not really my sport, but...

[kaigou]

Those of you reading me for awhile know I was a jock for a good while, and retain a lot of that mindset. I was on crew in high school and college, and part of choosing it in the first place was because I didn't like to run, so track was out of the question; I hated swimming (though I was actually a moderately strong swimmer); and I had the eye-hand coordination of a small rock -- which ruled out soccer, baseball, basketball, and field hockey. Crew isn't a one-season sport, either -- we were on the water all seasons except for about November through March (when hypothermia was an issue), and even then we were doing land training in prep for the spring racing season. That cut down on ever having time to be exposed to any other sports, so I never really learned to appreciate anything but, well, crew.

Now, my first partner was a former HS-level football player (center, IIRC), and it's thanks to J that I was finally exposed to the strategy in football and learned it was more than just a ball, some running, some pushing. (Also keep in mind that crew is one of the least contact-sports out there, so anything involving "pile up on the other guy" left me kind of baffled as to how and when and why.) Fast forward a few more years and the chance to attend my B-I-L's hockey game, and I got to see just how much strategy and teamwork goes into hockey (and by extension, similar sports like lacrosse and soccer).

All that said, I've never had any interest in sports movies or sports animes. Hollywood movies, bleah, because almost without exception the focus is on one person's (excuse me, one white man's) journey from inept newbie to star of the team. That never jived with me, because crew is a sport where if one person shines, it's to the detriment of the team, in terms of competition. The goal is to become a seamless group, where the whole is greater than its parts, so Hollywood's insistence that there always must be a 'star' of the team runs counter to my understanding of what it means to be a team.

And, of course, with sports anime -- do I even need to mention TeniPuri here, or did you see that coming already? -- again there's the emphasis on 'star' of the team... and a bizarre martial-arts-influenced emphasis on special moves. It's so often treated like it's all a fight, complete with sweeping lines like flying through the air, so on and so on.

I believe it was xian_pu who first mentioned Ookiku Furikabutte (Big Windup), and it was her explanation that had me intrigued enough to check it out. Mostly, I think, because she made it clear the focus wasn't necessarily on a 'star' player who single-handedly leads the underdogs to greatness (although there's shades of that in the story), but because the main character has such low self-esteem despite working so damn hard, and the team has to come together as an actual team to achieve anything. No special moves, no flying through the air, no crazy attack names, just the team and the sport.

Now the series has finally started its second season, and I'm starting to get cranky that CentralAnime is slowing on its fansubbing -- they were releasing on Wednesday evening weekly, then it became mid-day Thursday, and the most recent fansub came out on Friday evening. Slowing down, people, and meanwhile NicePitching (who does the scanlations) is so very very slow. Normally bearable, but not when they're translating a single chapter in sections and split it right at a major cliff-hanger. Cruel, cruel!

I can't believe I'm hooked on a baseball series -- but more than that, I can't believe I'm hooked on a baseball series that's actually also teaching me a lot about baseball. Hell, if any of my PE teachers in grade school had even remotely explained half of what Oofuri explains in a single half-hour segment of a game, I would've been a lifetime diehard baseball fan. Even with such miserable eye-hand coordination.

Other folks who've explained the series' virtues, better than I:

Bateszi Anime Blog: Time to champion Ookiku Furikabutte
glittertine: Oofuri Chapter 24b
littlebutfierce: Why I Love Ookiku Furikabutte

You can find the manga on Onemanga.com, and the fansubs (including first season) by searching on Tokyo Toshokan.

Comments

[branchandroot]

*laughing inordinately* It gets you in the end!

(Seriously, most sports manga /are/ martial arts manga. Just, you know, by other means.)

(To be fair, TeniPuri is unusually dreadful about the visible ki and utterly anti-physics moves. Anti-gravity shoes! Floating crack-fairies! And is a samurai flick, on top of that. But they key term really is "dreadful".)

