Ask John: Do Unconventional Baseball Anime Exist?

Question:
Maybe I’m overthinking a small word choice, but when you wrote “conventional baseball anime,” I had a thought. Does unconventional baseball anime exist? I suppose we could say Iron Leaguer because that is sports anime involving robots. Broadly speaking, sports anime tends to be either realistic or fantastical. Fantastical sports anime like Prince of Tennis or Inazuma Eleven has unrealistic elements like hitting a ball so quickly it turns into a fireball that burns through nets. But I don’t think I can recall a single fantastical baseball anime, outside of the baseball story arc in the surreal comedy Sexy Commando Gaiden: Sugoi yo!! Masaru-san.

Answer:

I said, “Major 2nd season 2 is a conventional baseball anime.” I was comparing it to prior baseball shows including Samurai Giants, Captain, Meimon! Daisan Yakyuubu, Princess Nine, Copihan, and Dia no Ace, in other words, shows that heavily revolve around teams playing baseball against other teams. Very marginally less conventional baseball anime may include, primarily, Mitsuru Adachi’s dramas which are nearly as much domestic romantic comedies as “conventional” baseball anime series. But I would say that at least three different baseball anime exist which differ appreciably in concentration from stories about teams playing hardball. The title I had prominently in mind when I qualified a difference between “conventional” and “unconventional” baseball anime was Madhouse’s 2008 series One Outs, based on the manga by Shinobu Kaitani. One Outs can be described as a sibling to Touhai Densetsu Akagi that swaps mahjong for baseball. Literally, One Outs is the story of a professional league pitcher of entirely average physical prowess who’s able to rack up an amazing winning streak by psychologically intimidating and manipulating opposing players. Later in the 25 episode television series the story expands to incorporate the intrigue of devious pro baseball teams employing highly refined cheating. Ostensibly One Outs is a baseball anime, and much of the series does depict sportsmen playing the game. But the thematic and narrative focus of the series is on psychological warfare rather than sporting technique.

As I recollect it, Production I.G’s 2011 series Moshidora, or “Moshi Koukou Yakyuu no Joshi Manager ga Drucker no Management wo Yondara,” does not depict an awful lot of actual competitive baseball play. The adaptation of Natsumi Iwasaki’s lite novel revolves around a high school girl who unknowingly uses a corporate business management strategy book as a guide to managing and advising her high school baseball team. So much of the ten episode series concentrates on the development and implementation of theory and strategy, particularly the protagonist trying to figure out how to interpret business precepts to baseball principles, with actual baseball play taking a back seat in the series’ narrative explication.

Studio Studio Deen’s two season Gurazeni television series from 2018 is comparable to One Outs in the sense that Gurazeni also depicts plenty of ball play, but the thematic and narrative focus of the show is not on the team competition. Gurazeni could be called the anime version of Moneyball. The show’s narrative focus is not on which teams win and lose nor primarily on club hiring but rather on individual players’ efforts to reach statistical averages that ensure their continued employment and qualify them for pay raises and bonuses. Athletic ranking among the characters in Gurazeni isn’t determined by physical ability or natural talent but rather by pay rate. The most respected players are those who earn the biggest paychecks, not necessarily those who hit the most homeruns or throw the fastest pitches. So while Gurazeni is technically a baseball anime, the competition between teams and players is not for highest score but rather for highest individual statistics and income.

On a side note, since the question included the specific inquiry about specifically “fantastical” baseball anime, I can recollect a few prime examples supplemented by some additional minor league examples.

Toei’s 1986 sci-fi baseball series Go-Q-Choji Ikkiman is near completely unheard of in America and not even widely remembered in Japan. Yet the series about dangerous “battle ball” baseball games played between interplanetary teams is arguably the inspiration for similar stories including Man Gatarou’s 1996 manga series Jigoku Koushien. The 2003 live action film adaptation known as Battlefield Baseball is more widely known than the later 2009 Flash animation OVA.

Another particularly fine illustration of superhuman baseball is the five-minute-long One Piece short film Take Aim! The Pirate Baseball King that screened along with the 2004 fifth One Piece feature film.

Moreover, A number of other anime series that aren’t baseball shows yet include an episode featuring superhuman or otherwise “fantastical” baseball include the Super Saiyajin-powered match in Dragon Ball Super episode 70, giant robots playing baseball in Gundam Build Fighters episode 13, Naota forced to hit a cosmic flyball in FLCL OVA 4, and psychic powered baseball in Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo episode 9. Most recently, this season’s Brand New Animal episode 5 also is an homage to the win-and-survive/lose-and-die concept of Go-Q-Choji Ikkiman.