Gurazeni

Gurazeni is not an underdog story. It's not about high stakes or becoming the best that anyone ever was. Bonda is just a baseball player. A middle relief pitcher, one of the most forgotten positions in the game. This story is about the day to day life of an athlete, hoping that he can just survive after the game. It's a side that many of us don't normally think about. Hell, a lot of athletes don't think about it either. It's incredibly cool to get an inside look at how he handles the stress of being a professional baseball player while also trying to handle ... normal things, like relationships with friends and a crush on a girl.

It's simple, it's cool. Like any other American kid, I grew up playing Little League and I've seen my share of MLB, but I've always been more drawn towards soccer, hockey, and football. While I thought I knew quite a bit about baseball, this show taught me some neat things about pitching and batting that I'd never thought about before. See, we laugh, but we also learn.

If you want a solid and grounded anime about baseball, watch Gurazeni.

(I copied and pasted this from a review I previously wrote on Crunchyroll over a year ago. Recently rewatched it and my feelings are pretty much the same.)

If you've ever watched a sports anime before, you know that they have some very unrealistic tendencies. There are plenty of non-sports fans who actually enjoy sports anime. The reason being that those shows are closer to anime than they are to the sport they are portraying in the story. Gurazeni does not follow that pattern. It's a sports anime that portrays the sport as close to real as one can in the medium.

Story:
The story follows a middle relief pitcher in a Japanese baseball league modeled after Japan's NPB. He plays for a team stylized after the Tokyo Yakult Swallows, with many other teams being ... modeled after other real teams in the NPB. The main point of the story is about the pitcher's pursuit of that big payday. His understanding that he must make as much money as he can playing baseball fuels his performance. This creates a very realistic story about a guy just trying to get what he can before his luck runs out. The story really caught me, as it wasn't the typical chase for glory, but the chase for stability. It mirrors how baseball works in real life, where the non-star players basically have to skate on thin ice 24/7, knowing that a few bad games can cost them their job. It's really captivating

Art:
The show isn't extremely impressive for the most part. It's mostly standard 2D animation, though they do use 3D animation during action scene on the field and with the usage of vehicles. There's nothing I would call "bad" from an art standpoint.

Sound:
The theme songs for this show are actually really catchy. The opening theme is called Merigo by Cypress Ueno to Robert Yoshino. The ending theme is called Shadow Monster by Asako Toki. Both songs can easily get stuck in your head after hearing them enough, and are not in any way annoying. The BGM wasn't super noticeable, but didn't suck either.

Character:
The main character, Natsunosuke, is a very great main character. He's not you typical anime protagonist with a hero streak. He's just a regular, everyday normal guy who just happens to play baseball. He has his insecurities in regards to his standing with his team, and is constantly thinking about the possibility that his baseball career could come to an end. This makes him very realistic and relatable. They was his friends and teammates are portrayed is also hyper-realistic. The struggles they all deal with in regards to their professional careers is what helps drive the show when it's not focused on Natsunosuke.

Enjoyment:
This show never felt overwhelming or over-dramatic. Each episode had a great story that helped you dive deeper into the lives of Natsunosuke and his teammates. The situations portrayed covered many topics of his life, and helped make the show feel diverse and alive. It's the easiest-to-watch sports anime I've ever seen.

Overall:
It's the best sports anime I've ever watched. This show does not have a single anime bone in it's body. It's all about the game. No long anime speeches. No fundamental moves with fancy names. No over-the-top reactions. Just the realistic portrayal of a middle reliever trying to get that bag before his career ends. As a big sports fan, I couldn't ask for a better show.

This show is just so...mediocre it hurts.

It's by no means a terrible show, but nothing sets it apart at all in any way shape or form. This show is about a professional relief pitcher, but as the episodes go on and on, you realize that this show basically is just an episodic anime about baseball with Bando interacting with different characters each episode. It feels like every episode is just a random episode with a random character with Bando in it. These standalone episodes are not BAD, it's just not good. It does not culminate into anything, and nor are the individual episodes good enough ... to be watched by themselves. For a show about sports, its extremely fragmented and involves almost no story progression, with the main focus of the show being Bando's worries, and the worries of other players.

Plus, the CGI is just terrible. There is a lot of it, and it's very apparent that the producers of the show were very lazy. For a baseball anime, the MAIN CHARACTER's PITCH IS ALWAYS CGI. Really dude? You just CG'd the main character's pitch because you're lazy to do that? I get the outfielders being CG'd, but the main character's pitch too? Come on. There is a definite limit to what you can just badly CGI, and CGing the pitch for the main character is going way too far.

Another thing I noticed about this show is that despite the show involving a lot about Bando's thoughts, worries, and habits, a lot of his habits are only featured when it is convenient for the show. Otherwise, it is ignored and is continuing as usual. Bando's actions are kind of confusing sometimes as a result.

Lastly, I'd like to point out the female lead. You'd think that the female lead would appear very early in the anime, occupying a lot of space on the cover art, OP, and ED. But no. She appears in the very last episode of the first season, and is a weak character that's super boring. And Bando's thoughts about her are as vanilla and boring as the author could make it. Man, that was bad.

In conclusion, the entire anime is episodic, even though it is a sports anime, which is very different, unique, and definitely a risk, and it definitely did not pull off. It ended up making the episodes fragmented and of course, made it so that you were not invested in the characters or team by the end of the season like most classic sports anime end up doing. That would be fine, but the episodic episodes are also not bad, but definitely not amazing. They don't stand out very well, and as a result, you're watching through 12 episodes of kind of stale episodes, with basically no hope of it getting any better due to the fragmentary and episodic nature of the anime. Everything is CG'd to save money, even Bando's pitches are, which are very disorienting when he pitches a lot, and he is the main character. You really don't want to be CGing such an important action. Lastly, the female lead first appears in the last episode of the season, and has a weak introduction along with Bando's interactions with her.

Maybe you should wait before producing a second season of Gurazeni, instead of going right in. I'm surprised this show got a green light to get adapted in the first place. It's pretty boring, and despite me finishing this entire first season, I really don't have any intention of starting the second, because the first season explained to me that this show has no future, and any hope with the female lead died on the episode she got introduced. Stray away from this show unless you really need to waste 4 hours, because this show does not have a lot of value.