The novel may have swept No.1 spot in every major book ranking chart in Japan with over 2.5 million copies sold in less than a year and half, but the anime adaptation is nothing but complete and utter failure.
One can tell how badly this show was neglected within minutes. Almost all the characters and backgrounds are nearly frozen! Not only that, there is absolutely zero creativity in art direction, as almost every single scene is either a standstill medium shot, standstill full shot, or moving long shot. It's like watching a slideshow.
Voice acting is almost equally lackluster. All the characters talk in an unusually slow pace, completely devoid of emotion. I don't know about you, but this is what I call "reading the script".
Of course, not every series is going to get 'Seirei no Moribito' or 'Dennou Coil' treatment and get showered with taxpayer money, but daily broadcast with production value lower than that of 'Anpanman' is no way to treat a No.1 yearly best seller. Just because it's an educational show on NHK doesn't mean it has to be garbage as an anime, and more importantly, it should not be teaching wrong things.
*Spoiler begins here*
The concept of running a baseball team like a business is nothing new. Actually, it's a pretty common theme in coach/management side of sports drama. 'Moshidora' is unique in that it specifies a single book and focuses on select concepts, but this presents a new set of problems. What happens is that the protagonist basically picks up Peter Drucker's "Management", then becomes a mindless drone who literally follows every single teaching on the book as if it really was the life's Bible. Last time I checked, management was an art that has best practices, but not an instruction manual!
Peter Drucker's book for a high school team is a very poor choice, because his books are written mainly for large corporations and nonprofits (like the Red Cross), whose ultimate goal is profit (or raising funds). That's why the concepts introduced in this series are like "organizations should be socially responsible", or "employee responsibility fosters morale/motivation" etc, that large corporations often neglect. It's also why the book focuses a lot on importance of marketing, because raising customer awareness and building lasting relationship with customers ultimately accomplish large organization's objectives. On the other hand, high school baseball team is a small organization, and their success is not measured by number of fans and revenue generated, but how far they advance into the tournament. This organizational objective was defined in one of the earlier episodes by the protagonist, to win. Marketing is not required to achieve that goal.
There were some interesting application of theories to a baseball team, but also stupid mistakes like confusing marketing with internal marketing and HRM (Human Resources Management). However, there were also many instances where things went way too conveniently just to prove the concept works. Especially, the application of "Innovation" was absolutely retarded. Anyone who knows anything about baseball knows that guessing the type and location of the pitch is more than half the challenges a batter has to face against a pitcher. By pitching nothing but strikes, you're voluntarily abandoning the location aspect of guesswork, essentially allowing batters to swing every pitch without hesitation. Such a strategy would never work, unless the pitcher was a prodigy who throws at 100mph or nasty breaking balls with startling precision (he was not). And the opposing team is still surprised at the regional semifinals that they don't bunt? No, they would send scouts to spy on opposing teams way before reaching that far.
Baseball aside, it didn't even make sense from business management perspective. "Innovation" from management and HR perspective is not telling your employees never-seen-before strategy and have them to follow that. It's about creating an environment for employees that encourages innovation. 3M's Post-it Notes and Google's "20 percent time" are probably the most famous examples. Creation of strict employee guideline by upper management, and blindly following a single book as a manager is not "innovation" from the management perspective.
While excessive fantasy is acceptable, sometimes even preferred in sports drama, using inconceivable scenarios to demonstrate a business concept is not the way to educate. The thing with business concept is that it must be used on a case-by-case basis, a strategy that works for one firm does not work for another. There are hundreds of theories and many influential business theorists around. A manager's job is to determine which strategy should be used for their own organization, and how it should be implemented. By forcibly twisting the outcome in order to demonstrate a theory, the lesson becomes invalid.
I was actually watching this series with a faint hope that the protagonist would eventually decide to abandon the book. To my surprise, it actually happened, but in the most undramatic way imaginable. No matter how you think about it, she should've strayed from the book after the eye-opening event of a best friend's death, at the very climax where she ended up pointlessly trying to convince the coach not to change the batter. That would've been solid drama, maybe even teach a real lesson from the story. In the end, the show severely underplayed the realization of the book's limits, and missed the chance to show that one must choose what she believes is right rather than blindly following a manual, or should I call it "innovation in management". As it stands, the choice of keeping the batter who eventually hit the winning run seems like yet another convenient scriptwriting. It also appears to be done on her whim, as they were still living by the book after regional finals. It didn't even make sense they're trying to play the way "customer" wants, when they're not even a professional team that plays for direct revenue and fan base. Apparently the producers of this show didn't understand the concept of organizational objective because they only read "Management". The climax, that fake swing sequence was extremely clever and dramatic, using canny plot device in earlier episode. Unfortunately, it's too little too late by this point.
Characters in this show are just puppets. Their emotions are limited, their behaviors are fabricated to advance the story (I mean, what was with the protagonist's reaction in front of the team after her friend's death? "Can't read the atmosphere," as the Japanese call it, beyond belief). To be honest, I forgot all their names already, because I simply was not even close to connecting or caring about any of them.
*Spoiler ends here*
OP by Azusa stood out as the only good thing about this series. 'Yume Note' is an extremely touching and catchy Jpop song perfect for what little atmosphere this series had. She's definitely setting herself up to become the next anime song princess in my opinion, with three consecutive solid theme songs in row, previous two being 'Amagami SS' OPs.
I do sense some clever writing by the original author, but I am going to single this one out as the worst anime adaptation attempt ever, and the worst sports anime I've ever encountered. Not only did it lack entertainment value as a sports anime, it failed miserably as a tool of business education, and serves only as the glorification of Peter Drucker and his book. I suspect the novel is nowhere as pathetic as this anime, and I'll be waiting to see the live-action movie adaptation as the better interpretation of the novel.
"What If the Educational Adaptation of a High School Baseball Novel Had a Proper "Direction"?"
