Anime always manages to transform the most boring ass sports into shows that are actually exciting. I actually hate watching baseball. It's really boring. I went to the NCAA Division I Baseball Championship in Omaha, which can be considered a step up from Koshien in Japanese Football. It was boring enough that I left with my friends in the middle of inning 5 and got some food.
Alas, Diamond no Ace compresses 2+ hours of baseball game time into the most exciting moments, with of course, monologues, closeups, and player perspective into each exciting of all of the players present while cutting off the excess--that is, of course, innings where no side scores--and only focuses on the juicy fun bits to watch. Of course the baseball shown in the anime is going to be more fun. No anime or manga is going to focus on the the 5 innings where the score doesn't change, or nothing that eventful happens.
Plus, the animation only accentuates the highlights. I'm pretty bitter about Madhouse doing an extremely subpar job of animation Overlord, but Diamond no Ace's animation is quite nice. Yes, there's going to be a decent number of slideshows in some games, but when the studio decides to animate ball throws and swings of tense moments, it gets really exciting. The only other baseball show I've watched recently was Gurazeni, so let's just say I'm immensely satisfied with the fact that there's no shitty CGI peppering the diamond and the ball throws are all hand animated, despite some of them being reused every so often. I have no complaints about the animation, and I think that if you're a little unsatisfied with the slideshows, that makes sense, but it's not so frequent enough that I care.
Of course, this goes for any sports show. So how does Diamond no Ace compare? Well, first of all, this show is grounded on reality. What does that mean? No supernatural moves like you would see in Kuroko no Basket, Prince of Tennis, or Inazuma 11. Just same old, same old High School Baseball.
Well, I have an obvious bias towards the more supernatural shows, but characters can certainly carry a sports anime that's more grounded in reality. Diamond no Ace does that...right? When I first started watching, I really didn't have my hopes up. Sawamura's the typical loud-mouthed protagonist that starts off weak, but somehow gets strong as the show progresses. Furuya's a talented baseball talent that's cool, doesn't talk much, is taciturn from his years of rejection of his team on his previous team, and poses as Sawamura's rival at Seido. Reminds me of Naruto and Sasuke a bit. That is to say, very cliche and not much going for either character.
So color me surprised when I actually start caring for the characters and the outcome of matches. Sawamura shows more emotional fragility than I expected, and while Furuya is still utterly boring, with his talent being OP and his only baseball throws one or two breaking balls and his extremely quick fastball, he still functions well when served as a foil and a rival to Sawamura.
Other characters are all well developed as the seasons go on, and while some of the seniors that you grow and love move on, new blood joins in the form of freshman players that are vying for bench spots on Siedo's roster. Miyuki was my favorite, being the catching genius, captain of the team, and managing all of the pitchers and other characters on the team. He's cocky, has a drive to win, and tries to move the team forward with his plays. There's Sawamura's roomate and leadoff batter, Kuramochi. He's more of a devilish character that's usually high-spirited and tries to lighten up the mood when everyone's down. he also beats people up sometimes, but also the voice of reason other times. There's Haruichi, the second basemen that's always looking up to his brother and adamantly plays with a wooden bat, despite the disadvantages that comes with it.
I'm not going to list out all of the relevant characters: there's too many over the course of three seasons, but all of them form the basis of the story, and they're all quite good. Yet, they all start off as nothing special. In fact, just looking at my last paragraph shows that these characters are pretty generic to start off with. None of these characters are particularly interesting and unique. This show's not like that. It's just that when you play against other teams with the rest of the main Seido team, you start to appreciate them more and more. The story takes place in West Tokyo, where a lot of great teams compete for the singular Koshien summer tournament spot, and you see recurring characters from powerhouse rival teams frequently enough that you get to know each player on both teams in most games. Of course it's not that interesting, seeing Seido playing a team that's made up of random people. But what if Seido was playing against a team where you knew their motivations and multi-facted characters to the point where its two teams you care about playing in an elimination match? It becomes a lot more interesting.
Plus, there's like the all stars of voice acting. While the main characters have good voice actors and all, a bunch of side characters have quite the lineup. Kazuya Nakai Akira Ishida, Hiroshi Kamiya, Jouji Nakata, Tomokazu Sugita and a few others. Just surprised a bunch of unique and good voice actors are all featured in Diamond no Ace.
Suspense from games, a solid and wide cast of characters, good animation, and good voice acting put Diamond no Ace above most other shounen sports shows.
