Ookiku Furikabutte (aka Oofuri) – Review

Oofuri on ANN

Baseball, Boys and high school.

This sounds quite like Major does it not?

But besides the words in common and the sport of baseball, those 2 anime are pretty much different in the rest of the aspects.

Oofuri VS Major

I know it is wrong to compare anime, but I can’t help myself but to compare both of the anime with each other.
While Major brings us heartache and trials as well as happiness.
Oofuri brings us a somewhat similar route as that of the prince of tennis. The main character develops and gets better and he does not lose.

One thing in common though is that both lead characters can be loser at times. haha, and while Goro from Major makes me find it adorable, Mihashi from Oofuri just makes it downright irritating.

Pace of the anime?

Oofuri goes in a much slower pace as compared to Major. Throughout the span of the anime, we see 3 matches. the final match (and the first round of the competetion only) takes up almost half of the season. However I would have to say that they do go into detail of how the match progresses and how each inning is played out. And i like this aspect of Oofuri. While the main character takes the spotlight, the rest of his team mates are not too far in the background. Actually, through this you are able to properly enjoy baseball being played as a team sport.

I am not saying that Major is not that way, but what makes Major so good is that it moves at such a fast pace that I feel that there are no wasted eps, and no match that was too brief.

Characters?

I cannot stand the whiny and back-boneless Mihashi. He lacks self confidence, and we know why that is from the first arc of the series. Mihashi splits his grids up into 9 sections and is able to have precise control over where the ball lands up. However, his pitches are really slow.
Why is he able to win the matches with slow pitches? After all i am sure that if the pitch is slow, no matter what sort of control he has it would still get hit.
Well, i definitely thought about that when i first saw them winning against the other team in their first match. However, this is where you get to see the importance of the catcher and his signs. You are able to carefully observe the workings of a good battery in play. Mishashi’s success is practically owed to the catcher(Takaya Abe). I like the interaction and the way we get to observe the whole play. And while in Major we know that the catcher is important (observe Goro and Toshi) we don’t really know how important it really is.

Eck!

While many fan girls would love this(oofuri) anime for the non stop hints of BL (boylove(yaoi)) stuff. Guys might feel a tad bit uneasy. But it can’t be help. It is a baseball team where you only have guys on it (‘cept for the manager and coach).

But if you love baseball or have an interest in it. Give this anime a shot. It is not too shabby and it might help you understand the game better. I know it did for me.

I just dont believe the fact that Mihashi’s (no matter how good and intuitive the catcher is) slow pitches were that effective

Rating? 7.5/10

There are a few filler eps here and there, I don’t like the way the anime ended with only the first round of the competetion over.
Futher more, we never got to really see the interaction of Abe’s previous pitcher and what happened between them.
I hope for a second season. Afterall, all the characters (cept for Mihashi) are lovable.

An image of our dear pitcher crying. He does that ALOT. haha.

-ra out!

Do you think that Mihashi’s pitches were realistic? As in effectiveness wise.