Gurazeni – 09

The term “inside baseball” is so cogent that it’s come to transcend references to the sport itself.  Anything geeky, specialized or insider gets referred to that way nowadays – but when that phrase was coined it referred to stat-heads and sabermetricians, hard-core baseball otaku who loved to analyze the sports from here till a week from Tuesday.

Gurazeni is about the most inside baseball manga or anime I can ever remember.  It’s almost as if it’s speaking a foreign language, but when which I learned as a child.  When Bonda’s friend Kuriki-san starts talking about release points and “building a wall”, I need no translation – he’s speaking a language I understand.  Pitchers do indeed obsess over mechanics – arm angle, release points, “hiding the ball”.  There is an arms race perpetually going on between pitchers and hitters, each side coming up with a new technique that’s widely copied as soon as it shows signs of success, forcing the other to adapt in order to overcome it.

But Bonda is correct in his main point of the episode – folks like Kuriki are both teacher and cautionary tale.  And as he figures out, you can learn from both – it’s just that the lessons from the latter are a lot more painful.  Pitchers always want to throw faster, and there is a generally inverse relationship between speed and control that forces pitchers to forever try and spike a balance.  But for a specialist like Bonda, speed is a dangerous drug – a siren’s song that can lead to being smashed on the rocks of baseball infamy.  Control is everything for someone like him, which is too bad because I imagine throwing harder (146 KMH is about 91 MPH) and being  able to jam hitters is an amazing feeling for a control pitcher.

It’s also worth noting that weight training is indeed not for everybody – and in fact, for both hitters and pitchers the loss of flexibility can do more harm than added strength does good.  As with the speed/control thing, it’s an eternal quest for balance.  One of the best things about Gurazeni is the way it portrays just how hard it is to be a professional athlete – the way these guys have to perpetually adapt and change to try and keep up with the demands of the sport.  This show may not be everybody’s cup of tea but I love swigging it down every weekend.

Gegege no Kitarou (2018) – 10

It’s been a long time since I watched or read Gegege no Kitarou with any regularity, and I’d forgotten the extent to which Nezumi-Otoko was a central figure in the series.  He’s more than just comic relief or a foil for Kitarou – he’s a kind of everyman.  Ratman is, in fact, half-youkai and half-human, and he effectively forms a bridge between the two worlds in many ways (including the nefarious impulses of each species).  Mizuki Shigeu unfailingly cited Nezumi-Otako as his favorite character, and I think that often shows through in the writing.  In fact Mizuki-sensei flat out said that the narrative wouldn’t work without Nezumi-Otoko’s presence:

  “Kitarou is a fool. Because he is an ally of justice, because he is like Superman, he never has thoughts along the lines of money meaning happiness. Because of this, if Nezumi-Otoko doesn’t appear, the stories won’t unfold steadily.”

I like the stories where we see the “human” side (I mean that in the existential rather than literal sense) of Ratman, and this was definitely one of them.  Specifically, he’s fallen in love with Mana (as many youkai seem to be doing) after she stumbles upon him collapsed in an alley covered in youkai mold, not having eaten in a week, and offers him konbini bread.  Unfortunately being Nezumi-Otako he courts her in clumsy and clandestine youkai fashion rather than confessing (not that it would’ve worked either way) which convinces her that something weird is happening at school – weirder than the usual “seven school mysteries” lineup.  And whenever Mana gets in trouble, we know who she calls and it ain’t Ghostbusters.

Neko-Musume and Nezumi-Otoko is a good basis for an episode, and this one does just fine with Kitarou and Medama-Oyaji mostly absent.  They’re visiting a hot spring – and like most very traditional Japanese onsen it’s a konyoku (mixed-gender bath).  There they run into Hanako (a member of this and pretty much every school mystery pack and an old friend of Catchick).  She has her own stalker issues – a ghost named Yusuke who’s haunting the second-floor boys room.  After Hanako made the mistake of offering him TP in an emergency (who knew?) Yusuke took it as a reciprocation of his love for her.

This is all pretty silly but very good fun, especially when Nurikabe ends up falling for (but thankfully not on) Mana himself.  As for Nezumi-Otoko, he’s so crestfallen he ends up taking a trip to nurse his broken heart – one which, I suspect, will be cut short as soon as the next (illusory) money-making opportunity presents itself.