Common Name: Gurazeni
Alternative Names: Money Pitch
Score: 5/10, 3/5
Length: 12 Episodes
Genre: Sports, Comedy, Slice of Life, Job Shadow
Summary: Bonda Natsunosuke is the southpaw middle relief pitcher for the fictional Japanese pro baseball team, the Jingu Spiders. He is 26 years old and makes a salary of 16 million yen (~$146,000) per year, which is notably above average for his position but well under the average among other players his age. In other words, he's an exceptional nobody in the world of baseball. Still, Bonda has seen others like him rise to greatness and fame before, so he's far from given up his hope of being the team's starting pitcher some day. Until then, though, he's determined to memorize and judge his opponents the only way he can: determining their worth in relation to his own. After all, if there's one thing Bonda can be relied on for, it's his ability to strike out anyone who makes less money than him.
Review: Put plainly, there are only two things that I gleaned from this nothing of a show. Firstly, it made me consider the fact that, while the "Slice of Life" genre does describe this show's general premise, there's nothing that really sets apart adult, job-centered anime apart from all the other "Slice of Life" anime out there. So in the interest of refining this overly broad and general genre, I'm going to start adding the subgenre of "Job Shadow" to any anime that are particularly focused on looking at the ins and outs of a particular industry. Anime like New Game, Shirobako, and even A Place Further Than the Universe would fall into this subgenre since they are all about looking at the adult world and responsibilities expected of them in their day-to-day work lives. The second thing Gurazeni did for me, though, is offer me a look into the world of baseball that I had never really given much thought to until now. It highlights the struggles of professional athletes in a real and believable manner in that their level of success and their future in the business will rely heavily on the worth of their contract. What's more, it goes into the details of someone who is just barely making it in the professional world and the struggles and pressures he faces in an industry known primarily for creating celebrities and stars that completely overshadow the existence of players like Bonda Natsunosuke. So, in other words, while this show isn't great or really all that good, it certainly did its job well enough to spark an interest in baseball I haven't had since I was a kid.
I still have no idea what these characters are talking about most of the time though
since interest doesn't necessarily equate to understanding.
That said, the truth of the matter is that there really isn't all that much to Gurazeni as a show. There's no story to speak of. The characters are barely there and the vast majority of them are totally forgettable since they suffer from both same-face and bland-face. What little comedy there is relies heavily on an understanding of sports knowledge, a thing I don't possess whatsoever, and the general understanding that the main character is kind of a putz. To make it even worse, this show can't even boast the same point of quality Wotakoi had to offer with its great character interactions. To be blunt, as show's go, Gurazeni is tolerable at best and aggressively boring at worst but that doesn't mean it isn't enjoyable to a certain degree. Each episode basically works to express a certain facet of the life of a low-tier professional baseball player and his constant quest to earn more money.
While I wouldn't call Bonda greedy, I'd call him standoffishly determined to get a bigger contract.
Day after day, we follow the life of Bonda Natsunosuke as he interacts with the various members of his team, the Jingu Spiders, and other teams that he goes up against. For example, as the show goes on, we get to see: players bumped up from or down to the minor leagues, players kicked from the league finding work as commentators or merch salesmen, and managers arguing about cutting an older player who is costing the club a fortune so they can hire several younger players. While I can't firmly state whether or not all this is accurate to life, there's enough self-awareness to the show's tone, pace, and commentary that I feel comfortable saying there's at least more truth to this show than there is made-up anime bullshit. While the Spiders might not be a real baseball team, they are believably indicative of what I interpreted as a standard, low-to-middling professional baseball team. While they do win some games, they lose a lot of others without any of those results hinging on the show's main character who only gets called in when absolutely necessary (i.e. for clean-up, to let the starting pitcher rest, or to shut-out those he's naturally inclined to win against). As I mentioned in the summary, however, the only people he can beat are those who make less than him.
And so we come to Bonda himself and how much of a shitheel prick he is.
While Bonda is generally a likable character, characterized as being a bit of an incompetent dork who's only just good enough to be a regular in the major leagues, it would be an understatement to say he's a bit problematic as the show's main character. Put as plainly as I can, he's about as petty and ruthless as they come. While he is, himself, insecure about his job, future, and paycheck, he hardly bats an eye about retiring someone he sees as lesser than himself, aka anyone with a lower salary than him. Worse than that, we never really see him work to improve or give the management a reason to reposition him into a higher paying role on the team. Now, sure, that's just a part of professional sports, but there's something of a grinning devil to Natsunosuke's demeanor; something about his personality feels false in an intentional kind of way. While there are several scenes where he pays lip service to those both above and below him, the show is mainly filled with his own inner monologue as he logically picks apart the strengths, weaknesses, and flaws of his fellow players. There's a persistent kind of cutthroat undertone to Bonda's monologues as he mocks those lower than him and enviously gushes about how much he wishes he was living the high life. In fact, the show characterizes this aspect of his personality so much that it honestly feels like he's just in this for the money, even though there are several scenes that prove that, whenever he's not on the clock, he's a fun and amicable guy that really loves sports in general. Yet, as someone that defines himself as a "leaf eater" in a world of carnivores, he almost always puts on this "survival of the fittest" mentality to brush off the fact that he has retired players better than himself. So, unfortunately, it's honestly really hard to tell how much Bonda cares about his fellow players, which only makes it all the more difficult to like this show that may or may not be helmed by a terrible person.
Boy would it be a blessing if Bonda was my only issue with this show.
To put it as simply as I can, I think the general issue with this entire show is that it lacks a certain amount of sensitivity. The issues with Bonda's portrayal throughout the show may very well be rooted in the fact that he talks about things so matter-of-factly that he seems emotionally detached from anything and anyone that isn't directly relevant to his goal of earning more money. Along the same lines, there's an issue with the show's portrayal of women that, unfortunately, sticks true to that idea that women are things and proof of a man's success in the world. At no point is there a female character that isn't portrayed as a caretaker or an advertisement of feminine beauty. The most obvious and egregious example of this issue is seen in the show's final episode, one that centers on Bonda developing a crush on a beautiful waitress and failing to get her attention in a game. This is a character who, I might add, was featured in the show's ending, showing her off as the lovely and supportive girlfriend-to-be of Natsunosuke, given her wearing a Spiders hat and catching a ball. Even as a humorous bait-and-switch over Natsunosuke fantasizing and getting ahead of himself with this non-existent relationship, it isn't a flattering portrayal of this woman who, beyond this one bit, has no relevance to the story whatsoever. Similarly, there's a certain amount of insensitivity with the show's portrayal of foreign players that all have either the same blonde-haired blue-eyed look or are stereotypically black in some of the worst ways I've seen in a while. Frankly, its these kinds of issues that make the show's mentality feel dated to the point that it would have likely been better received in the 80s or 90s, even though the original property was created in 2010.
For all I know, though, perhaps that mentality is more prevalent in baseball than I'd like to think.
So, I suppose I'm left to just come back around to what I was saying at the start: this show isn't good. It's informative and taught me a few things along the way but, on the whole, it is underwhelming if not outright offensive in some instances. From the lack of plot to the lack of any characters or particularly engaging art, this show can basically be described as mediocre. With how little work went into this and how little Studio Deen clearly didn't want to put into this, given the awful CG that runs throughout, it's nothing short of a miracle that this show works in any sense. For whatever reason, though, it did work on some level for me since I cared enough to watch the series as a whole. I certainly wouldn't recommend others give it that same chance I did but it might just serve as a decent gateway for future baseball shows that'll pop up in the years to come. With any luck, those will be worth recommending.