Major 2nd 2nd Season

Major is one of my favorite anime franchises of all time, let alone my favorite sports anime franchise by quite some distance. It’s characterization, intense matches and long-running storytelling present in many seasons with consistency always captivated me in so many ways. With its successor, Major 2nd having a very impressive first season (especially for being the sequel to a long-running success story already and not disappointing like a Boruto compared to Naruto), I was quite excited for this new season of Major to drop back in April. Here are some of my thoughts on the 8th overall season of the Major franchise and the2nd season of Major 2nd by Takuya Mitsuda! Major 2nd season 2 takes place a couple of years after the first season where Daigo Shigeno is now in Junior High, where he turns out to be the captain of the Fuurin baseball team. A team that is mostly full of girls (which also has his crime partner, Mutsuko Sakura from the Dolphins days) since a lot of the fellow guys on the team got kicked out due to a shoplifting incident, leaving Daigo alone with one guy (later two), to join the girls to form a baseball team with the thinnest roster imaginable. Hell, there isn’t even a proper coach in this team so, despite Fuurin’s previous reputation of being a competitive team, the lack of personnel automatically put Daigo in a tricky situation. Compared to the second season of the original Major where it had Goro conquering so many physical obstacles like returning from a potentially career-ending shoulder injury and switching to being a southpaw pitcher, to joining rival school Kaido along with Toshiya and go through multiple trials to get a taste of the immense competition awaiting his baseball future, this season feels a lot more tamer than that but presents its own challenges that Daigo and Fuurin have to go through. This occasion, mainly as a team that is all over the place – some players have talent but no real desire to get down and succeed through it all, some players have a lack of talent completely, some players have talent but are too rough and inexperienced to conquer against competition that is much highly skilled and have much more depth too than all of them, the fact that most of the team are comprised of females which a lot of teams tend to look down on, etc. This is a season that surrounds itself through teamwork as a whole, and working together to grow as a cohesive unit and try to pose a challenge to opposing teams despite the handicaps and hardships that they have had to endure as a team altogether. They may not have a coach or a proper bench (hell, some starters are barely classified as rookies despite some others playing baseball in the past in Little League), but through Daigo’s development as a leader, they still fight on; even with an obvious glass ceiling that hangs above them given how the state of the team is. The story itself for me is really entertaining for the most part as with a refreshing take on a cast and a more long-term focus on the Junior High section of Major 2nd which will extend past this season, it showcases the more gradual build that this show is laying the foundation of with this edition. The next season is where a lot of the big-time matches will kick off so this season focuses more on the development to get to that place and to build some tension for Daigo and potential rivals too for the future. For the most part, I feel like everything’s done well and organically too. There are points in the story where the pacing feels rushed, like at the end of certain matches and an oddly placed timeskip, but despite those flaws, I found the development of the cast and most of the matches itself to be extremely well crafted and drawn out for the entire season. Compared to a lot of anime this year which lost my interest narratively really quickly, Major 2nd offers some of the best character writing I’ve seen this year as well as in the franchise itself. It may not have the epic matches in season 5 or the great emotional punches in season 1 but the focus on teamwork with an evenly matched cast that doesn’t rely itself on Goro Shigeno makes it one of the most enjoyable and lovable seasons to date. The Furin Junior High Baseball team consisted of a mix of female and male baseball players (mostly females). So already, the cast, in general, feels very different from the traditional cast you would find in any sports anime let alone a Major season. Here, this anime showcases one of the rare times where both genders play important roles to work together as a team so that whole dynamic is pretty interesting and refreshing for the most part, and I’m glad Takuya Mitsuda chose to go with this direction, especially since for High School onwards, he can only mainly focus on Daigo and males due to the Koshien not allowing guy-girl teams to participate together unlike with Junior High. Daigo himself I felt was a really good protagonist again like the previous season but takes on a much more different role than the traditional sports protagonist. Daigo isn’t as hotheaded and charismatic as Goro in the original edition of Major, but with a more confident, serious, and determined personality at hand, Daigo came across as a genuine leader in this one. A leader who would work as hard as he could to bring the best out of his teammates to make up for the many obstacles that they have to overcome being a team that had no coach and barely a cohesive squad due to a lot of the older players being kicked out for shoplifting. He’s showcased some nice development from the first season and played a really good role in being the quiet but tactical and observational captain who also had the passion and heart for baseball to motivate his teammates to try and succeed alongside him. Another character that returned was Mutsuko Sakura into having a more prominent role this season as probably the 2nd main character instead of Hikaru last