Nine Dragons' Ball Parade

Review contains spoilers. Not that there's much to spoil.
2020 was a rough year for Shonen Jump. Haikyuu, Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs, Demon Slayer and The Promised Neverland all ended in quick succession. Act-Age was cancelled due to the writer's crimes, and despite serializing a large number of newbies (some of which, like Undead Unluck, Magu-chan and Me & Roboco would find some success), Jump would only find two manga that were instant successes: Mashle, which sold 50k by volume three, and Ayakashi Triangle, which sold very well from the first volume. That's not to say that Jump was having huge issues, but after losing several sales giants there were enough free slots to try out several manga, most of which didn't remain. Heading into 2021, We Never Learn and Chainsaw Man ended, and Moriking and Agravity Boys were axed, all within a few weeks, and Jump was left with a fairly weak bottom roster and an itch to serialize some hits to replace those that had ended. Early on in the year, Jump serialized a batch of four manga back to back. Two of them were The Elusive Samurai and Witch Watch, both from veteran authors, and they found success. The other two were the swiftly axed i tell c and the also swiftly axed Nine Dragons' Ball Parade, and neither would find any success whatsoever. Alright, manga history lesson over, onto the review.

Nine Dragons' Ball Parade is the story of Tamao, who isn't especially athletic but still wants to make it to Koshien with a strong team at Hakuo High. He shows up to tryouts for said team, armed with knowledge on successful middle school baseball players from around Japan, and attempts to snag a position on the team as catcher using his brain. Unfortunately, after a practice game, he doesn't make the cut, with one of the scouts explaining quite logically that the school has a team on hire for the purpose of scouting opponents and figuring out how to deal with them, so there's no need to take a mediocre player whose selling point is that very thing. A dejected Tamao leaves, only to be chased after by the natural talent Tao Ryudo, who compliments Tamao's skill and asks him to create a Koshien-level team together. The manga, short as it is, focuses on the pair trying to recruit strong players who slipped under large teams' radar for one reason or another.
Yes, Nine Dragon's Ball Parade is a sports manga that's focused on creating a team rather than any actual games. That's an interesting idea, but leads to a lot of issues, which I'll get to in a bit.

Nine Dragons' Ball Parade does, to its credit, feel like it tries to shake up the tried and true sports manga formula. Aside from the focus on building a team, its main character, Tamao, isn't naturally talented like the majority of sports protagonists. Using his sheer love with and obsession with baseball and its players as his strength is a unique and fascinating idea that I really wish had been explored more, perhaps by making him more of a trickster like Hiruma from Eyeshield 21. Having the focus on a catcher could also have been interesting, but the thing is, we don't really get to see any of that pan out. Nine Dragon's Ball Parade has all of one real game in it, and, well, it's an awkward middle ground between strategy and a typical guts-and-glory sports shonen.

In my opinion, sports shonen need three things to be good- interesting/likeable characters, good games/matches and some skill progression for the main character. Unfortunately, Nine Dragon's Ball Parade doesn't really have any of those. The lack of skill progression is somewhat explained by the fact that the manga was quickly cancelled, but the other two could have happened if the manga did a better job.
First off, characters. I've already mentioned how the main character is a catcher who relies on his knowledge of other teams to give him and his team an edge. He is also, unfortunately, a typical "weak" character, with no real talent other than this obsession with the game, and it makes for a character than isn't compelling. Going more the trickster route, even mildly like Miyuki from Ace of the Diamond, could have made him feel more likeable. Heck, even just making him less of a weak character could have allowed Nine Dragons to take a more interesting tack. Ryudo is a typical talented sports shonen character, nothing too interesting there. The issue stems with the characters that are recruited onto the team- one is a wholesome family-loving guy, and the other is just downright annoying. The latter is a huge issue, since the other characters are so meh. His constant annoyingness and the self-centered remarks aren't endearing, and since the manga's preferred way of dealing with him is slapstick, he just sticks out like a sore thumb and ruins every page he's on. Normally, he wouldn't be a huge deal, but since there's so little to make the other characters stand out, the impact of one annoying one is quite honestly awful.
Second, since the series tries to focus on building the team early, as I already said there's only one real game. It is not great, and it feels rushed as it's the final few chapters of the series. I don't know for sure if it could have turned out better had the series not wasted so much time, but it's just a slapdash game that tries to show off the team. For a sports series, a rushed last few chapters being the only game besides the tryouts just did not work well. Even though the series was axed, the overall lack of, well, the sport is just glaring and, considering the overall not great cast, leaves the series with no real draw.

As far as art goes, well, it's not very good, but it isn't awful. Character designs are largely uninteresting, but other than that the art is passable.

Overall, Nine Dragons' Ball Parade is still an interesting experiment, if only because it tries to put a different spin on sports manga as a genre. Unfortunately, it's a failed experiment that left me wishing it didn't try to take as many risks, and winds up being a series that deserved the axe by the end. Nothing about it is particularly bad aside from one really annoying character, but everything is mediocre to the point that the series not following typical sports series conventions leaves it a messy disappointment.