writing for this show just does not quite know what it wants to be. It constantly switches from a sports show to incredibly generic shonen. Characters survive lethal blows for no reason, and some scenes just felt nonsensical. I’m actually half surprised it didn’t bring back alive a certain char that dies, considering the way the writing was going.

The story of Tribe Nine is mainly just a general story of one time rising to the top. You have several eccentric and quirky characters you’ll forget by tomorrow make up the other teams the protags fight. They of course beat them, and then have one final battle against Ojiro and his dudes. That’s about it really, there’s hardly any nuance and feels like the worst bits of Kodaka’s previous works, where it’s just constantly escalating even if it’s nonsensical.

So what about the characters? Well most of the cast is fairly bland tbh. Haru and Taiga do grow as characters, but it’s very standard stuff. Shun is cool I guess, Kazuki joins later, and without spoiling has an alright dynamic with Ojiro. As for Ojiro, he’s kind of just a very typical “only the strong shall thrive” villain. The overall conflict of this show is standard stuff where “guy with power of friendship fights villain with no friends and shows him power of friendship”. I actually like this trope, it’s just very mediocrely done here. Perhaps the most notable thing about Ojiro I can say is that Corpse Father plays him in the dub.

If it sounds like I’m repeating myself, it’s probably because I am. There’s really just not much to say about this series, it’s incredibly average in most everything. The animation is fine most of the time, sometimes getting good but not to the point it would really affect my score. The voice performances are good in sub like usual. This anime mostly just sort of exists to promote the game like most anime of its type.

Overall, I’d give it a 5 maaaaybe 5.5/10. Peep the soundtrack when it comes out, but I wouldn’t really rec watching it, unless you’re a Danganronpa fan just absolutely starving for more stuff similar to it. Even then though, all you’re gonna get is a few crumbs.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Jan 2, 2023

fakeharmonies

Not Recommended

I am a huge fan of Chiharu Sawashiro, who plays Taiga. I’m mentioning this because, when it comes to anime, I tend to have an “I’ll watch it if Chiharu Sawashiro is in it” mentality. While it may have led me to watching some absolute gems like Tsukipro, I really need to stop having that mentality, because it also led me to watching Tribe Nine, which might just be the worst anime I have ever watched in my entire life. The worldbuilding makes no sense, I hate most of the characters, and it genuinely confuses me that someone looked at this monstrosity of a show ... and thought it was okay to subject the public to it.

The main character, Haru, is… fine. He’s alright. Personally, I find him a bit annoying in his weird passiveness, but there’s nothing actively wrong with him, I guess. This can be said of the vast majority of characters, in fact, because barely anyone has anything going on besides being extremely basic, stock image character tropes (the newbie, the singular girl, the big guy, the little guy who’s a huge perv, the big bad villain who just wants power, etc.), with two exceptions that I’ll discuss in the next paragraph. That doesn’t mean they’re tolerable characters by any means, though. They all kinda suck.

The two exceptions are Taiga, and the members of the Ota Tribe (so, technically, there’s six exceptions, I guess). Taiga is easily my favourite character (and it’s not just because he’s voiced by Chiharu Sawashiro, I swear), even if his character motivation kinda stopped making a ton of sense after episode 4 (no spoilers). He seemed to actually care about the things around him— both XB and the other characters— compared to the other members of his tribe who seem infuriatingly take-it-or-leave-it about everything. This is interesting considering that Taiga is a total newbie to both the sport and the area, being from “overseas” (the dub decided that he’s Irish?), and thus has every reason not to care. There was even a moment where something bad happens involving Saori, and he’s the only one who wants to help her, despite everyone else being theoretically her longtime friends. The show seriously treats him like a punching bag, calling him “arrogant” and “stupid” for wanting to do things that are the completely logical thing to do in the given situation. There’s also several moments in the show where he says to the other characters that he’s the only reason that they’re alive, and the show treats those moments as if he’s being dumb and overconfident, but if you follow the plot up to that point, it’s literally just the plain truth. It’s absurd, and my boy deserves better.

