*Ahem* Pretty long first impressions, huh?

When it comes to sport + slice-of-life anime, I’m really picky because anime like those tend to drag at one point, go for so long and most of the time, bore me. So I heard about the news already and I’ve never ever heard of Ookiku Furikabutte! until now. In order to become Best Friends For Life (BFFL) with issa-sa (now issa-sa must watch the first episode of ROOKIES and blog it XD), I decided to watch the first episode of this series to see how it would turn out and if it really was worth making a fuss over (Big Windup! is the English title, but I really don’t see the issue). Besides, I was planning to start this anime either way because of the fact that it’s based on baseball, which reminded me so much of my favourite J-Drama called ROOKIES.

The main protagonist of Ookiku Furikabutte!, Mihashi, annoys me sometimes when he takes so long explaining things, but overall he’s pretty cute being indecisive. The other characters are pretty normal, except Abe, who seems to be really knowledgeable when it comes down to baseball, and already I can see that he’ll be a truly good friend for Mihashi (yaoi, anyone?). Ookiku Furikabutte! is dissimilar to ROOKIES in many ways, but plot-wise, it’s almost the same since in both shows, the teams aim for Koshien (no shit, what else can they aim for?) and the main characters are the pitcher and the base-catcher (whatever they’re called).

In ROOKIES, it’s about a group of delinquents who are banned from playing baseball for half a year after a batter of their team knocked out the pitcher from the opposing side with his bat. A new teacher, Kawato, tries to bring the baseball team back together while the principal disapproves of this. The main character is the ace of the team, good at both pitching (so bloody fast that the other batters can’t hit it) and batting. On the other hand, Ookiku Furikabutte! seems to focus on Mihashi trying to become an ace pitcher and become stronger as a person, and become more confident in himself. His pitching is slow, but I like it how Ookiku Furikabutte! explains baseball techniques (ROOKIES also has some baseball techniques explanations, but it was all in Japanese so I couldn’t understand it – damn RAWs). The first episode of Ookiku Furikabutte! was decent, but it didn’t exactly make me so excited that I wanted to follow it. The graphics are horrible, okay, not entirely — they were okay, even if it is a 200+MB file, but I suppose that’s because it was created ages ago. The pictures aren’t that awesome either and sometimes Mihasha would look so weird that I just want to turn the screen off. I didn’t bother listening to the OP and ED because I didn’t have time, plus the start of the songs didn’t so much intrigue me.

I loved how Ookiku Furikabutte! started off the series really smoothly and quickly, but whenever Mihashi was preparing to throw the ball, he took so darn long that I just wanted to fast-forward the episode, but was afraid that I’d spoil myself in doing that so I didn’t dare. On the other hand, the humour is great and some people can really relate to Mihashi. Occasionally, I feel the same way as Mihashi does about pitching – reluctant to show off something I love because I know that it’s no good. The friendship between Abe and Mihashi grew extremely rapidly and I know that because they depend on each other a lot (seems like it), this may lead to some consequences in the future (correct me if I’m wrong!). I also enjoyed it how Hanai assumed that Mihashi was being modest about his pitching abilities, and how everyone was very encouraging of Mihashi towards the end. Whether or not I’ll follow this anime really depends on how much free time I have during the holidays because although the first episode of Ookiku Furikabutte! was definitely worth watching, it seemed like I only watched it because I had nothing better to do (which is true, by the way), but if I had a choice, I probably wouldn’t touch this series ever again.

Not to say that I won’t – I can certainly see potential and it’d be nice to see where this anime goes from now, but I hope that Mihashi doesn’t irritate me to an extent where I will totally despise this show (I hate anime with main protagonists who piss me off). So to everyone who mentioned news of Ookiku Furikabutte!, thanks!