Boukyaku Battery is a bit of an odd duck for me. As a seemingly straightforward (no bogus flimflammery) baseball manga adaptation it should have been right in my strike zone. But sometimes I get anti-sleeper vibes, and this was a series where I did. Just something about the premise and the look and the tenor of the reader commentary about it didn’t sit right with me. Plus, the fate of any series not on the front burner at MAPPA always figures to be a dubious proposition.
Honestly, the first word that pops into my mind with this premiere is “weird”. The art and animation is a bit weird actually (clearly MAPPA is not budgeting much on this one), but I’m talking more about the writing. The “perspective” if you will. I’m not sure where this series is coming from but it’s somewhere out there. Some of that comes from the Miyano Mamoru character, Kaname. Miyano is pretty off the wall with his performance (though I admit that “Chihaya” line made me LOL), and while that’s obviously one of his go-to personas, this kid is one weird dude (and I’m not buying the amnesia as an excuse).
Amnesia is at the heart of this premise, which finds an “oblivion” battery (that’s the English title) who terrorized youth baseball wind up at a no-name public school with no baseball team after the catcher gets amnesia. Amnesia is a cliche but okay, I’ll wait for the explanation on that one. So why did they go to a school with no baseball team? Diid Kiyomine (the pitcher) just give up on the idea of anyone else being able to catch his pitches (I mean, get over yourself), or did he know a baseball club was being formed? The main supporting character is Yamada, a sad-sack kid who gave up baseball after being humiliated by the titular pairing. It’s an arch-typical Kaji Yuuki performance, with all that implies.
All in all this just didn’t work for me, though there were moments that I did enjoy. I didn’t find Kaname funny, and that’s a problem since his antics dominate much of the episode. The humor generally is very broad, with lots of stage falls and face-pulling. And I didn’t really like any of the characters, though there’s still time for that to change. If the baseball stuff winds up being good that will make up for a lot, but it’s too soon to know whether that will be the case. First episodes are hard – I’ll see how I like the second one here, but first impressions (and that’s what these are called, after all) aren’t especially favorable.
Joshua
April 11, 2024 at 9:23 pmI saw the 2020 Jump Festa short adapting this first chapter too (and parts of what next episode will pertain to) and it’s fundamentally identical really (outside of arguably looking more appealing visually), so I’d set expectations low going in next week. I will say that there’s a fine balance in manzai comedy that this series will need to find before it becomes a turn off.
It just feels like ever since Zombie Land Saga that producers genuinely believed that Miyano was a natural born comedy star, which is why he’s being type cast into roles exactly like Kotaro from ZLS: loudmouthed, hammy and high pitched. Even though I swore there was supposed to be some irony to the fact that a charismatic actor like Miyano (typically cast as cool bishounen) was playing the opposite of those kinds of characters.
Joshua
June 3, 2024 at 11:35 amMAPPA being MAPPA aside, something clicked halfway through the series when it dropped that comedy shtick (as an emphasis) and started becoming more introspective in exploring its characters. It felt like after several episodes of awkward comedy and inexplicable pop culture references (including one part where Kei briefly goes Super Saiyan, not making this up), it required these baseball player leads to lose to a rival school during their first tryout to humble them (and the show to an extent).
I’d say that’s a significant improvement and probably why it managed to keep hanging on after those rocky first chapters. One player’s backstory about his “yips” was even kinda moving.
Guardian Enzo
June 3, 2024 at 12:18 pmGlad to hear it. I disliked the first couple of episodes so viscerally that there’s no way I would make the time to go back to it, TBH.
Joshua
June 26, 2024 at 12:39 pmAaaaaaaaand what a difference it makes when this series took a drastic shift in tone for the better. There was a turn for the psychological when Kei temporarily revert back to his original memories of being a serious player (before relapsing back to his amnesiac self. And then this week’s episode delivered what could possibly be one of the best looking episodes of the season.
I’m not being hyperbolic, it was genuinely an exceptionally good looking game of baseball that felt truly exciting (reminiscent of the better Mix and Daiya no A episodes). On top of also using its more introspective tone to explore another player’s backstory in a shockingly well directed way. I thought it was spectacular actually.
It’s probably likely that a season 2 is getting announced after next week, so I wonder if it can keep this up going forward now that it has shaken much of its bad habits from the start of the series?
Quynh
August 12, 2024 at 10:30 amI had actually tried to read the manga of this multiple times a few years ago, with it not sticking due to the weird unseriousness of it. I had recently given the anime a chance and was shocked how to goes way deeper than you would think, with the ending leaving questions that made me pick up the manga again for answers. I hope people seriously give this series another chance because behind the weird comedy (which IMO does actually kind of end up working somehow in the later half) I appreciate the character’s uniqueness and I’m definitely most curious about Kaname’s character.