My Review of "'Oblivion Battery"!
Nipple hair!..... Did I do it right?
Story
The anime follows the story of the battery duo of Haruka Kiyomine and Kei Kaname. In middle school, they were unstoppable, having plenty students retire and quit baseball due to their skill difference. However, Kei Kaname began suffering from amnesia, leading to his skills to be completely erased. Now, Kei has to relearn his abilities and regain his passion for baseball to help Haruka and their high school baseball team/club succeed.
Visuals
It's MAPPA. Of course the visuals stand out among other anime of similar concepts. However, I think that they do overdo it on a few things for this type of anime.
Characters
Haruka Kiyomine is a serious pitcher who always needs to relieve his everyday stress. His best friend, Kei Kaname, is a humorous catcher with amnesia. He isn't the skillful catcher he used to be, but he's determined to at least be close to who he was before. Tarou Yamada is the average baseball player that follows their story and tries to be the regulator of situations. Aoi Toudou and Shunpei Chihaya are also baseball players in the team who Haruka and Kei defeated in the past that have regained their passion to continue their baseball careers.
The Good
I liked the little bits of anime references thrown into this show. They are nice nods of respect to other great shows that don't overshadow the actual story. As MAPPA does, I like the action scenes in this anime. They were really able to dramatize baseball in such a way that doesn't make it feel too unrealistic but also very entertaining. I really loved the story. Although the delivery could've been better in certain moments, I still enjoyed the way they chose to develop the characters in each episode. You could really see how far each character had gone to become the great players they are.
(Yes, this is an actual scene in the anime)The Bad
I didn't like the facial expressions of a few characters. I just felt that some of them didn't fit the design of the characters and sometimes overexaggerated a situation in a bad way. I just felt that if they spent more time on that and a little less on the action scenes, there would've been a better balance and I would've enjoyed it more. In my opinion, the comedy felt dry and forced. I didn't find many of the comedic moments that comedic and it ended up ruining parts of the anime for me. To be more specific, I didn't really like post-amnesia Kei Kaname's humor. I liked the story behind him, but I found his jokes to be unbearable throughout the show. I preferred the small jokes that a character like Haruka makes. It's not too wacky and it stays relevant to the story.
The Downright Ugly
I did find problems with this show (as addressed above), but I don't there was any that were necessarily downright ugly.
Is It Worth The Watch?
Unless you're into sports or baseball, I wouldn't recommend watching this anime. You're more than likely not gonna love the anime. At most, you may think it's a good anime, but there are better anime in the sports genre that you could watch and enjoy way more. This show is definitely a grower for me as I slowly began to enjoy it more in the later episodes.
Thank you for taking the time to read my review. I hope this helped you with your decision on whether to watch this anime or not! If you already have watched it, I hope that you can agree with me with some of the points I made. ^^
