Major: Ball of Friendship
Alternate Titles: メジャー 友情の一球
Original Japanese Release Date: December 13th, 2008
Episode Length/Run-time: 104 Minutes
Summary:
Goro Shigeno returns home after his first season of playing baseball in Japan and he reminisces about a baseball tournament that he participated in when he was a child.
Review:
This movie is set late in the Major series. Goro is reminiscing about how he played in a baseball tournament which was the site of a critical point in Goro’s life, where he pushes himself to the point of sustaining a critical baseball injury. Just like most of the Major series, this one is filled with sports action that is totally engrossing. There is just something about how Major presents its action that makes it a great watch.
The movie is fairly simple. It’s simply the course of a baseball game but because the viewer knows that Goro is going to push himself to injury, and because he’s pushing himself, it creates a lot of dramatic tension. Therefore, for viewers who have been following the series especially, this one is going to be a tense ride. Even if you haven’t been following the series however, it still ought to be a pretty good movie.
As is usually the case with Major, the music, animation and character art are all quite good. It was interesting to see the more modern animation applied to the younger character designs in the series. People who like the more shounen style of art will probably appreciate the art that there is to be seen in the Major movie and the series in general.
I suppose I marked this movie so far down from the series because the movie doesn’t do a good job of standing on its own. You really need to see the series to get the full effect of the movie. It’s a good movie that I enjoyed but from a critical point of view, I need to make note of that. There just isn’t much to it but the movie does a good job of highlighting what is probably the more trialsome period of Goro’s life as well as one of the more memorable scenes in the Major universe.
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