One Outs 1 and 2 – it’s not really about baseball

There’s been very little talk about One Outs which shouldn’t surprise me but does. Somehow I really thought there were more Kaiji and Akagi fans out there and that like me they too would be counting down the days until they could get their gambling anime fix. After all I’ve been doing everything I can to convince bishie fangirls that One Outs is about beautiful guys, manly anime watchers that it’s about badass dudes crushing their opponents and everyone else that “baseball” is just a euphemism for “better than sex” in a pitiful attempt to drum up interest and therefore fansubs.

In fact, let me clear up something right now. ONE OUTS IS NOT ABOUT BASEBALL. Okay, that’s not entirely true. It is about baseball but only as a means of getting to the edge-of-your-seat gambling goodness. 

But does it live up to its predecessors? After only 2 episodes it’s too early to say however it definitely has potential.

I’ve gotta admit the OP had me a little worried. What with the spiky-haired anorexic man and the whiny rock song it’s just begging to be turned into (God no!) yet another Linkin Park AMV. By the way, his pants are unbuttoned. See, I wasn’t so wrong about this appealing to fangirls.

Essentially what the first two episodes boil down to is “my buzz cut makes me manly” Hiromichi Kojima, a professional batter, risking his entire career in a gamble against “I have 0% body fat” pitcher Toua Tokuchi. Toua is an unbeatable pitcher but not just because he’s a really good baseball player but because he’s a really good gambler. He’s not so much a Kaiji as an Akagi; unlike mere mortals he is able to see and exploit the weaknesses in other people. 

Then there’s this gambler Big Mama and Kojima’s two friends who function as a sort of Greek chorus, the former pointing out Toua’s godly strategies and the latter flipping out over them. Of course Big Mama is awesome merely because she’s a fat black woman named Big Mama. When was the last time you saw that in an anime? That’s right, never.

Now what makes Kaiji so great is not just that it’s incredibly thrilling but that the triumphs and defeats that Kaiji faces become metaphors for, well, life in general. For instance there’s a scene where a character talks about how people waste their lives away day by day, never really striving for anything and only realizing on their death beds all their missed opportunities. I’m certain I’m not the only one for whom that struck way too close to home.

One Outs doesn’t really have that just yet except for a scene in episode 1 where Big Mama says that when faced with a big decision a Japanese person will always choose to wait and see. I suspect the show is being a little tongue-in-cheek here though to what extent I don’t know. Either way, it’s a fairly lame revelation so I’m hoping for something better next time. 

My favorite part of the show so far is the wood chopping scene. After losing a minor gamble to Toua, Kojima goes into the mountains and chops wood for a week… 1,000 pieces a day to be precise. It’s like in kung fu flicks where the main character goes to the Shaolin Temple and waits outside it for weeks on end in order to prove that he’s strong enough to train there.

Except that this brings up so many more questions. Why is he chopping wood? Does he really think he can reach enlightenment like this? Isn’t it illegal to just walk into a forest and start destroying the trees? Is he the one who chopped down Nagi’s tree? What did he do with 7,000 logs at the end of the week?  Don’t you think he’s being a little AXcessive? Wait, don’t click away… I have more.

The long and the short of it is, One Outs seems pretty good so I for one welcome Madhouse’s impending U.S. coup which they’ve been so kind as to warn us of. Sure, the show could be improved by having the outcomes of the gambles be a little less obvious but I’m going to assume that there will be plenty of twists and life and death situations to come. If you liked Kaiji and Akagi, and I don’t know why you wouldn’t, give it a try.