The Ota Tribe are just funny, honestly. They’re so gimmicky but it’s in a genuinely enjoyable way (very #edgy and rawr XD if I’m being honest, but in a funny way). Sonoda is a delightful antagonist, all he wants is chaos, and that includes keeping a guy who’s constantly trying to murder him by his side. The puppet show sent me into actual hysterics. Episode 9 was the only good episode of this show and it left me wanting the Ota Tribe as the protagonists.

The animation and art style are horrific. Most of the main characters have grey skin, the hairstyles completely change shape depending on the scene, and the limited colour palette makes my eyes hurt. The purpose of a limited colour palette is to make sure your colours look nice and cohesive in any scene, but they chose the absolute worst colours possible so there’s no point of making it limited in the first place. The shading also doesn’t make any sense in most scenes, neither does the lighting. It’s all godawful and I really shouldn’t have expected anything else from the people who made Danganronpa of all things.

The voice acting isn’t terrible, but the mixing in the Japanese dub made it almost unwatchable at certain points, even if the casting and voice acting was good. The music was super loud and invasive, and the voices were stupidly quiet in most scenes. The English dub fixed a lot of the problems, even if there wasn’t much vocal diversity compared to the Japanese cast. I still don’t entirely understand why Taiga was Irish, but Phillip Sacramento was honestly phenomenal, so it’s hard to even care. It was nice that they made it clear where he was from, compared to the Japanese dub which just said “overseas.”

The overall standout was probably Junta Terashima as Sonoda, though— he really captures how absolutely batshit the guy is, even when he’s saying stuff in an objectively calm manner, and especially when he was trying blow everything up for the sake of some “chaos.” Also, once again, the puppet show sent me into hysterics and I think about it regularly.

Everyone in the dub was about equally good with no real standouts, with my only real complaint being, unfortunately, Ojiro’s casting. I don’t hate Corpse Husband or anything, but he wasn’t… um… acting. He just seemed to be reading the lines as himself, or something. A bit disappointing considering his voice is obviously very unique and I think he could bring something really cool to the dubbing industry, but he really dropped the ball here. Hopefully he’ll get better over time, though!

Before I continue, I also really feel the need to mention all the misogyny in this show. It’s awful. Saori’s constantly getting sexualized (groping, getting walked in on, etc.), the main female villain’s gimmick at the end is just an excuse to draw her basically naked, and the only other female characters (Enoki and Minami) barely existed. Minami is basically just a prop to her male boss in most cases. It’s hard to say anything else without spoiling stuff, but please, if you’re going to watch this, be prepared to be practically assaulted with misogynistic bullshit. It’s very reminiscent of the humour of older, “haha they’re threatening to rape the girl, isn’t that HILARIOUS?”-type shounens, and it’s seriously uncomfortable to watch.

Overall, holy shit, don’t watch this show unless you’re some kind of Danganronpa mega fan, though even those people seem to be disappointed judging by some of the other reviews. It’s a complete mess of a show with a bad plot, bad worldbuilding, bad art, bad characters, and bad development as a whole.

If you want a show about a semi-post-apocalyptic Japan where a new government takes over and instates a law declaring that people have to fight with something extremely specific other than weapons, causing the 23 wards of Tokyo to form groups and essentially start a turf war, I would suggest Hypnosis Mic: Rhyme Anima, where it’s basically just Tribe Nine’s worldbuilding but with rapping and infinitely better. If you want “existing sport but EXTREME,” try Prince of Stride, which is about track racing but with added parkour. If you’re like me and will watch anything with Chiharu Sawashiro in it, try Cheer Boys, which is about male college cheerleading, or Tsukipro, an incredible chill and delightfully “nothing happens” idol anime. Alternatively, watch literally anything other than this.

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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