Moshidora is about a baseball team manager who guides her team based on a reading of Drucker’s “Management.” The first episode introduces the main character, explains her motivations for becoming the team manager, and she begins to read the book and use the advicer for her team.
The first episode seemed fairly promising. It moved along at a decent clip and had a good mix of baseball, management and interactions between the characters. I’ll admit that I’m not the biggest fan of baseball— I find it to be the most boring sport ever created— but it’s portrayal wasn’t that bad. A fairly accurate portrayal, but they skipped through the 99% of the game which is just people standing around, and showed how the game is won or lost through one person’s stupid split-second mistake. Just not my thing.
As far as the characters though, the main girl seems a tad bland, but she’ll probably develop as the show continues. I’m generally not a fan of tragic girls in hospitals, but her backstory was well thought out at least. I like the guy who joined the baseball team to make business connections. It’s a much better reason for joining the team than actually liking baseball. I won’t blog this since I’ll just complain about baseball the whole time, but I do plan to keep watching.
Ookarin’s banter continues to carry this show. This show has a great script.
Hououin’s rant about how the world has room for only one mad scientist was beyond awesome. At last we have someone who is honest about his own motivations for saving the world. 🙂
Shinku and Eclair continue to be a great pair, equaling each other in both hotheadedness and idiocy. The part where they both told the other to go ahead while they take on the enemy themselves was a great take on that overused device. The ensuing argument and complaints from the enemy leader only made it better.
This show is the funnest thing I’ve seen in a long while. If I had any complaints, they could stand to make the princess a bit more interesting in comparison to the other characters. Right now she is comparatively boring. Also, why did Shinku and Eclair suddenly become so weak looking when they were fighting in the castle courtyard? What happened to their energy beams and crazy Parkour moves? Their fight with the guards through the princess’ mirror looked rather pathetic.
So far, Ano Hana is my favorite show of the spring season. I think it’s something everyone can relate to— growing up and changing. The friends you once had as a child you grow apart from. The audacity of trying to bring your childhood friends back together makes for some interesting chemistry.
I really like the characters for both Anjou and Hisakawa. Hisakawa is just plain awesome, quitting school to fulfill his dream of traveling the world, believing in the ghost stories of his friend he hasn’t seen since they were children, and asking a girl to play Pokemon with him.
As predicted, Madoka makes a wish not bounded by logic and becomes a Godess, defeating witches before they are born so that the magical girls can live happily. It was a satisfying ending which left everything resolved, but a bit too much Shinbo. Also the Gurren-Lagannesque galactic sized battle and the Trans-Am yuri scene were not strictly necessary.
While the middle of the episode was lackluster, particularly the Trans-Am scene and extended epilogue, the beginning and the end were well done. I especially liked the twist at the end where the witches are replaced by magical beasts and Homura works together with Kyuubey to fight them. It’s nice to see that it isn’t all happily ever after.
But overall, the finale was surprisingly straight forward and predictable, and lacked the twists and turns which made the earlier episodes so enjoyable, so I must say I was a bit disappointed.