*considers* You might actually like Eyeshield 21 (give the last arc a miss, though, the ethnicity-fail is appalling). It does have the wimp-to-star, but at least the whole team is doing the wimp-to-star thing, which helped a lot to hold my interest. And I really hate football! I mean really! It bores me to death! But... somehow I now know a lot about it, and giggle in a silly way whenever I pass my uni's team practicing because they have the same colors as Deimon. *still faintly puzzled how this came about*

I fell away from Oofuri early on because of the fandom, which was hideously 4chan and all about the "raep" 'jokes' and *pauses to be nauseated again* just, urgh. But I should probably go back and pick it up again now it's on onemanga and I don't have to deal with the fans to get it.

[annotated_em]

You might also like Giant Killing, if you like the Oofuri team dynamic; it's kind of made of both awesome and win and seems like it's set to be about the team rather than the individual players (although the players are important, too). It's seinen, like Oofuri, which has a lot to do with the general tone and focus, I think.

I've been rereading Oofuri this week, and it makes me so damn gleeful, the boys are all so cute.

[kaigou]

Hmmm. Except if there's one thing that turns me off, it's "professional". Maybe that's a bias from having been so deep in a sport that's utterly amateur (all the way to the Olympics), that leaves me feeling cold towards those who get paid for what they do. One reason that the few times I've read/watched anything sports-related, I usually stick to HS/college because at least then you don't have the whole "sold a player" kind of stuff. Doesn't help that I do know the basics of football strategy, and compared to baseball strategy, football's a bit more simplistic in some ways. Baseball still isn't a spectator sport (but then again, neither was my sport, really) -- which is why the slow pace of Oofuri really makes a difference, as it gives time to show you each player's role in the eventual actual action that takes barely a second.

[annotated_em]

*thoughtful* Fair enough; the pro vs. school thing doesn't twig for me, but I like the competition and teamwork more than anything else so I'm not necessarily paying attention to that aspect. I was gonna say that Giant Killing doesn't make a big deal out of professional aspect, except that it does acknowledge that the team is professional; players leave and move around, so even if they're doing it because they love it, it's still their job. On the other hand, you do get a slice of how the fans of the team are invested in how the team is doing, which is what I like, too--they're so very invested in how the team turns out that I can't help cooing.

[taithe]

I totally agree with you. Picked up TeniPuri cos I heard it was entertaining but later on I wanted to strangle most of the characters. Mind you, tennis is more individual based so I wasn't expecting as much focus on teamwork.

Ugh, you totally brought up a point that reminded me why Whistle!, a soccer manga, had upset me when halfway through the main character moves on from his old team to work harder to level up. My understanding of the manga up until then had been that the team would grow as well. :\ Most sports anime/manga pretty much fit the shonen mold for this reason because you have a "hero" who has to battle multiple opponents and power up along the way. Oofuri's audience is supposed to be older than a shonen audience, I think.

The show is amazing in that it manages to convince people that baseball can be interesting. It's hard to stay in fandom as an English speaker though. Don't remember how behind the manga scanlations were but when I was following them they were doing that "split a chapter and release in sections" thing too. Glad there's a second season out so that it's easier to keep up.

[leorising]

I have always loved watching baseball -- I am as athletic as the proverbial fish on a bicycle -- and have started reading the OF scanlations. Thank you! It looks like it'll be fun. (Also, I think I'll skip the fandoms.)

I love the gazillion strategies involved in baseball, the ever-changing mix of physics, physicality, psychology and even weather that make each play in each game unique. (As opposed to basketball. You know, where they stand in front of a hoop whose height and position never changes, yet most millionaire players still can't manage to hit a standing free throw 3 out of 4 times? Indoors? Zzzzz.) Unfortunately, baseball has been ruined in the US for many, many years, IMO, and I find it unfollowable any more. Thanks for giving me a summer baseball fix I can get behind!

Sorry I came late to the party, so I wasn't aware of your athletic achievements. Fantastic! I've always envied those whose bodies allow them to become athletes. Sounds like you enjoyed it and got a lot out of it. ^_^

[kaigou]

There are two things that will never ever get me: CLAMP and TeniPuri. NEVER! *shakes fist*

(Well, those are the "at least" two things, because I reserve the right to add more. Like, say, Sailor Moon in all her incarnations.)

