LogFAQs > #901225979

15. One Outs (2008)
Koala (3/5)
https://imgur.com/dZiB6Wf

The ultimate baseball anime, One Outs is the story of a gambling man who is undefeated in a baseball gambling game called One Outs. He ends up coming face-to-face with a professional player, but loses after that player kinda has to cheat in order to win. The result is that he must now pitch for that man's baseball team, with the end goal of winning the championship. But Toua will only pitch for the team if the owner agrees to his absurd salary proposition, where every at-bat becomes a gamble, with big money on the line.

This show is so much fun. I'm a bit biased, since basebal is y favorite sport to both watch and play, and seeing something that can take the classic game and turn it on it's head to make it into something so clever without completely changing the game is awesome. One Outs isn't the most realistic sports anime out there (Toua can literally control the rotation of his pitches with pinpoint accuracy), but I'd say it's the most exciting. One Outs rarely has a dull moment, with each game bringing some new obstacle to the table. Toua is one of the greatest main characters in the medium despite never really developing beyond being a guy who just wants to gamble. He's always calm and collected, playing 3D chess with his opponents, the front office, and sometimes even his own teammates. Even though the end result is usually the same, it manages to avoid falling into a formula by creating so many different scenarios that require different methods to overcome. One of my favorite moments was when the front office tries to get Toua to pitch three games in a row so they can put him in debt. He wins the first two, but he's obviouslsy exhausted by the third game. But he knew the weather forecast was gonna call for heavy rain, so he just gets lit up in the early innings, before it can be called an official game. After the downpour has started, they pull strings to keep the game going, but Toua has been roughing up the mound ever so slightly as he pitches in order to throw opposing pitchers' balances off. Long story short, this creates a dissonance in the opposing team, and we see the toxic environment the pitchers have to deal with on a power-heavy team. They essentially just start throwing the game, and, to save face, the manager forfeits the game to keep his pitchers' stats clean. It's such an awesome sequence of events using actual knowledge of how the game works to create drama and intrigue, even if no front office is as corrupt as the ones on display here (At east I think...)

It is a shame that the show didn't get a full adaptation. I don't remember where exactly it ended, since I picked up the manga immediately after I finished, so the lines are a bit blurry, but you get into some even more intriguing concepts. Though one of the more ridiculous ones doesn't really make sense if you think about it for a few moments, it's still fun to watch the team essentially take on Toua's ridiculous gamble themselves. While Toua never changes much, his teammates do, and the switch from a losing culture to a winning one makes for some wonderful development. I mean, the Lycaons are kinda like my Cubs in a way...
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https://imgur.com/l7xxLh1
PSN/Steam - RoboQuote ; NNID - TazzyMan