Breakdown: Ookiku Furikabutte (Big Windup or Oofuri)
SPOILER FREE
Big Windup: High school baseball anime (studio is A-1 Pictures) and manga (Asa Higuchi), ongoing.
Production: Solid. Production IG and Madhouse still dominate in terms of quality, but A-1 is sure as hell head and shoulders above the clusterfuck team that did Eyeshield (which was a combo of TV Tokyo, NAS, and Gallop).
Tropes: Low Self-Esteem Hero, Fudanshi Bait, “I Will Make You A Hero”, Slice Of Life
Not-Your-Wikipedia-Summary: Ren Mihashi is a total wuss because his middle school baseball team utterly destroyed his self confidence. They always lost because the catcher never knew how to use Mihashi’s insane ball control to their advantage. Now Mihashi is in high school and a nervous wreck and joins the baseball team. The catcher, Takaya Abe, (voiced by the extremely talented and easy-to-pick-out Yuichi Nakamura), sees Mihashi’s potential and decides he’s going to make Mihashi into the best damn ace that’ll take them all to Koushien. Cue slow-paced, feel-good, team-coming-together-against-the-odds
TL;DR Review: It’s cute. It’s low stress. If you want to watch the friendship between boys be pushed and pulled and strained and celebrated all in the frame of high school baseball, and if you want that satisfaction that comes from a low-self-esteem hero showing everyone up, it’s a fun trip. Yes, all the character blush too much and the queer baiting between several characters is so obvious it borders on fetishization. But it’s not a bad thing to have different kinds of boys represented: scared boys, crying boys, boys who aren’t sure of themselves but are teaming up to try their best. We need to show that no matter what kind of person you are, you’re still a valuable part of the team.
"Objective” Score: 6/10 (for those who like/need a slow pace and can overlook the problematic coach [more below])
Personal Score: 4/10 (too queer baity [make it gay or don’t, just stop with the fucking baiting], too slow, too problematic with the coach character)
Full Thoughts: So it’s been awhile since I watched this series. After watching One Outs I thought I’d go watch its exact opposite while still in the baseball genre. I have to say, it didn’t really age on me well. I think it’s a good series for 13-15 year-olds. It has all that blushing queer baiting that, if you’re in the closet or still figuring yourself out, might be tantalizingly close to validation. Also, like I said above, it’s great to see boys who aren’t chock full of toxic masculinity. You can be a scaredy cat and still be a good athlete. It has enough humor and embarrassed-youth moments to make it relatable/more dramatic for younger viewers or those who are still capable of being embarrassed. For those of us who are older/cynical/naturally-prone-to-being-an-asshole, watching it is more irritating than anything else.
But let’s talk about something else...
Author Insertion Characters: Now, let me make it clear at the outset that this is NOT limited to female authors/creators. Pretty much every series has The Inserted Author, and more often than not it’s the protagonist. This is especially apparent where there are multiple female characters all in love with one boring ass dude. But what about when the Inserted Author isn’t the protagonist? What about when they’re a side character who is vicariously enjoying some exploitative scene? Usually, with male authors, we get side male characters who “happen to” see panty shots, etc. They’re so common to any series that they hardly need mentioning. I admit, I don’t even mention it, I’m so used to it; I just roll my eyes and watch on.
But in the case of Oofuri, we get the team’s coach, Momoe. As soon as I saw her, I knew the series had been written/drawn by a woman, in good ways and bad. She’s got big boobs, has a strong personality, and the team is intimidated by her insane baseball skills and general strength. If she’d been written by a man, the team would’ve been drooling over her big breasts and there would have been a nonstop “comedic” tension over how sexy she was. But she’s not sexualized in any way. For that, I'm super grateful. (The bar is low for my gratitude, I admit.)
But there’s a couple of things about her that threw major red flags for me: one, that it’s made clear that she pours all of her money into this boy’s baseball team. Now, she’s a woman with insane baseball skills and a clear passion for the game. So why the fuck didn’t she start a GIRL’S softball team? They don’t even cover it, as if it’s not even a real question. And why is she pouring all of her everything into serving these young boy’s needs? Talk about gender role stereotypes. Why isn’t the school providing funds for all this equipment? Or if not, why aren’t they finding a way, as a TEAM, to raise funds for it? Why is she, the only woman on it, pouring all of her money into it?
That’s one red flag. The other red flag basically answers all of those questions and can be seen below:
I’m sorry, is that woman orgasming over team bonding between adolescent boys?
If you don’t have a problem with the above screenshot, if your brain is saying some shit like “but no, it’s pure! Because she’s a woman! And they’re boys!” then I want you to do a mental experiment: imagine that screenshot above with the genders switched. So an older man is clutching himself, blushing and sweating like that, saying “this is so good” behind the backs of a bunch of oblivious 14/15-yo girls. Is your mental reaction a little different? Good. Now readjust your previous opinion.
This answers the question of why she’s coaching a boy’s team. Because the author wanted to vicariously jill off on the emotional bonding between young boys, all under the excuse of the Female Purity Myth. What am I talking about? It’s the pervasive idea that women can’t be sexual/perverted. That womanhood somehow makes women “naturally” pure. This is damaging to men and women: To women because we’re shamed when we ARE sexual beings (which is a one sentence understatement of a very complicated issue), and to men/boys who are sexually abused by women but feel that they can’t come forward about it.
So. I’m conflicted. I like her character because SHE isn’t sexualized... but I’m angered by how the series validates the fetishization of queer relationships between boys by older women. I’d rather watch a series that has no female characters than a series that has one who is this problematic. I’ll be passing on re-watching any more of this.