season. While her personality hasn’t changed much, her passion for baseball has grown immensely and she’s become a pitcher now compared to being a slogger previously. Given the lack of teammates in Fuurin, she took the responsibility for becoming a pitcher and the show did a good job with her development to be a competent pitcher than can compete with a lot of teams in tournaments (still not the best of the best ones though). Plus, she was also the support that the team needed at times given strained times as she could relate to her teammates but also to Daigo too if he was under pressure or was putting too much work down to improve everyone else. Plus she’s still charming, sweet, and likable too so those are all bonuses to how good she is. Then you have the rest of the team who mostly are enjoyable to watch and a really good supporting cast as a whole to the anime with a few standouts being Yayoi Sawa, one of my favorite characters of the year for just her calm, cool and collected personality as well as Chisato Fuji for being really sweet, charming and quite the devilish little troll at times when teasing others, especially her sister Chiyo. Some characters like Tanba didn’t quite receive much spotlight as well as Kandori but for the most part, the baseball club all shined together due to how much this season focused on teamwork and how each player is important to the success of the team, especially since none of them aren’t as talented, fiery and motivational to win like a Goro Shigeno. The rival teams also had a nice mix of new characters, old characters returning from Little League (Andy, Urabe, Michiru) and old characters returning from the original Major edition (Goro, Fuji) to all have their good moments too whether in playing baseball against Fuurin or just by being a small part of the Fuurin journey to grow and develop like with Goro. So overall, I really loved the characters as a whole and this club as a whole might be one of my favorite sports clubs I’ve seen in anime based on the teams. Teamwork made the cast grow nicely together, especially chemistry wise and it really shows here. Major 2nd season 2’s art for the most part looks really different not only from previous Major seasons but from sports anime in general. It has more of this slice of life-like feel to it less than the typical sports anime but for the most part, I loved this refreshing change. While the episodes down the line do look a tad weaker than how it started (mainly due to the number of delays this show suffered due to COVID-19), the show looked damn good. It was colorful, the character designs were great, the animation for the baseball matches was better than ever with the subtle details brought out really nicely – especially seeing the pitches feel more realistic and varied and just seeing the runners slide and batters swing look more satisfying and real as ever. The colors also pop really nicely too overall in this show as well. For a baseball anime, while it may not have the intense Haikyuu or Hajime no Ippo like moments in terms of animation, this edition of Major leaned more towards the calm, realistic style, which looked amazing. OLM brought the best out of this anime and even with having to deal with COVID-19 delays, they did such a stellar job overall with bringing this anime to life with how fantastic it looks overall. Some of the visuals for the openings looked fantastic too, especially the colorful nature of the 2nd opening with the paint flying everywhere while showing all characters there. The sound department was strong here, as usual for a Major anime. The background music has a nice variety of calm tracks, funny tracks for comedy moments, and intense tracks when getting down to the clutch moments in a baseball game. Major’s always been strong for me when it comes to music and how it fits a variety of moments, and this season is no different whatsoever. The opening songs were really catchy for me as well since I never wanted to skip it at all due to how fun it sounded, especially the first one ‘Answer’. The songs again, not the traditional sports opening songs as it felt more like a josei/slice of life song but for the atmosphere of the show, it works nicely. The voice acting also was great, with some standouts being Kana Hanazawa as Mutsuko and Sumire Uesaka portraying the perfect cute devil in Chisato. For the most part, all the voice actors/actresses fit their roles really well for the entirety of the show and delivered nicely in the range of emotions that the show provided overall. In a year where I’ve been disappointed by so many shows and dislike so many shows, Major 2nd season 2 has been a genuine breath of fresh air. It’s not only a refreshing show since it’s actually great but also gives a refreshing feel to the Major franchise and the sports genre as a whole. And given how this Junior High arc is not over yet with this season, it feels like one of the most important Major arcs to date which makes it more exciting. The matches and characters were just really great overall, and I had a blast watching this anime when I desperately needed something decent from this year. The journey for the airing of this 2nd season was a damn bumpy one, to say the least as it got hit with numerous delays in the earlier half of the season, where episodes would not air for more than a month to make up for production scheduling to ensure that the season can finish somehow. But in the end, it managed to actually finish and I’m glad since unlike Kingdom season 3, I get to actually complete a clear anime of the year candidate this year itself. Major 2nd season 2 was an excellent anime and an excellent addition to the Major franchise despite feeling a lot different from the other 7 seasons overall (Major + first season of Major 2nd). Definitely recommend the whole Major franchise as a whole, let alone just this one anyway but for Major fans, this anime should be a treat just like the rest.