Gurazeni is a thrilling and no holds barred struggle for survival as the protagonist Bonda Natsunouske engages all out war as the pitcher of the Spiders. For he knows every single one of his pitches will determine how much money he takes home. If the Spiders lose, if his pitches get hit, he loses the money he stood to earn.
This show is baseball gambling at its simplest. And the strongest aspect of it certainly is the protagonist Bonda and his reality warping pitches. Singlehandedly, he destroys entire rival teams and walks away richer every--
Oh. Oh no. That’s… that’s the wrong show. That’s the wrong show. There aren’t even any similarities between that show and Gurazeni. How did this mix-up even happen? Somebody’s getting fired for this one.
Okay, no for real this time. Gurazeni is a slice of life baseball series.
...No, that’s it. That’s literally it. That's...
Can't I just review One Outs instead? Come on.
#Failure Pitch#
I guess we're really doing this. Right away I just have to state that Gurazeni was a complete and utter waste of time (brought to us by Studio DEEN). As a sports series, there's no clear or set goal through the entire thing. We're never given like an idea of what point in their season they're in, so basically there never feels like a point to any of the games. It's just one after another. And Bonda never improves throughout the entire thing. To be fair in that respect, there ARE three different Gurazeni manga series apparently, but with what this anime has given us in the span of twelve episodes, I have absolutely no interest or desire in seeing where this goes.
Not to mention there are multiple episodes where it's not even about Bonda. Which I wouldn't have a problem with if they were actually building up the team. But despite entire episodes being about Bonda's teammates or even one of the goddamned commentators (WHO GIVES A FUCK ABOUT THE COMMENTATOR), all of the Spiders excluding Bonda may as well have been nameless and faceless. Even the ones the show spent time on were completely forgettable.
...I'm getting ahead of myself here. We can't skirt past the elephant in the room. The Anilist and MAL descriptions of this show are as follows:
#ANILIST#
The "baseball money survival" story focuses on a baseball team that operates as a highly-stratified society, where the player's performance determines his annual salary. The story follows an eight-year relief pitcher with an odd left-handed side-arm throw as he fights to survive under the team's strict system.
#MAL#
This is the story of Natsunosuke Honda, a pro baseball player—a relief pitcher who has been playing pro in a team called Spiders for 8 years. The team operates as a highly-stratified society, where the player's performance determines his annual salary. Natsunosuke is one of the highest paid players in the game. He measures how good players are by how much money they make, and he intends to be on top and stay there, and as such is always looking for players to challenge and does everything to insure that he is better than they are.
I've seen it described as "baseball money survival" elsewhere as well. Also, I just want to make a quick note on the MAL description: Natsunosuke is FAR from the highest paid players in the show. Like if anything he's like average or towards BELOW AVERAGE. Like holy shit, I WOULD HAVE LOVED TO SEE THE VERSION THE MAL DESCRIPTION IS DESCRIBING. But no, he never improves, and he never gets his salary raised beyond his starting 18 million yen per year.
To further stretch the blatant attempt to try and sell this as One Outs, they even got the same guy who did One Outs' script for Gurazeni. And I... don't know why. I guess probably just because both are baseball series. There is absolutely no survival element or gambling element or any stakes to this series in what this season gave us WHATSOEVER. All Bonda does is just ramble on and on about other players' contracts, and the constant and unending narration almost immediately got old and made me hate Bonda.
"This guy makes this much! That guy makes that much! This guy is worth literally ten of me! Ten entire Bonda's! Wow!"
Nobody. And I mean,
NOBODY
gives a flying fuck about the players' contracts unless it's like crazy over the top like the one One Outs is centered around. I would rather fucking see an entire series about the people who maintain and prepare the goddamned FIELD than a guy just rambling on internally about how much more the other players make than him. Even Gurazeni itself shows that the contracts don't matter, as even goddamned worthless Bonda can still sometimes triumph over the guy who makes five times or however much as him. Bonda even says it himself that him thinking this way is stupid or silly YET HE STILL DOES IT.
"Oh wow. It's almost like my contract being smaller than this didn't necessarily guarantee that I would lose to him. It's almost like there are factors much more important that determine a player's skill other than THEIR GODDAMNED BANK ACCOUNTS."
