Moshidora
もしドラMinami joins her High School baseball team as a team manager after finding out that her best friend Yuuki is in the hospital and can't be a team manager any more. In order to try to fill in for Yuuki and to help out the team the best she can, she goes out to find a book on how to manage a baseball team. Unfortunately, she accidentally buys Peter Drucker's book called "Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices" which is actually about how to properly manage a business. Because she couldn't return the book, she decides to read it anyway and to try to apply the business management concepts to the baseball team so that way they can go on and win the Nationals.
Reviews
jedediah.kozey - 2013-11-26 23:23:47
When I stumbled across this anime, I was genuinely excited to watch it. The concept of applying management skills to baseball was intriguing, and I wanted to see the direction that story would take in regards to this aspect.
Story
With a rather lukewarm introduction, we see why Minami hates baseball, why the team sucks, and why she wants to help them. You can tell that the circumstances surrounding the characters was nothing more than a stage to display the business management formula towards baseball. That said, it does pick up a little in the mid story when ideas are one by one applied to the team and various other clubs. Where the story fails is in the emotional climax that takes the award for the being one of the most ham handed and melodramatic exchange ever witnessed in any anime. You just feel bad for the voice actors who had to deliver those lines with a serious tone. Otherwise dramatic scenes become laughable in an intended way.
Animation/Sound
You can tell the studio had a paper thin budget with this one. Given only 10 episodes to worth with, the shoe-string budget shows through with a heavy reliance on flashbacks to previously animated scenes and long panning still frame shots. Sounds are dull and sparse. Music is only a few generic Jpop scores that play over and over throughout the series.
Character
It's like the writer found every trope and stereotype possible to cram together to some how get enough people to form a baseball team. Aside from a downright hilarious (unintentionally so) shortstop, everyone is forgettable. You don't remember them so much as their role within the story.
Overall
I really like baseball anime. It's just a shame that the direction of this anime went where it did. Moshidora's writer had an interesting idea what just does not pan out and never developed beyond the most basic of levels. Too much time was allotted to building a concept that did not work and not enough to developing characters or the story.