Boukyaku Battery (TV)

Oblivion Battery - It's a game of baseball...with more attitude to offer? If there's one genre in the AniManga space that proves a hard task to nail, it would be the sports genre, regardless of its source origin. And believe me, I've tried a fair few sports shows over the past few years, from the likes of soccer/football (i.e. Ao Ashi, Blue Lock) to niche ones like Spring 2021's Shakunetsu Kabaddi, and I definitely have mixed feelings so far. It's less often than most that studios are given a once-in-a-blue-moon rein to produce something out of their ballpark, and this season, it would have to bethe infamous studio MAPPA being assigned to yet another sports show, the last being Masafumi Nishida's Summer 2021 show of Re-Main that focuses on water polo (which was mediocre to fine). 3 years later, the studio is back with yet another sports show. The difference this time, is the adaptation of mangaka Eko Mikawa's Boukyaku Battery a.k.a Oblivion Battery, which offers more than just its main baseball theme...with an injection of humour here and there? "Nipple hair!!!" - Kei Kaname, VAed by Mamoru Miyano The TL;DR of such a story or plot as Boukyaku Battery would be: a group of misfits and quitters who compensate for the morale of the baseball team in their own quirks and features, so much so that they're all connected by the white whisps of a thrown baseball at a rather fast speed, with the sport being the circumstance that connects their humanity together in a weird, but cohesive way to break out of their life-stagnating rut. You literally have an unbeatable power duo, an ordinary young man, as well as a pair of frenemies, all of whom joined a public school with little to no recognition, much less an active baseball club to begin with. And with some tenacity, through the POV of the Average Joe, circumstances begin to unravel and bond the misfits together in one form or another, despite everyone being fearful of the Oblivion Battery duo's name being a reference to what to expect in the series. The love of baseball, and a make-and-break decision. Both Kei Kaname and Haruka Kiyomine are the feared Battery duo, being a fearsome catcher-pitcher tour de force to be reckoned with...when they get all serious. In retrospect, the Oblivion part refers to Kei suffering from amnesia, acting all joker-like with his cringey "Nipple Hair" repeated gag comedy, and Haruka just not giving a damn care about him, which only matters when they're on the pitch. Enter Taro Yamada, the Average Joe, who's the 1st-year newbie in their public school, Kotesashi High School. As you would expect, all 1st-years are coerced to join a club to make full use of their years in school, and Taro, chancing upon the famed battery duo, opts them together to form a new baseball club to reignite the fun of baseball. Little did he know that he would have to deal with Kei's relentless gags and the amnesiac forgetfulness of how to play the sport, alongside Haruka who only gives the silent treatment and talks when it matters. The baseball club only gets going once Shunpei Chihaya and Aoi Todo, once-baseball regulars who are not only morally defeated by the Oblivion Battery duo, but their own circumstances as well, join the rag-tag club, and as they say: "Once all struggle is grasped, miracles are possible." The characters easily steal the show for the series. It's not just the incapability of people to excel at their greatest, but it's all learning about how to overcome the high walls, even if help is and isn't existent, for it is all in the psychological mind if they choose to believe that they can do it to begin with. More often than not, I can understand if Kei's comedy gag of jokes gets old and repetitive easily, but surprisingly enough, that same amnesiac personality also serves as a great facade between his serious and not-so-serious moments. Like I've said, it's all in the mind, and if you choose to believe that you can do it despite the circumstances, you will go far, alongside Kotesashi High's baseball club members, where struggles are part-and-parcel of life. It's why "Opposites Attract", and it's how a psychologically challenged team like Kei, Haruka, Taro, Shunpei, and Aoi, can still go the distance if they try their damnest. It would not be surprising to see a studio like MAPPA take on the mantle of yet another sports show after Re-Main, considering that they actually produced the ONA special for Weekly Shonen Jump's Anime Festa back in 2020. Little did we know, that this was the sequence of events to come when the anime was greenlit in August 2023, even though the series is directed by MAPPA's B-tier team of debut director Masato Nakazono alongside Tsuyoshi Iida for assistance. Still, even with the lesser-known shows, the studio does give its all to the show's production through stellar animation to give it some flex, even if it feels rather stiff at times. The music, I would say, is pretty excellent, given