Ballpark de Tsukamaete! (The Catcher in the Ballpark!) – 08

Nothing too terribly exciting in Ballpark de Tsukamaete this week, although it did have a fair bit of Ruriko-Koutarou interaction at least. On balance possibly the weakest episode of the series so far, but not in the sort of way that’s a major turnoff. Just overall kind of soft.

Having grown up a Cub fan, I certainly don’t need to be educated about the impact of wind on baseball – no major league park sees games as heavily impacted as Wrigley Field. I’ll always remember the legendary 23-22 extravaganza against the Phillies (we lost, naturally) with the wind howling out a gale. And when it howls in, little Wrigley becomes a great pitcher’s park. Of course for vendors in skirts wind is an issue too, especially in front of their crush. I thought Koutarou did a good job finessing his way out of that (though the timing of Koujirou’s homer certainly helped). He fooled Ruriko, anyway.

The headline of the ep is probably Ruriko spending some time with Koutarou outside work, even if it was at her workplace. Unfortunately he failed to recognize her at first, which lands him squarely in the doghouse for several days. That’s followed by a bit with a reporter coming to the park to write an expose of vendor girl abuses, which takes things in kind of an interesting direction.

This is like one of those idol series that ultimately winds up being a love letter. I don’t honestly know what things are like for these girls – in fact maybe it really is like Aona says, and most of them like their jobs. The whole thing does come off as rather sexist to me, and I’m certainly not in favor of a high-schooler being allowed to do it. But like I said, I don’t claim to know – I certainly wouldn’t expect it to be anywhere near as depraved as the idol industry. I’m not going to trust a manga like this as a source though for obvious reasons, which makes the chapter kind of a miss. Hopefully we get back to more rewarding themes next week.

Uchuujin MuuMuu (Me and the Alien MuMu) – 07

Uchuujin MuuMuu has to be one of the weirdest anime I’ve watched for a long time. Not in the Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita or even Apocalypse Hotel sense, with a wild premise and extravagant gags, but just weird for its own sake. Structurally, tonally – it just ambles off in weird directions and I kind of numbly follow along. It’s a fascinating experience, that’s for sure.

Rokugou is right to be curious at Sakurako explaining tech to her cat, though by this point it kind of feels like everyone should have figured out something seriously weird is going on. As for that whole “cursed Egostation” thing, I mean – wow. Even if it did turn out to be all BS I was (for the second time with this show) shocked it went there. Tenkubashi’s explanation of first generation vs. mass-produced goods was spot-on, using the protagonists mecha vs. a zaku as an analogy – pretty brilliant, actually.

We got to see the other side of Samezu a bit this time, though she’s still 24-grit sandpaper. Why does she know so much about thermometers, I wonder? She also wears a smartwatch that segues into a long discourse on that time of the month. That reference to Tokyo as a hotpot was another pretty astute observation – I could totally see how college women in the trenches would see it that way. Tokyo has a large percentage of transplants from elsewhere in Japan, but especially in that setting they must seem omnipresent. Miwa forgets her thermometer (which seems very important to her) and pops into the conbini to buy another. There she runs into MuuMuu and Maru, very much not behaving like cats.

Well, Miwa was nice enough to rescue Sakurako from the cats’ misguided attempts to cure her cold. On some level a person has to have decency to do that unsolicited. The interesting part is, how come she can see the missile? Is its cloaking malfunctioning or is there something particular about Miwa that allows her to do so?