Rookies

So typical, it’s all been done so many times, yet so entertaining, so likeable. A new teacher comes to the school who wants to help his students achieve and, most importantly, discover their dreams. He gets his hands on delinquents who love baseball but aren't allowed to play. They got banned because they got in a fight at a tournament. Well, it'll take a while to get gloves on them and bats in their hand, but these boys will play. And they're not just gonna win. I told myself at the beginning that if they get to Koshien Stadium, I'll be satisfied, that it doesn't matter if they win, the main thing is that they get there. But I was wrong. The most important thing is that they keep playing... The closing song is absolutely amazing, every time I heard it I had to smile and rock my head from side to side like a moron. ^^ But I'm knocking points off for the fact that there's just no way for anyone to have that much bad luck, it was just too much. And then there were some unnecessarily long scenes, but that's pretty much every dorama, so that's kind of par for the course. You might think this looks perfectly normal, an eleven-part dorama, right? Well I’d say it’s actually a thirteen-parter – the first and last episodes are an hour and a half each. (2010.12.01)

It is hard to find a Japanese anime in the new millennium that is truly "Japanese" and demonstrates the essence of the word shōnen more clearly. The success it has enjoyed on home soil is well-deserved and understandable, as it has everything a Japanese audience wants to see: excellent acting, well-written characters and their credible development, a sense of progression and alternation between serious and comedic moments, a strong message and, above all, the civility with which the events on screen are presented. It is this civility that makes it easy even for a non-Japanese audience to project themselves into the story and empathize with the individual characters, who remind them of the times when they too were trying to realize their dreams and goals against adversity - even though they may not have had the support that the boys have here in the form of their teacher Kawato. After that, it would have been a clear five stars, yet in the final episodes, a completely unnecessary dramatization of the story creeps into the series in order to convince even the most hardened mofo, that no matter what happens to them in life, they need to just spit on their hands, grit their teeth and get on with it. Which is a real shame, because it takes away from the realism I mentioned above. Still, I would warmly recommend it to everyone and give it a lovely four stars. (2020.04.25)