One Outs

One Outs Review

It’s odd but I have been watching a lot more sports anime recently. I think it is the fault of some of my friends who introduced me to some legitimately good sports anime, like Major, and the fact that good sport’s anime have been coming out as a late from Japan, like Kuroko’s Basketball. This has led me to find even more just plain good sports anime, like today’s fair. A story of victory, manipulation and gambling. A show about baseball like you have never seen it before. A show with a lot illegal activities going on. But I might be getting a bit ahead of myself. This is One Outs.

One Outs is an anime from a few years ago about Tokuchi Toua, a gambling man if there ever was one. He participates in an little baseball game called One Outs, where it is the pitcher verses the batter, winner takes all. And he has never lost. Until he meets Hiromichi Kojima, a professional baseball player for the Lycaons who is looking for the thing that will bring his team to the championships. He finds and makes a bet with Tokuchi, if he wins Hiromichi will own Tokuchi’s hand, and if he loses he will retire from baseball. Hiromichi wins, and takes Tokuchi to play for his team. There Tokuchi makes a contract with the Owner for the team, for every batter he strikes out he will make about $50,000, and for every point he gives up he loses ten times that much. And Tokuchi has no interest in losing. 

 What makes this series so distinct from other sports anime are two things. The first is that the show doesn’t really have a team feel to it. In other sports shows we always get to know the team to some extent. Even if it is only a handful of the main player, like if don’t know all the backups and such, we still know who most of the team are so that we can root for them, and connect to the players on the field. But One Outs doesn’t do this. I honestly couldn’t tell you anything about most of the players on the Lycoans, or any other team for that matter except for the very few that are important for that game. Instead we focus on one character, Tokuchi. But this isn’t the case of the viewer seeing things through the main characters eyes either. We are never allowed into Tokuchi’s personal monologue, we are never allowed to know what he is thinking as he is thinking it. Instead we get to see everyone else’s reactions to what he does, and an explanation later. This is because Tokuchi is a master manipulator. He can get inside the head of a player and make them do exactly as he wants them to do. He is an expert of human behavior and uses this to his full advantage. The second thing that makes this series so distinct is that this baseball show is barely about baseball. 

As I mentioned, this show is all about gambling. Tokuchi’s contract with the team owner is just a game. Every game is just another series of gambling between the opposing team or their manager and Tokuchi. It is a constant series of one ups-manship that ultimately ends with Tokuchi on top. And this is actually really interesting. Too often do we see the team that plays baseball, or any other sport, purely and because of their purity for the game they win. It is through luck and pluck do they win the championship game against the team that treats the game as a tool, or the team that cheats, or whatever the bad guys do in a sports anime. Not in One Out’s though. Almost every team in this series is somehow manipulating the game to their advantage. One team uses a professional track and field runner to steal bases and get easy points. One team neglects their defense in order to focus on three players. And one team just downright cheats all time. And the home team is no different. Every one working directly for the team’s owner is under his thumb, just another dog for him to use and order around, with the exception being most of the players who just take orders from the manager who is under the owner’s thumb. And the owner is an unscrupulous being who wants his own team to lose constantly if it saves him money at the end of the day. This show takes the concept of a traditional sports anime and beats it upside the head basically. But that is what makes it interesting to watch. 

  It isn’t all good. The opening and closing songs are in English but not done well. I am not someone who skips openings and closings usually, but I was for most of the series. And it also doesn’t really end. Tokuchi beats another team, beats the owner, and then declares that he will continue to do that repeatedly until they win the championship. I believe that is mostly because at the time the manga was still going on, but I was hoping for a bit more closure. But I can overlook all that for Tokuchi. It is just too fun watching him play people like instruments. Everything he does is a well calculated strike, thought of tens of steps in advanced. It gets to a point where you know that any little thing Tokuchi has done is part of his overall plan, you just have to wait for him to explain how it is part of his plan. This show is a chess match, but with one side manipulating both sets of pieces.

   Overall I really liked One Outs. It isn’t my favorite sports anime, that right still belongs to Giant Killing, but it is a fun ride overall. If you are into gambling shows, more eccentric sports anime, or just shows with manipulative main leads, I could not recommend this show more. If, on the other hand, you prefer more traditional sports anime though, then I would warn you to stay away, or at least give this a try before dropping it forever. So until next time, have fun watching.