...And it was borderline embarrassing when the fifth episode was just an episode about a manga artist starts going to the Spiders' games because he wants to do a baseball series about an average relief pitcher. So... the manga artist character in Gurazeni wants to make... Gurazeni? Wow, how masturbatory.
Like wow what a wonderful idea, a sport series about a dull average character who not only cares about money, but the amount of money OTHER people are making. Wow, what a great series to get people interested in the sport of baseball!
What else was there to mention? Oh yeah.
You can't have a sport series without at least one female character, right? There's gotta be at least one in there. Well, we see Gurazeni's right away in the OP like three times. Then, the entire ED is just her, and I think it's her singing the ED as well. You may be wondering, well, when is she actually introduced though? She's throughout the OP and she's the entire ED... so surely, she's a supporting character, right? But I'm on like episode three and there's been no sighting of her whatsoever...
...She's introduced episode 12. The very final episode of Gurazeni. The entire episode is about her going to a Spiders game, rooting for the other team, and then hating the absolute shit out of Bonda. Her and Bonda barely interact and she does not recognize him as a professional baseball player because of how absolutely average he is. Really, the entire purpose of her episode is to establish that Bonda in fact has a love interest. Said love interest is just completely unaware of him. Like literally does not know who he is apart from some other customer that comes to the diner and unbeknownst to her, is constantly staring at her from afar.
But... but in the ED, she's shown to be wearing a Spiders cap though. She appears multiple times in the OP! SHE'S IN THE GODDAMNED COVER IMAGE. I THOUGHT THERE WOULD BE A SINGLE SUPPORTING CHARACTER THAT MATTERED.
LET ME DANCE WITH YOUR SHADOW MONSTER TONI--wait shadow monster? WHAT THE FUCK IS A SHADOW MONSTER. WHY IS THE ED FOR THIS BASEBALL SERIES REFERENCING SHADOW MONSTERS.
Yes well, we'll probably have to wait until the fourth season of Gurazeni for her to even make the realization who Bonda even is. That is to say if she even appears in other parts of Gurazeni. I'm just kind of giving this series that little credit and assuming she is. And I probably shouldn't, because like every character a single episode focuses on, they either never appear again in another episode or are just complete bit players. As a matter of fact, I think the only character I can remember seeing again after an episode focused on them was the commentator guy.
...I feel like bringing up the terrible CG and the fact that the actual baseball scenes are usually a slog to watch is basically shoveling dirt onto the coffin of this show. Like the shoddy and cheap animation kind of fucking pales in comparison to the fact that at multiple points this show felt insulting to the sport of baseball itself. There's an episode where like the managers of a team that the Spiders are playing against want their old fan favorite player to lose against Bonda because they want him to retire because his contract is costing them too much money.
And I guess like it's supposed to be funny but... that's terrible? You would rather your whole team to lose and the fans' favorite player completely retire rather than just renegotiate his contract. Like in One Outs, the whole thing is the owner of the team wants the star player to do terrible because they agreed on an insane and ridiculous contract. But in One Outs, the team owner is an over the top villainous asshole.
Again, wow. I can really feel the spirit of baseball in this series. "This old bastard is costing us too much money and therefore is preventing us from hiring some new young players with potential! WE NEED HIM TO RETIRE RIGHT AWAY."
#A Foregone Conclusion#
...If we take masochism off of the table, there's absolutely no situation in which I would ever recommend anybody watch Gurazeni. Like the fact that they tried to sell this as One Outs is fucking baffling in every single regard.
One Outs is from 2008. Gurazeni is from 2018. Ten years between these two, and One Outs is a billion times more fun to watch and is fucking way better looking, and while One Outs is certainly about the money that the protagonist is earning from the sport, I never thought it was insulting to the sport of baseball.
...I'm honestly not even sure if I'm going to continue into the already confirmed second season. Almost feel like I have to just to see if this aimless and worthless series is just going to continue on episodically forever or if it ever actually obtains a purpose or a point.
That's neither here nor there, though. I give the first season of Gurazeni a 5 out of 100. I think it's probably safe to call it the absolute worst baseball series despite the fact the original manga series has ~~somehow~~ won awards. ~~The other major contender in my opinion I guess you could at least say it's more a drama than an actual sports series.~~
Gurazeni is probably one of the worst sports series period, actually. But I haven't watched enough of them to feel confident enough to outright make that claim. It's absolutely the worst of the ones I HAVE watched, though.
