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29 November 2009: Best Girl of the Year, 2009

Shimizu and Goro
Shimizu is a peach.

Are "Best of the Year" lists premature at this point considering December hasn't even started yet? Normally, I would say yes, but for 2009 Girl of the Year honors, Shimizu Kaoru from Major has boat raced them all. This is an easy win for Shimizu because I'm giving her an unfair amount of latitude in defining what "of the year" even means. Were I to strictly consider only 2009 appearances in making this judgment, it is possible—perhaps even likely—someone would surpass Shimizu for top honors. (Aoba from Cross Game, that's who.)

Shimizu
The fan service in Major gets completely out of hand.

However, followers of the five-season, one-hundred-twenty-plus episode baseball epic Major enjoy the unique privilege of seeing its characters mature from very young children to adulthood. We see Kaoru grow up just as we see Goro grow up. Shimizu is not just a "childhood friend" in the typical anime sense. Most of the time we're just told someone is a childhood friend character and we're expected to fill in the blanks with what we know of the trope from previous broadly drawn stereotypes.

Shimizu and Miho
How this got past the censors, I have no idea.

This is not the case with Shimizu. We meet Shimizu when Goro meets Shimizu, and by the time she describes herself—years later—as a childhood friend, we're almost surprised to realize Shimizu has been with Goro all this time. Part of this surprise is because she does not wake Goro up in the morning. Nor is she is a substitute for a missing parent. And she is not a devoted slave. This is not to say Shimizu is 100 percent realistic, but she's still a very sweet girl and far superior to the typical cookie-cutter osananajimi stereotypes.

Shimizu rounds third
Shimizu rounds third and digs for home.

So maybe it isn't entirely fair to weigh five seasons of character development against competitors that may have only got to play a single inning, but sometimes a single up the middle with nobody on and the outcome still in question ends up being worth just as much as the attention-getting walk-off home run. True, Shimizu still needed to take three bases back when I called the 2009 Best Girl of the Year shot in April, but I knew she'd be safe all the way.


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