1 February 2009: Major v. One Outs - or - Pitchers and Catchers Report in 13 Days
Tokuchi from One Outs.
I dropped One Outs after episode 14 because it stopped being about gambling and turned into a show about over-reacting to events that are commonplace during real-life baseball games. Kind of on a goof, I started watching Major instead, mostly because of its crazy shounen-type episode count. Well, it turns out Major is really good, and (at least through the first forty episodes) it depicts baseball reasonably accurately. It is much more realistic than Princess Nine or The Natural, for example. I would say Major is about equivalent to Bull Durham as far as the balance between fact and fiction goes.
Komori, the preternaturally skilled weenie kid,
consoles Shimizu, the token girl, from Major.
There is another significant difference that makes Major superior to One Outs: One Outs is about triumph and unshakable confidence. Major is about defeat and despair. In fact, Major is fantastically cruel. Watching some episodes, I was incredulous at times I was actually watching a kid's show. Then again, anime for younger children often seems willing to take things much further than spineless shows aimed at teenagers where all too often nothing of consequence happens.
