Princess Nine: Kisaragi Joshikou Yakyuubu

I once suggested this show to a baseball fan and after a couple days he sent me a message saying something along the lines of "I started watching this to see baseball, why do I care so much about the characters?!" My response was that it's because it's a good anime.

So, to clarify why this is so biased: This was my first real obscure anime. I'd grown up watching Dragon Ball once in a while and had watched Cowboy Bebop, but I never truly veered too far off the beaten path. Then, doing research for what was essentially the set-up for a joke, I needed ... to find an older anime about girls' baseball. This is what came up. So I used the name, referenced a character and thought I was done. But I wasn't. I find out that this show was on Youtube (which, now that I understand the anime industry better, I shouldn't have done that). I watch through the entire show. While not my point of no return into becoming a weeb, it was absolutely a starting point that led me to want to find more anime.

With that out of the way, you can understand why it's hard for me to talk about this show objectively. The criticisms about the love triangle is valid and I would absolutely agree that the guys kind of have no real personality (Hiroki is the most dull love interest I've ever seen). The girls however, are full of it.

My favorite character is and will always be Seira Morimura, the speed demon second baseman with the maximum amount of attitude. If anything, I would've loved to have seen so much more of her. In terms of the best developed character, Izumi is really all you need to look towards. The show's protagonist may technically be Ryo, it's Izumi's story for most of it. Each girl has something to prove and each really does get to have their own moment to shine (except maybe Hikaru). It's hard to introduce 9 characters and get you to recognize and care about each of them, but Princess Nine delivers in that sense.

I'm unsure of who to suggest this for as I found it on a sheer whim, but it's just a close favorite of mine. After watching more anime, I've definitely found anime that I've loved so much more, but you never really forget your first.

A " charming mediocrity" best describes my opinion of Princess Nine, there are many tropes and just things the show doesn't do that well, that calling this show 'good' is a bit of a stretch to me. But despite this I did find it somewhat charming, whilst there isn't much particularly good with this series, I did enjoy my time with it.

Princess Nine is pretty much about forming a female baseball team, in a league where only men are allowed, to overturn the rules and prove that women can compete on equal ground with men. It doesn't solely focus on this in fact there are ... only three baseball games in the 26 episode run, the rest is either focused on training, recruiting (for the first half), on a romance sub plot, or on trying to stop the school counsellors, parent association, baseball association etc for not allowing a girls team to play in the baseball league.

The problem with this show is none of the aspects were done that well, the baseball isn't really in depth and most of the game isn't about tough opponents but just a mental issue the pitcher has, its okay to do this sometimes but all the games is that the girl's team could be winning if they were playing their best but something is stopping them. I want to point out the first official baseball game match for being particular bad, if the point of your show is to show that woman can be on equal ground, having the female team seduce the men's team because they don't think they can compete on equal footing is missing the point.
Despite it not being very developed I did enjoy watching the baseball game's unfold, it was just kind of fun, it was predictable and filled with tropes and certainly not anything new, but enjoyable none the less. I would of liked it if this anime had more baseball focused episodes, more on the opponents team, more on our main heroine's team and just more on baseball in general; I think that would have improved Princess Nine quite a bit.

The romance plot kind of went on for too long, various misunderstandings made it kind of annoying at points, I sort of liked the couple but the love triangle did go on for way too long and various misunderstandings which prolonged the drama only served to annoy me.
The various associations stopping the girls did too, it made sense that somebody would try and stop them, their against the norm, but having four or five upsets of them not being able to play, because some group is trying to stop them just got annoying, it just felt like filler from the actual content, as you never believed any of these groups would actually stop the team from playing, as them playing was the entire point of the show.

I probably enjoyed the recruiting arc the most travelling across Japan or searching the school to find other girls suitable for the team, they even go to a remote fisher village to find a girl capable of the 'wave motion swing' it was a bit silly but the character introductions were nice enough which make up most of the first half.

The characters to carry on this train of thought, you could probably guess what I'm going to say, some of them are tropey, the MC's naivety, the rival, and some of the cast aren't anything you haven't seen before in another show due to their common personalities. All the characters do have some sort of issue they have to contend with so its not like there is nothing to them, but they don't feel that changed and there still isn't that much to them at the end of the day. Despite the non distinctive and tropey cast, none of them are dislikable or annoying (well most of them at least) and most of them felt charming due to the tropes, they're not good, but they are not annoying or dislikable either.

The sound and animation is fine the OST is a bit repetitive but it does its job the opening and ending aren't terrible but okay. Their isn't a lot of action in terms of animation, but its fine it representative of its time and consistent.

I actually kind of liked the dub it was a bit cheesy and silly but that also had its own appeal.

Overall this show is mediocre to me, there is nothing exceptional here, but despite that I enjoyed most of it and found it charming, even though it was predictable and tropey, knowing what you are going to get has its appeal as well, and it was an easy watch. This show isn't good and nor would I recommend it, it has a blend of romance and sports and it ends up doing neither of them that well, there are better anime for both of these things. I only watched this show due to the random button on Crunchyroll. My time didn't feel wasted and that is about all I can give to Princess Nine.

For a better Baseball anime I would suggest Ace of Diamond, its a bit long but focuses a lot more on the baseball element of the show.

I will keep this brief. Spoilers ahead.

I can forgive a lot of things about Shoujo storytelling. Shoujo has two things primarily working against it. One is that there's rarely a good budget like its shounen counterpart, so stock footage, sparkles, and lots of talking are used as storytelling devices. The other is that shoujo tends to be aimed at women and faces more scrutiny than shounen, so shoujo is (largely) emotion and character dynamic heavy.

My issue is that this show starts strong thematically with a frank discussion about the issues women face to this day. It then turns around and has the team fail ... to achieve their dreams because of a love triangle involving two of the girls and a boy from the rival team. So the moral I got from this show is you are either single and alone, or in a relationship and happy, and either way you fail. Because women can't possibly be treated as equals. And that all our actual problems (because relationship woes are the only viable thing) can be solved by a big strong man. Lovely.

Had the girls lost because they were out skilled, that would have been fine. But they didn't. This is a pseudo feminist work that is insulting to its audience.