What are the size limitations on contraband shipped from the Seireitei?
My co-blogger and I are currently rewatching One Outs, which is one of (if not the?!) first sports anime we ever watched. Now that we have a great depth of experience with the genre, we wanted to go back to see if it held up, because there are aspects of this show we reference *all the time.*
--Despite, as we've now learned, remembering almost nothing about the series, inclusive of the things we reference (and will doggedly continue to reference) all the time.
On this second run-through we've had plenty of opportunities to focus on things other than the plot. Esoteric information about how baseball benefits packages work, who Lycaon is in mythology, etc. But most importantly, the moment my co-blogger pointed out that these baseball execs get their furniture from the same place that the Gotei does:
Like, look at those garbage fucking couches!!!!!!!
Even the colorways are reminiscent of Soul Society's absolute best:
(I'd also like to point out that despite the fact that I am pretty sure those first two shots are from the same baseball game, albeit different episodes, in between cuts back from these Conniving Old Baseball Guys to something that ostensibly resembles baseball (it's shenanigans is what it is ), the Conniving Old Baseball Guys seem to have... gotten up to some funny business? Like, where'd that lamp go, guys. Guys. Where's the potted tree. Why are all the couches much closed to the table than they were before.
Anyway, here's the Seireitei's own resident Old Baseball Guy, probably:
I wanted to add in Ginrei's office because in the two One Outs screenshots it almost looks like they're two different cofee tables, but I feel like it might just be differently lit. And so here we have the various reds and browns of the Seireitei, across the 6th and 10th offices, which are pretty similar to the One Outs reds and browns. And of course their shared affinity for yellow seat cushions.
The real question, of course, is
How did the Conniving Baseball Guys come into possession of furniture from the Seireitei?
(And before you ask "Isn't it possible that the Seireitei got it from the World of the Living?" The answer to that is an emphatic NO, for the pure and simple fact that the #1 purveyor of fine furniture in the Seireitei is Seireiei IKEA. Obviously.)
My theory about where this baseball furniture came from hinges on our favorite character from One Outs, Johnson, whom we reference all the time but whom it turns out we remembered almost nothing about, except that he had legs.
As you can plainly see, he has a clear relationship with Lille Barro, one of the esteemed Sternritter who's spent the last 20492095 years or whatever hanging out in the Seireitei Shadow Realm.
What is that relationship? Undefinable. Full of intrigue. This summer's biggest celebrity secret.
Maybe they're brothers. Lovers. Cardholding members of the eyeball tattoo enthusiast club.
In any case, they are spiritually linked across time and space and baseball and Guns:
I think Johnson's got the furniture hookup. He gets it shipped direct, from Shadow IKEA via his best guy, Lille Barro. He supplies the entire league. Because who better to establish a silk road from one dimension to the next than those living in exile from both, the Sternritter? Urahara's shop? Ha! Child's play.
The Sternritter have a flat pack empire.
There are no shipping limits because
And tl;dr that's how all of Japanese baseball owns furniture from the same collection as the Gotei.
