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Now in Japan
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Written by maehara
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Saturday, 29 January 2005 08:00 |
 That's Major as in 'League' - yup, it's a
baseball anime, with a large helping of one-parent-family angst thrown
in. I've never really been able to get into sports anime, with
the possibly exception of Battle Athletes (and it doesn't really count) - even the much-hyped Princess Nine never really did anything for me - so I have to admit I'm not expecting too much from this...
1 - Goro's Dream - Daddy's Dream
Five-year-old Goro's determined to follow in his father's footsteps
& become a major-league baseball pitcher. While little Goro
certainly doesn't lack enthusiasm, life's getting in the way - his
mother died recently, and his father hasn't been taking it too
well. Injury & bad form since Chiaki died mean there's a
possibility of him being fired by his team, and poor Goro's on the
wrong side of his father's frustrations. Seeing his father fall
from sporting idol to sporting nobody isn't easy on him, either - but
there's more to baseball than pitching...
It really is a two-track story, here - on the one side you've got
Goro's desire to become a pro baseball player (and you can pretty much
figure from the OP sequence that there's a lot of that to come,
although it's only touched upon in this episode), while on the other
you have the efforts of his father to cope with Chiaki's death and take
good care of his son while still trying to make a career out of
baseball. I also spot some potential love interest in the form of
Goro's teacher. Put it all together, and there's a lot for the
writers to work with.
Problem is, family problems & sport anime seem to be two different
genres to me, and I'm not convinced it'll work that well over the long
term. Not being a fan of sports anime didn't really help, either,
and I found that there wasn't really anything here to make me keep
coming back to the show.
Sports nuts may get a bit more out of this, but for me, it's a 'pass'...
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