Ookiku Furikabutte

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Amongst sports manga, it's rare to see a grassroots club that also aims to be competitively nationally ranked. Usually, grassroots clubs that start from scratch in different series tend to be satisfied with having new members, doing club activities and events, and focusing on slice of life activities. Sometimes, there's no "competition" to be had, like an Astronomy or book club.

Considering that, Ookiku Furikabutte is quite a rare breed of manga, which combines both grassroots and competitiveness in a highly popular sport. No all-star player is leading the charge, and the coach is also inexperienced. While there are experienced players. and even an amazing one, ... Nishiura high school's baseball team is far from having a great cast of players. There are only 10 players, a mere one substitute on the bench. The fields were unmaintained--overgrown with weeds and grass-- and had to be maintained from scratch by the Coach.

Despite this, the team forges on. Unlike a conventional sports manga, where the team has a platitude of facilities, budget, and experienced seniors and coaches, Nishiura's grassroots baseball team only has freshmen. They go through a lot of pain and struggles because of these setbacks. With the little budget, the coach and the parents of the baseball players all pitch in money to afford all of the necessities. Players don't have actual uniforms outside of their game ones. When they go to training camp, they get a massive discount because they're also cleaning the fields, and to save even more money, they scour the forests for food to eat and cook. The players have to deal with not having a field to practice on, best practices on what to work on in batting form, and so on. Personal connections have to be called in by the Coach for there to be proper baseball mentors and guidance.

This grassroots club atmosphere spreads from player to player and is reflected in all of the chapters. There is quite a lot of slice of life scenes, despite the manga still being a majority about baseball. You get to see the variety and freedom that a grassroots club has, though. There's no specific training regime, and you always see the players trying different things to improve. They go to other schools to observe how other schools practice. They go to games to scout. They go to a joint practice to interact with other schools they never would have been able to meet.

That being said, sometimes, the character interactions doesn't flow well. In particular, there are a couple of chapters dedicated to entirely about how the players agree to not have any romantic relationships while in the baseball club. This just felt like an author self-insert telling the reader "there won't be any romance focus in this manga." It just didn't feel like a conversation adolescent high school students would ever have, let alone unanimously agree on.

Each baseball game they play, when it gets to be shown, is very detailed. There are a lot of player dynamics and relationships from player to player due to the small number of players in the club, so everyone knows each other. No one is competing for a regular spot, since everyone is guaranteed one, so everyone forges a bond with each other. Yet even with a guaranteed spot, no one slacks off. I go over the characters in more detail in my anime review, so I won't go very in-depth for this one

What are the pros and cons of this approach of a competitive grassroots team? Well, there are a lot of slice-of-life activities tied to baseball and a lot of character depth to the small character pool. But the obvious flaw is that you're going to be spending a very large amount of chapters reading pretty mundane things, like dedicating 5 chapters of 50 pages to the joint practice camp or something. Well, that's the price of detail-oriented manga like this. Things that could be skipped will not be. As a result, despite there being hundreds of chapters being released, and over a decade of steady releases, the manga has only reached the second year of high school despite only displaying a few key games for the team.

A pleasure to read! As far as story, characters and baseball are concerned, this manga is amazing!

The story gives a lot of insight into the niche world of Japanese high-school baseball, something that non-Japanese people might find difficult to find otherwise. Not only is the culture surrounding the sport explained, but also the sport of baseball, the training, and the nutrition is explained in a way that makes it easy to understand.

At first the art may be a little off putting, but once you get used to the art style, you come to appreciate and love it. The characters that the art depicts are ... well-written, and don't feel one-dimensional, giving the story a feeling that's just so much more real. Baseballmanga, and sportsmanga in general, tend to put almost to much emphasis on the games played as an element to develop story and characters, but this manga puts a refreshing focus on what goes on outside of the field. You come to love the time the boys spend bonding and training together, which then makes the games feel much more rewarding!

Overall a great and enjoyable read, looking forward to the next chapters!

I had been an anime-only person for my entire life (I’m 26) up until now. The manga that broke it for me was Ookiku Furikabutte. Naturally, I watched the anime first, but was so sad that the anime only had 2 seasons and doesn’t even cover half of the plot in the manga. (If a season 3 and beyond get made, my life would be complete!)

The manga is exceptional: every character on the team (Nishiura High School) is so lovable and carefully crafted, all the aspects of baseball are realistic and detailed (I’ve been watching professional American baseball since I was a kid), and the ... artwork is top-notch.

The characters are my favorite thing about Ookiku Furikabutte. There are so many characters to love: my favorite character is Izumi (Nishiura’s center fielder) since he’s a hard-worker, even-keeled, has a sense of humor, and is sensitive. Sakaeguchi (Nishiura’s second baseman) is my second favorite because of his good spirits and friendly nature. And of course, there’s Tajima (Nishiura’s third baseman)—who doesn’t love Tajima?

There is so much to love about this manga, and I’m looking forward to continue reading it for years and years. There is much left to the story! Thank you, Higuchi sensei!