Kita ze Inbou! - キタぜ陰謀!

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OP: “Kokoro e” by Road of Major
ED1: “Step” by Beni Arashiro
ED2: “Faraway” by Paradise GO!!GO!!
Production: Hibari
Major

Well it’s about time I talk about this anime!

Sports anime are quite different from our films we grew on. Instead of having an underdog team winning the world championship, the Japanese sports anime is known to have a prodigy, with or without a team, regardless of their skill, and almost every time he wins the game. The main offender is Prince of Tennis, a show I’ll never understand how come I wasted my time on as I already know what is going to happen and the characters are as flat as Lina Inverse’s chest. Thankfully there is Major, an anime that although follows a bit of the stereotypes, has a lot more depth than any sports anime I have seen.

Our hero is Goro Honda, a young boy who always admired his dad, a pro baseball player. He wishes to become as good as his dad and become famous. Despite all the events that happen in his childhood, Goro keeps on training as he becomes 9 years old and finally able to join the little league team at Mifune. However, the team has no players and Goro has to recruit them in order to win the championship and win against the most powerful team in the region: Yokohama Little.

True, the plot is very basic, but that’s the magic of the show. It doesn’t throw complex terminology or over the top animation to make us hooked, it’s just simple, by the books baseball. Goro doesn’t win that easily however, as the teams he faces are more experienced and once you believe one team is getting the upper hand, the other manages to shock everyone. That makes a sports anime work: surprise. If the lead character would be powerful, there’d be no point of rooting him and identify him, and I’ll spoil this: Goro does lose a few times, but that makes him human and it does evolve him as a character.

Which brings me to another great thing about Major, the characters, Goro in particular. At first he is just an innocent friendly child who loves his dead and have a naive charm to him you can’t really blame him for some of the stuff he does. However, when he grows up, his personality changes dramatically as he appears to be more stern, rebellious and a solo worker, which he eventually learns to rely on his friends more. As his friends help him to evolve, Goro helps his friends as well. Komori is a shy kid who never thought of joining his team, but with his instructions, he become his right-hand player. There is also a romance between him and a girl who joins his team, Kaoru Shimizu, proving as nimble as she is, she can still perform miracles. Although only 4 out of the 9 characters have backgrounds, the rest of the team are still represented AS part of the team. While those types of show like to emphasize just the main lead, all the characters, even the most minor ones, do something important that actually changes the result of the game, making us, the viewers, cheer for them as well.

The voice cast is quite varied with the oh-so famous “boy seiyuu” Motoko Kumai as Goro, and she does an excellent job bringing his spunk to life, both as a young boy and a young teenager. Takehito Koyasu voices his dad in a very dramatic performance and Rie Kugimiya voicing the meek Komori, using her famous “Alphonse Elric” voice. The cast is excellent, and since most of the characters are kids, the majority of the seiyuus are female, but it’s an overall great cast that does the job right. The opening theme song “kokoro e” by Road of Major is a true classic and one of the memorable scenes from the entire show, and the ending themes, “Step” (for it’s Engrish) and “Faraway” (for showing young girls in a somewhat questionable way, but feasible) are catchy too.

The thing that makes Major work so well is the fact it doesn’t make the sport too extreme and keeps it intriguing to the end. In addition, it also takes about all the important messages as “There is no I in Team” and “You should always follow your dreams” but it is not treated as a cliche. If you are open minded, you are going to love major. I almost cried at episode 6, and that doesn’t happen that often, that’s how powerful the show can be even if you take baseball out of the equation, it does much more. There is a good reason why the show has more than 5 seasons and a very successful movie, it’s because a lot of people in japan go on the stage of dream, and they conquer it.

93/100