its composition by both Tomoki Kikuya and Hiroko Yamasaki. Especially for the former, who also composed the music sensation that was Fall 2022's Bocchi the Rock!, as well as his 2017 hits of Spring's Eromanga-sensei, as well as Fall's Blend S alongside Imouto sae Ireba Ii. a.k.a A Sister's All You Need, to name a few. Tomoki Kikuya is a very talented musician who knows how to string all the show's moments with his musical craftsmanship. As for the theme songs, it's a killer combination with Mrs. Green Apple's OP and Macaroni Empitsu's ED, though I prefer much of the stylized childlike drawing of the latter in the visuals, as well as the solid ED song that's one of my favourites this season. If you're going to watch Boukyaku Battery a.k.a Oblivion Battery, let me give you some advice: don't think of it as a grand stage of a show, like Blue Lock. It's actually more reminiscent of MAPPA's other work, Re-Main, where its characters will lead the show in its own narrative of character growth and overcoming all obstacles, though the execution can be hit or miss. Still, you can't go wrong with this series, and it wouldn't actually hurt to try watching it at least once through for a decent time.

Oblivion Battery is a largely character-driven show that also has a great deal of focus on baseball. The balancing act generally tilts toward character development, but I never considered baseball a throwaway theme in this show. First of all, I want to say that this show is extremely smart with the introduction of the baseball team. It feels so....genuine. Realistic. Now, I'm not going to say that a premise that chance coincidences of genius players coming to a nameless public school alongside Kei, an amnesia-ridden former genius catcher is realistic, but if you suspend your disbelief of the setting of the show, you'll come to realizethat the rest of the pieces fall together like a perfectly built puzzle. I love the way characters get brought into the team. It's with purpose, and not with an irrelevant surface-level connection of baseball that connects each core character. I'll get the obvious one out of the way when talking about Haruka and Kei. Haruka is extremely dependent, almost obsessive about Kei being his catcher, going to a nameless school with Kei, and not even trying to convince Kei to go to a private school with an extremely talented baseball team scholarship. he seemingly defers to Kei at every step, but also is stubborn about his pitching, practicing every minute he gets, but also throwing away his high school career just to play with his catcher. Normally, Haruka would be worried about the future, wondering how their relationship would play out, and maybe try to bring back his old friend back before he got amnesia. However, Kei never thinks that way. He merely thinks of his best friend as his best friend. It goes past anything: Kei is Kei. I could drone on and on, but it's a unique relationship with dynamics I won't be going too deep in this review. Next are the rest of the cast of baseball players. I'll ignore Taro since he's a pretty basic captain-like character. However, I really like Aoi and Shunpei's character design and background. Again, when we talk about grassroots clubs trying to recruit members, it's generally just the main characters begging over and over again for them to join. This may seem like the case for this show as well, but you'll end up realizing that it's not as simple as you think. I won't go too deep into either character since there would be pretty massive spoilers, but I just love the fact that both characters are depicted as adolescent kids. There's no stupid drama to heighten tensions. There's not going to be an accident that scars another person for life or something. It's almost all inner introspection. It's coming of age. It's facing problems that you shoved to the back of your mind because you couldn't initially solve them. Sometimes, characters need help from others. Sometimes, help comes in the form of a healthy environment and examining yourself. Overall, I just absolutely love the connection that Aoi and Shunpei both suffered immensely from the battery duo of Kei and Haruka, but instead of escaping again, they try to confront their problems. Finally, I want to talk about the actual character interactions. It's genuine! I love it. It captures the crude humor that high school kids go through. I love Shunpei and Aoi's back-and-forth arguments. I like Kei's boke. I like Aoi's tsukommi. And I like Haruka's strictness with himself and the gap he creates when he acts immature at times. I do agree that Kei's quite over the top. However, I think that's just what you have to accept: Kei's a character that had amnesia and as a result, regressed into child-like behavior. A former genius character, will he ever regain his former intellect? You don't know, but one thing's for certain, he's going to be lazy, childish, and do stupid one-liners constantly. Since this show