I fell away from Oofuri early on because of the fandom, which was hideously 4chan

I didn't even realize there was a fandom for it, to be honest. I don't really go looking for fandoms, now, when I find a series I like. (I just try to convert you guys and create our own pocket of the 'net right here.) Hell, I didn't even discover Oofuri until it was, hrm, just around the broadcast of the final episodes of the first season, really. So I got it in a mostly fell swoop, and then was left having to wait what felt like months between manga updates. Honestly, if the baseball jargon didn't scare the crap out of me, I'd insist someone track down a Taiwanese translation and damn well bring it over myself, because NP does a great job but so so so soooo slow, damn it.

[kaigou]

I believe Oofuri is classed as shonen, but maybe the fact that it's (for once) actual quality shonen that it stands out so much. Then again, it's also won several awards: the 2006 Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize and 2007 Kodansha Manga Award. From what I understand, that's kinda like getting the Newberry and Caldecott, in terms of prestige. Not a Pulitzer, sure, but nothing to sniff at.

Like I said to Branch (above), I never even went looking for a fandom. The split chapters are a real hassle, really, and it's not like you're missing much given the anime is extremely faithful to the manga, which is nice but does make manga-reading redundant, if you see the series first (or vice versa).

As for TeniPuri, the fandom in that one definitely scared the crap out of me, and I'm a GW survivor! ...but your observation of tennis being more individual-based is one of the reasons I've never liked tennis, really. At all. Or golf, for that matter. There's next to no true teamwork, with the exception of doubles, and that's just not the same as ten people trying to work together. Just not enough to hold my interest, because it's the inter-team competition that interests me almost more than extra-team competition.

[kaigou]

I've always envied those whose bodies allow them to become athletes.

I HAD NO CHOICE.

No, really! My mother's rule was that I had to join a sport that was: sanctioned by the school, co-ed, competitive, team-based, and required significant physical training (like running and/or lifting weights). The honest-to-goodness reason I picked crew over the other few options (which would've been track or swimming, to be honest, given that eye-hand thing)... well, see, there were these really hot guys sitting at the crew table...

...and the rest is history.

I was out running errands today and ran into two friends who watch all kinds of sports (basketball, baseball, boxing, cricket, soccer, football, etc, etc), and asked them which sport they'd say is the most complex, strategically. Neither of them even paused to think: baseball. Very definite about it, too. And since then, we've had an ongoing conversation in this house comparing strategic elements in baseball, football, soccer, and hockey, arguing which has the most complex strategies... which is really fun, considering crew had only the simplest of strategies (and mostly focused on psychological, really), while CP was, uhm... well, I think he knew two or three people on the track team, in HS. Maybe waved to them in the hallway, and that might've been as close as he's ever gotten (or been interested in getting) to anything athletic.

I think he's still rather confused how he ended up with a jock -- but then again, given it means that I still have some base strength left, he can't complain too much. After all, someone around here's gotta be able to move the washing machine and hoist the dresser when that's needed. Though I let him open the mustard jar, so he feels like he's contributing.

[leorising]

Hahaha! Well, it sounds like your mom was very wise. And you seem to have made a choice you could love.

Sounds like an interesting discussion. I think I'd go to hockey next, then to boxing (which, I know, is not a team sport, but requires a lot of physicality and strategy and just plain old guts. Must be the Irish in me. Although I'm not as cool watching guys pound each other as I used to be, and kickboxing etc. is right out. Ah, for the days of Ali and Frazier...) It's hard to argue with 9/10ths of the world, but soccer is just soooooooo daaaaaaaaaamn slooooooooooow. American football is okay, I guess, in a pinch, when I'm desperate to watch something Not Basketball.

