Reviews

Feb 15, 2023
FunnyFunny
Cross Game humors itself to be a sports anime. It's not. This show is ABSOLUTELY NOT a sports show. It tricks you into thinking that it is something that it is not. While 80% of the show or more has focused on the "theme" of baseball, the reality is that it might as well be nothing. 80% of this show is absolutely nothing. It's too generic. People just throw balls and practice. There are no play-by-play games. Not a single game is described in detail. A large majority of games are skipped off-screen. People run. Coaches talk and do knocking drills. People hit balls. There are no descriptors. At all. I'm convinced that Mitsuru Adachi, the author of Cross Game, can't write any compelling baseball manga.

See, a baseball anime would actually have details about the damn games. There would be play-by-plays. Monologues of players at bat, the catcher's monologues of the calling of the game, and the pitcher's monologue of his own mental state of mind are shown. This is especially so when games are in tense situations. Not all plays should so slow-paced and detailed, but certainly, for the exciting showdowns, this stuff is pretty normal and necessary for a viewer to get invested in the play, characters, and stakes at hand. This show does none of that, and it extends to the entire cast of characters as well. In a sports show, each character should show their progression: their strengths and weaknesses, their struggles, and their eventual payoff for hard training. At the very least, the main characters should. I am well aware that characterizing 9 characters--an entire baseball team-- and other side characters is extremely tough while also trying to include baseball games and a plot. That being said, it's unacceptable that none of the characters have any shown progression in baseball. There are basically only four named characters on the baseball team of Seishuu Academy: Azuma, Kitamura, Akaishi, Nakanishi, and Senda. Azuma's a batting genius. He's got no flaws, and never had a slump. He barely has any mishaps, and even in the final game in extra innings, he barely breaks a sweat. Kitamura's a pitching genius. He's only got one flaw, which is his lack of stamina, which also eventually gets phased out. That's it. Akaishi, Nakanishi, and Senda don't even get enough screen time for me to exactly pinpoint any flaws or strengths unless you consider Nakanishi to be fat and slow. You don't know any players' batting skills other than Azuma's, and you don't know what pitch types they prefer.

Is it not enough evidence that there's no attention to detail when you consider that the game-winning homerun doesn't even show you what type of pitch was being thrown, and what count it was at? There's no attempt at making this show's focus on baseball.

So the show clearly tries to distance itself from sports. What is it after? Romance? Slice of life? Characterization? Well, it dabbles in all of those aspects but also fails to deliver. Aoba and Kou's relationship really reminded me of Akane and Ranma's relationship in Ranma 1/2, which is a good thing, but there are basically no slice-of-life scenes outside of baseball-related activities. I hate to say it, but even the slapstick rom-com that Ranma 1/2 did was successful in character development and it achieved what it was trying to do, but what is Cross Game trying to do?

There's romance in this show, but it's very slow and unrewarding. Regardless, the only reason the romance ever progresses is because of forced drama. There are a lot of dramatic situations that force people to expose fragility in order for the show and characters to progress, and it's just lame. As I said, there are no slice-of-life scenes, there's forced drama to increase tension in the shallow baseball games and romance, and all of these genres are half-baked in the show. There's no identity.

if the show decided to take one genre and stick with it, I'm sure the show would have been an enjoyable experience. Too bad it never does.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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