is dependent on characters, the slice-of-life scenes are that much more numerous, and that much more important. Diving into the character interactions both on the mound and off the field is a treat and also serves to solidify each character. If you can't stand Kei or any of the other characters, this show might not be for you. On the other hand, if you think the characters are great and dialogue fun, you're in for a good time. I'll talk about less important stuff about comparing to other baseball anime here: Compared to other shows like Diamond no Ace, this show shows less detail into the aspect of baseball and doubles down on characters. Diamond no Ace has such extreme details into each player's habits and does play-by-play for nearly every important game. This show, while still emphasizing player habits and strategy, nearly never does play-by-play and instead focuses on the character's feelings at the moment. You'll never see this show talk strategy about Kei giving Haruka signs for pitching (at least yet) or the specific batting habits of opponents. Yet at the same time, it's not like Cross Game where baseball might as well be a fleeting background, as this show still focuses a lot on the game itself. It's just varying levels of detail. Ookiku Furikabutte, on the other hand, does as good of a job when it comes to play by plays, but staggers immensely on character interaction and development. While crude humor surfaces up here and there, it does feel a lot more artificial and even more immature than Kei sometimes. It does feel like surface-level imitation. On the other hand, characters in Ookiku Furikabutte just bring up extremely odd topics at times, almost like author-self insert dialogue rather than actual high school freshmen kids talking. This happens many times. So yes, I think while Oblivion Battery clearly won't get to the level of detail that shows like Diamond no Ace provides, that's perfectly fine because the scope of the show is completely different.

To anyone who dislikes the "It gets good later on" kind of show, this might not be for you. But for anyone who has enough patience to watch half of the show before deciding whether it is for them or not, this might be worth a try. I say that because in my opinion, the show only became interesting when it's telling the backstories of the main characters, and that only started during the 6th episode. The 2 MCs have not been interesting so far. Kaname has been doing nothing but forced and redundant "comical" bits for the most part, which now became so tired and irritating.But his character did get a development relating to his Amnesia before the season ended so, that at least gave him a little pump of interest. Kiyomine on the other hand still doesn't have any personality other than being obsessed and teasing a BL with Kaname. They did utilize the other character, Toudou, for the baseball and serious aspects of the show, seemingly presenting him as the most mature and leader-like among the crew. His character arc was the first part of the story that made the show interesting for me. Chihaya also had his character arc spot before the season ended. It wasn't too strong and was more of a first hurdle for him to overcome, but the point of the backstory was quite helpful to give him a motivation going forward. Yamada the POV character has become less of an irritating embodiment of a narrator and finally started taking part during the baseball games and some of the character events. That's an improvement from when he was still mostly like a ghost that speaks from time to time. The "2D" gamer dude... I don't think we got much from him yet-- his introduction episode was fairly fun though, to be fair. Frankly, if this had bad animation, I would've dropped it already. But since it's visually pleasing, it wasn't hard to keep watching, which is why I managed to see its much more interesting latter half. With that being said, I do see a bit of possibility that this could turn into an interesting Baseball-themed Anime when the MCs finally get into some competition/tournament arcs. They've already setup some rival characters to look forward to, and some challenges for the characters to overcome. The only problem would be if the 2 MCs, Kaname and Kiyomine, remain stuck with a romantic angle even during serious arcs. IMO, if they don't get any more motivation other than them wanting to play with each other's "balls", then the writer(s) might as well focus on the other characters as the main ones. TL;DR: You want some Baseball action in Anime? You got it!.... during the last 3 episodes, that is. (I'm not counting the practice match against Teitoku-- that was more of a plot setup.). If you don't mind going through some character-building that would PROBABLY lead somewhere then it might be worth checking out. Otherwise, just watch the Major series. WARNING: Toudou's older sister is flaming hot!!!

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