The boys of summer

My most recent binge-watch fest was sitting down and checking out Big Windup!, a 25 episode show centered around high school baseball.  I’ve been planning to watch this for a while and finally decided to pull the trigger when I had some free time.  In short I loved it, even though I’m not the biggest of sports fans.

What I liked about it (and what anime does in general) is how they take the minutia of a subject and spread it across over two dozen episodes of a show, to pull you into that world and give you a sense of what it’s like to be in the character’s shoes.  For Big Windup! It’s being a player on a baseball team.  Now for me, the most experience I have in playing baseball was when I played in a tee-ball league for just one season.  At that point in time, you’re playing mostly by yourself along with 8 other players that wear the same uniform as you do, so the experience of teamwork was MIA.

Big Windup! gave me a new appreciation for the sport as there is so much strategy that is occurring under the surface of baseball that you’re unaware of when you’re just a spectator.  Sure I know of the call signs the catcher gives to the pitcher, how coaches from the dugout give commands via hand gestures, and paying attention to the first and third base coaches, but when you tie them all together by showing them all occurring during a single game is when you can tell what a team effort it takes to win a game, and how the strategy has to spread to every player across the diamond.

It’s very in line with Initial D, another show I love a lot.  They are the same in regards to all of the inner monologue that occurs in an episode; and for Big Windup!, most of it takes place between the catcher and pitcher.  Because of this, you get to hear the mind processing a strategy that considers all that is occurring on the field (like who’s on base), in addition to knowing the opponent’s batting stats, the batting roster, the current inning, balls, strikes, and outs on the board.  Man, there’s so much to keep track of!

It’s all a fictional story, so they can set it up to be a game with a lot of drama, but I was surprised at how I reacted to the games that they played.  There were some highly intense moments for me and it felt weird that I even cheered when the team’s strategy worked, and flinched when the opposing team hit a win.  The games were of fiction, so why did I even act that way?!  I guess that shows just how good the writer is at setting up how a game would playout for the reader -- or in my case since I didn’t read the manga -- the viewer.

I also liked all of the scenes that occur off of the field, where we see the kids as students at high school or what they do at home.  I also liked how they began bringing in the parents, more specifically the mothers, by having them sit and cheer for their team.  It was kind of fun trying to pick out which kid belonged to which mom only based on facial features alone.  Then finding out which of the kids have the same classes together and knowing who grew up with who and figuring out that someone on the team knows someone on the team they are playing.  All of this just expands on the universe of the story and gives it life, as opposed to just focusing solely on the sport.

So yeah, Big Windup! is a really cool show.  I watched it on Hulu, and they have both the subbed and dubbed versions, so you can watch it whatever way you prefer.  I only watched the first season as that’s the only one they have.  In fact, I don’t believe the second season has been dubbed yet.  Someone needs to get going on that as I needs more Big Windup!!

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