Tag: Major

Major: The Ball of Friendship

Leave a comment

I really enjoyed the first season of Major and so now we’ve finally continued on with Goro’s journey. Though this film actually didn’t come out after the first season, it takes place in between seasons one and two so we’ve decided to watch things in chronological order as best we can. That also means this isn’t a movie for jumping into the series, it makes no introductions.

Also, while there is a specific baseball that starts Goto thinking about his past at the beginning of the movie, calling it The Ball of Friendship is just odd. This movie doesn’t really have anything to do with making friends and being there for each other. Friendship doesn’t get Goro through in the climactic last game.

The ending of the first series was a whirlwind of changes at the end. The first season ends with the huge bombshells that are dropped on everyone in Goro’s penultimate year of elementary school. When the second season begins they have jumped ahead to junior high and there are even more significant changes that took place. This movie bridges the gap by explaining how many of those changes came to be from the first season to the second. In a way this is the secret history of Major: The Little League Years.

But as Narutaki said there is not pity for anyone who is not a Major fan. Heck the movie starts in the middle of Goro’s professional career. There is just a little refresher material at the beginning to bring you back up to speed after the intro but it is only there to jog the memory of people who already watched the first season. But other than that your on your own. This movie was made for the hardcore to see what happened in that missing gap. It is more a gaiden than anything else. But a vital one in reflection.

Just a quick note: The movie starts with a lot of awkward English to the point where you might assume you got an old dub. The story just starts in America with native English speakers who are clearly not voice actors. They jump back to Japanese quickly enough but I know it threw Narutaki and I for a loop at first.

Continue reading →

Major S1: The Natural

Leave a comment

I have always had an interest in sports series from the beginning of my fandom, but that desire has exploded in the last couple of years. Major is something of an institution as far as baseball titles are concerned with an incredibly long serial and the unique angle of following our lead from pre-little league youth up to the major leagues. It also happened to finally come to an end in 2010. Some readers might remember this title was also recommended to us for our 100th Ongoing Investigation and for that I am grateful as it was the push I needed to jump in.

When you think of long running shonen series you almost always think of shonen fighting. But shonen sports can be just as popular and run just as long. Slam Dunk, Fighting Spirit, and Prince of Tennis are all mega popular shonen sports franchises that go on for over 30 books and have had equally long running anime. But when it comes to sports anime the king of athletic manga has always been baseball anime. Star of the Giants and Touch are amazingly popular cultural touchstones that have hardcore fans outside of the normal manga reading demographic. Another such breakout baseball manga hit is the recently completed manga Major. It chronicles the career of Goro Honda from just a kindergartner with a love of baseball to his major league baseball career and everything in between. The manga ran for an incredible 77 volumes and the anime ran for 6 seasons and only just ended in 2010. As major sport anime fans we decided to check on the first season of the anime and see what story has completely captivated Shonen Sunday readers and NHK viewers over the years.

Continue reading →

Ongoing Investigations: Case #100

6 Comments

Ongoing Investigations #100 marks a milestone for the blog! To celebrate, this time around we asked Twitter to suggest the titles for us to check out.

Ever since I finished Cross Game, I have been itching for more baseball anime, and truly I find myself more and more engaged in sports series overall. Major is a damn long and famous series that we finally started to explore. Major has a dual story taking place, the next stage of the career of an aging baseball player and his son the growing, passionate young baseball dreamer, Goro. As with other baseball series, death seems to stalk the cast, but you can see it coming, though this doesn’t make me any happier to say good-bye. Since Goro is too young to really be the star yet, we follow the dad as he pursues a new road on his team. This is an excellent way for us to experience Goro as a child while still getting plenty of baseball tension. At this point I am more excited about the dad’s future but Goro is a good a kid and things seem promising. And as a popular title, and currently hitting its 6th season, the animation is quite nice. For me, Major exuded a lot of heart and I fell in love with it easily. Liked this show so much you can expect to see a full review soon.

hisuicon Major was suggested to us in a roundabout way by Ed Chavez. Apparently he was never a big fan of the manga but suggested we sample the series anyways as part of a proper Shonen Sunday education. When Bradley C Meek suggested it on Twitter for our 100th Ongoing Investigation we had to watch it.  I had mostly heard of the show for the fact that it follows the professional career of the main character, Goro Honda,  from his early childhood days when he really gets into the idea of playing professionally to his playing the major leagues. The series starts with it being the story of Goro’s and his potentially career ending injury. Seeing his father’s struggles inspires Goro to aim to be professional ball player himself. So far Narutaki and I have been intrigued by both Goro’s fathers struggles and his romance with Goro’s teacher. Eventually Goro’s dad will have to step out of the spotlight as Goro gets older and the show focuses more on him but we have been enjoying the show so far. The first 3 episodes we watched did not have the opening so the picture of the cracked baseball helmet does not seem encouraging especially since we are getting this bad feeling about Goro’s dad. I am curious to see were the series goes and how Goro grows as a character.

Continue reading →