Reviews for Major (8.32)

So we have here a sports anime. Not the most enjoyable genre, since most titles focus on the actual representation of the sport instead of the person playing the sport, his growth around the sport, his relations with others, basically I believe there’s a need to represent the psychology of the individual and those around him using the particular sport as a mere setting. That’s not the case in almost all sports titles, since the target is of a small age. Some random review was talking about Hajjime no Ippo as being the “obvious” peak the genre has to offer. Well if that was a joke it was hilarious. If not’ it’s best to not assume by ourselves that something is absolute. Especially with a title with humongous flaws like Ippo.

It’s not exactly the case with this title. We have the first part of the anime with our protagonist as a very young boy with thrives to follow on his fathers footsteps in baseball. We aren’t choked with long baseball matches, but we see the actual person and the way he is affected by the presence of baseball and the absence of a motherly figure in his life. Quite a different and non-clichee approach to things.

The second part shows him after he has grown a bit and experienced great deal of pain at such and early age. It now follows the traditional recipe, meaning match after match ,each of them taking several episodes to complete. Thing that always makes me forward to the actual peak of the match and the ending. And of course we have the dumb looking rivals with a ton of trash talk “ I’m the best, I won’t loose, you’re 10 years too early to win over me ‘ and all the great lines that make me wanna seriously hit someone. Every single opponent till the end has some juicy lines like this and a “I can’t loose” pose, just so they can look shocked and paralyzed when Goro shits on their play. After the 70th time you start to think why are they so shocked about, it’s happened before already.

And as a side note, and some spoilers here, so watch out. We have Goro parent less, with his kindergarten teacher watching out for him. We come to a situation where she thinks to marry his fathers friend. This is totally my personal disapproval with a matter such as this if it were real. Goro initially feels betrayed by her behavior and doesn’t approve. We have then lines like “ Goro, I’m alone too. Every day you leave school, I’m alone. You need a father in your life. Her former roommate says she needs to think about herself too, her life shouldn’t be over after razing Goro etc.

I’m guessing this was the manga’s author view of this life’s matter. Well, I would take the liberty to say it’s pretty wrong. You cannot feel lonely when you have a son, I mean isn’t that life's greatest joy, greatest accomplishment? You can’t decide something like this on your dumb selfish feelings, you’re your every decision should be made for the child. Should a child change parents like socks? Does he need a replacement of a father, when he’s already experienced so much, so early ? The way this matter is handled doesn’t sit right with me and I constantly got the feeling that I’m being shoved up my throat with the author’s flawed believes. Oh well.

Animation wise is a more than decent production, the movements are fluid, well drawn and no stills, thank god. Good lighting and nice colors. And some scenes throughout the matches gives you chills. The voices are good and fitted to the characters but not much to say about the music, which hasn’t remained in my mind at all throughout the series, leaving the op/en apart.

It’s an enjoyable series for baseball fans and even for mega haters of baseball like myself. Since you have a somewhat different approach on the genre that gives you more info about the actual characters instead of showing a million matches that take 5 episodes each, it's easier to swallow than you'd expect.