One Outs

/ , , , / / 0 Comments

Alternate Titles: ONE OUTS – Nobody wins, but I!

Original Japanese Release Date: October 7th, 2008

Episode Length/Run-time: 25

Summary:
A show that combines gambling with baseball. Hiromichi Kojima, a star player for the Lycaons, meets a pitcher who is known as the undisputed king of gambling.  This man, Toua Tokuchi, is the owner if a very difficult to hit 83 mile per hour fastball.  Kojima gets Toua to join to Lycaons but only under certain special conditions made with the owner of the team.  Toua gets 5,000,000 yen for every out he pitches, but loses 50,000,000 yen for every run he gives up.

Review:

Here is an interesting show.  A sports anime that really isn’t about the sports at all!  There is the action aspect to the show, true, but unlike many other testosterone packed action sports shows like Major and Hajime no Ippo (not that theres anything wrong with it because those are two of the greatest sports anime out there), this show is a chess match between the owner of the Lycoans and the pitcher Toua.  During the course of this show, the owner does all sorts of things to sabotage Toua’s RBI of 0.  It’s truly a sight to see the efforts that the two go through to deceive each other.

Part of me feels like this anime is very cultural.  There are several reasons for this but one of the primary reasons is the gambling itself.  As you may or not know, gambling is illegal in Japan.  As such, the show focuses on a taboo cultural aspect of Japan’s society.  For this reason, some might consider this a social commentary.
Finally, the art and animation of the show is wonderful.  There is even a bit of bishounen fan service in there for all of the ladies.  The characters are brightly drawn and have very unique designs, something I find to be fairly routine for sports anime.  The music I was a little less enthused about.  As I write this, I cannot remember what the theme songs sounds like.

All in all, this is a show I recommend to many people.  Certainly all men will enjoy this anime and even a select handful of women as well.  I know Chiaki enjoyed this anime just as much as I did and so I would likely widely recommend it, especially for its unique delivery.

[starrater]