Anime is very well-served for sports this season, no question about it – and baseball especially.  In Major 2nd and Gurazeni it has two excellent series (both directed by the same man, one of the medium’s top talents – which is a highly unusual situation I can’t recall occurring before) totally different in style and focus.  Major brings out the emotional side of baseball as a game in a very visceral way, and Gurazeni deconstructs baseball as a sport in a very detached, intellectual way.

Yet Major is very smart in the way it goes about its business, and Gurazeni is surprisingly gripping – if you’re a baseball fan, anyway.  I continue to be struck by how “inside baseball” this series is – it really strikes me as a show for nothing less than baseball otaku.  But it’s so accurate when it comes to the details that I get sparks of recognition all the time – “that’s how you know it’s working”, as the old saying goes.  In Bonda-san Gurazeni has given us one of the least photogenic protagonists around, but he’s so intensely relatable that his struggles feel very personal.

Was there a bit of autobiography in the story of the mangaka (played by Shimono Hiro) who wants to take the bold step of writing a baseball manga about a middle reliever?  As far as I know Moritaka Yuuji never wrote a battle fantasy like “Battle of Juro” before Gurazeni, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a lot of pushback when the idea for Gurazeni was first bandied about with the editorial staff.   The thing is, it’s a great idea – but I would have argued that it could never become a hit, and I’m as big a baseball fan as there is.  That Gurazeni has spawned 17 volumes, a sequel and an anime strikes me as something of a miracle.

Bonda-san kind of likes being the mangaka’s center of attention, and who can blame him?  No one in baseball labors in anonymity more than the LOOGY, and it’s nice to be treated like a star for once.  All of the things the mangaka and Bonda talk about – being called on to pitch before you’re ready, having to warm up time after time in the bullpen and never getting to pitch at all – these are the bane of the life of the middle reliever.  It’s a tough and generally thankless job, and while no one should be throwing pity parties for anybody who gets paid to play baseball for a living, the role has nothing of the glamor (or financial reward) of being a starter or closer.

When the mangaka asks Bonda if he dreams about being a starter someday, I think the answer is spot-on – there probably isn’t a setup guy that doesn’t think about it sometimes.  But it’s the opportunity to be a closer that presents itself first, with the Spiders’ closer being sent down to the minors and Bonda being one of the candidates to replace him.  He doesn’t initially get the call, but the manager doesn’t have a lot of faith in the guy who does.  And when the opportunity comes to face the lefty gaijin slugger Bobby with the game on the line, he calls on Bonda despite the fact that he’s already left the dugout for the bench (which would never happen in MLB, by the way).

That was a great ending for lots of reasons – not least because of the way Watanabe-sensei shot the scene in such a way as to subtly suggest what was going to happen.  For Bonda to earn a save without throwing a pitch – that was a rare moment of glory for the guy who punches the clock and doesn’t get many chances to show off.  I really found myself stressing in that final scene in the way I do during real sporting events – which is an ability all really good sports anime have to have.  The desire to see Bonda get ahead is very real at this point, because guys like Bonda never seem to get ahead.  I don’t imagine Gurazeni would be Gurazeni if he became a full-time closer or starter, but it’s nice to know there are moments where the everyman can be the star.