Story - 6
In One Outs you find the typical sports plot: "Lets win the championship even though we are the underdogs in literally every scenario!" with one minor change, being that our MC was not initially aiming for this goal. Instead, our MC wants to gamble. In fact, the sole reason Tokuchi even has to play with this team is because he lost a bet for the first time. But rest assured, our god-like pitcher will never lose again an even seems to develop a small desire to help his team win. However, Tokuchi pulls a tsundere move (male tsundere boy is that original!) saying it's all because of the bet he lost.
This story also lacks a key in sports anime: any sense of tension. Tokuchi never breaks a sweat and overcomes every "pinch" he is thrown into. And with only one championship on the line losing the Inter-High (or any other tournament) but winning the Winter Cup (or any subsequent tournaments) is not an option, so One Outs becomes a show of intrigue. "How will Tokuchi win this time?" becomes the question.
One nice twist in the genreal formula is that the Owner of the team does not care about how the team performs. All he cares about is money, so with the contract outlined in the series description + OP MC = a lot of possible debt.
idk if this is actually a spoiler but I don't wanna get yelled at. The story does not end and 6 years after it aired no second season, ova's, or even movies have been announced to give us a sense of closure. The writers even decided to time-skip to the beginning of the championship game from who-knows-where in the season. Only like 5 or 6 sereis between the Lycaons and opponents are animated.
a
Art - 4
I found the character designs for this show frustrating as they all seemed to deviate from 3 base designs, and I found them all appalling. Even worse is Tokuchi's hair. The shape is wrong and it only gets worse when he puts on his hat to go and pitch. The only time it isn't bad is inside his batting helmet. But seeing how Tokuchi is a pitcher we don't get many of those scenes.
Sound - 5
Not much to say. I skipped the OP and ED at every turn after listening to them a couple times. The background music is pretty generic. The one thing One Outs improves upon is that the OP never changes. Most shows that span 2 airing seasons change the OP half-way through (around ep 11-13) to one that is even worse.
Characters - 7
Other than Tokuchi there are no other characters of note. Teammates and opponents alike never develop and are presented as complete children with the exception of Ideguchi and Kojima whose development was so miniscule you might miss it. Tokuchi himself never develops as he is in a completely different league from everybody else that he never experiences any crisis. Tokuchi's wit, planning, awareness, ability to keep a level head, and simple strategy are the selling points of this sereis. Rest assured, there are a lot of those moments.
Tokuchi himself is so constantly level headed and focused on victory that nothing ever phases him. This is in part due to his ability to always figure out what everybody else is thinking due to their body language and apply a countermeasure. Tokuchi is always able to see the flaws in his plan, be it his own or his opponents. Tokuchi always has a follow up plan for when the weakness in his current strategy is discovered, and the opponents just so happen to become more and more competent despite that they are only in the regular season. Of course Owner never grows smarter and is always destroyed by Tokuchi.
And to make sure the audience understands everything One Outs features not 1, but 2 normal side characters. Tokuchi explains all of his plans to the audience via these characters. They amke sure anybody can understand what Tokuchi does. This may be an old and well used tactic but One Outs does a pretty decent job of it.
Enjoyment - 9
Just because I disliked "most aspects" of this show, it is still something I would recommend to anybody. Why? In One Outs, 90% of the screen time is dedicated to Tokuchi. Whether he is riling up his opponents, distracting them, exposing their weakness, ignoring them, etc. Tokuchi vs. some random side character is this shows formula. And boy is it great to watch. Like I said, I learned to never doubt Tokuchi and isntead tried to predict what he would do. Don't bother. Nobody no matter their experience in baseball be they professional players in real life, ammatuer, or beginners will be able to predict Tokuchi. That was something I did not find frustrating at all. I loved it.
TL;DR review
OP MC beats every opponent in his way no matter how poorly drawn they are or how bad the background music is, or how good the side characters of One Outs present them to be. It has a generic story with 1 neat twist, and for all the things it does that frustrate me, Tokuchi makes up for it personally. Even people who know nothing about baseball can enjoy it due to the age old tactic of every super genius needs a normal person to accompany them. Tokuchi explains everything he does to that person, but more importantly to you. the viewer.