Very interesting, indeed. ^_^

[arya]

I could be wrong since I never followed the scanlation process and just went and read the finished product, but I think the split chapters is mostly because they release the magazine chapters as opposed to the tankoubon chapters. Oofuri chapters are loooong, right? And I vaguely remember one chapter that was actually all of 200+ pages (and I can't be sure but isn't 200+ the standard fair for a tankoubon? So that whole volume was probably comprised of that one chapter + maybe some omake + character profiles).

The magazine that runs it, Afternoon, is a monthly seinen manga serialization and since the usual monthly magazines contain 50/60-ish pages a chapter, I think the scanlation group is releasing the chapters as the magazine releases them. I remembered being awed waybackwhen because, "How can one mangaka draw 100+ pages per chapter in a month?" is how I approached Oofuri and it was only when people started sharing raws that I realized, no, Higuchi draws just as much as the usual monthly mangaka, because I don't think I've ever seen her pass the 60+ pages mark at all. She just has her own way of titling her chapters, I think, as she doesn't follow the magazine release numbers like all the other manga/mangaka.

[kaigou]

Yeah, there's a logic to the numbering and it does have to do with the original. It's not like the split chapters are only two pages long! It's still an incredibly slow translation group, especially when it's not as though they're waiting for the next section to come out -- that, I'm used to. You get ch60, and then you have to wait a week, two weeks, a month, for ch61... here, ch24 comes out in its entirety, so the delay in this case is scanlation-group, not mangaka.

Actually, CP (the household Japanese-speaker) gets that magazine, and he'll point out to me that there's an Oofuri chapter, but he's got no interest in baseball to translate it for me. *sob* And damn it, there's not a Chinese version of the magazine, or I just might get it for that manga alone!

[kaigou]

My absolute favorite spectator sport has got to be football (err, not American football, but footy/soccer) -- the sheer athletic grace of the World Cup players is just breath-taking. I might have decent basic strength for my age, and retain pretty damn good balance (necessary when you're in something as delicately balanced as a rowing shell) but I never had that kind of move-in-any-direction-at-a-blink dancer-like ability. Football only gets that kind of free-flying grace every now and then, and most often purely by accident -- it's very earth-bound, otherwise.

The only problem with British football is that the fans scare the everloving crap out of me -- they're like the Brit equivalent of Duke basketball fans!

[kaigou]

Oh, that's one of my favorite parts of Oofuri, the parent-fans -- man, do I remember those dynamics from HS! When the team heads into the Koushien, the parents agree to go to competitors' games and videotape them. The team's watching one such game when two of the parents show up, and Hanai's reaction (he's the team captain) is just note-perfect. The coach says something, and he's all, "yes, ma'am!" and then his mother says, in an aside, "Captain, you're in charge," and Hanai just does this sulky kind of wilt. And since not all of the mothers are that versed in baseball, they end up acting like a sort of greek chorus at the games, with the baseball-knowledgeable mothers explaining things without sounding like it's all for the cabbages in the audience.

I think the other reason I prefer sports at school-age level (whether HS or college) is because the development of teamwork so often parallels well with the development of individual integrity and knowledge. Competition as a way to hone one's self, and at the same time to realize one's self. What Oofuri has that I've not found previously is that it also highlights the coach's reactions to the players and their actions, not just in a strategic sense but in a personal sense: things like, "should I interfere, say anything? no, I'll wait, let him figure it out for himself..." Watching the player struggle with self-doubt, the coach keeping a careful eye on him, makes me wonder if my own coaches went through the same thing when they watched me positively kill myself to get higher erg scores in our weekly seat-races. If, perhaps, it was also them giving a bit of competitive medicine and trusting I'd figure out what they knew, that I was good enough.

So maybe in some ways, the fact that Oofuri doesn't go into the usual martial-arts-influenced wackiness a la TeniPuri, and that it pays plenty of attention to all the players, and that it presents the story from parent and coach perspectives, too... maybe it's just hitting a whole lot of notes that remind me of what I found valuable in sports, even if my sport was just about as radically different from baseball as you can possibly get.