One Outs - Nobody wins, but I! discussion thread

[LordGeo]

Yeah, it hasn't been subbed yet... But I still want to start the thread, and hopefully it will be subbed soon.

Anyway, for those who don't know waht the show is about, here is the basic idea of the story from ANN:
"The story begins when Hiromichi Kojima, the star batter of the fictional Lycaons in Japan's Pacific League, heads to the southern Japanese island of Okinawa to train and bring himself out of a slump. There, he meet Tōa Tokuchi, a 134-kmph (83 miles per hour) pitcher and the undisputed king of a gambling form of baseball called "One Out." At Kojima's urging, Tokuchi signs up with the Lycaons under an unusual contract: he gets 5,000,000 yen (about US$46,000) for every out he pitches, but loses 50,000,000 yen (US$460,000) for every point he gives up."

A baseball anime mixed in with gambling? Now that sounds intersting! The man has to pitch 10 outs just so that he can be out of the negative in the case he gives a point; I'm not a big baseball fan but even I can tell that's crazy.

Why I'm excited about this show:
1. It's a Madhouse anime, and I haven't been disappointed in their shows yet from what I've seen.
2. It has pretty much the same exact staff that did Akagi and Kaiji... That means that this is in excellent hands!
3. Masato Hagiwara voices main character Toua Tokuchi... So not only do we get the same staff, we get the same guy doing the main character. Sometimes that could be a problem, but Hagiwara is an excellent seiyuu.

Anyway, one episode is out unsubbed right now so if anyone saw that and wants to talk about it then we could have at least somewhat of a start.

[LordGeo]

Episode 1 (Unsubbed): First Look
While I didn't watch the episode in full, I did look at parts of it. Looking at some parts I can tell that Madhouse is giving this a good bit of their budget, and considering that they're doing 3 shows this season (One Outs, Casshern SINS, and Kurozuka) it's nice to see it look this good.

Even though this isn't based off of a Nobuyuki Fukumoto manga (if you want to be technical this is actually a Jump anime, since the manga was serialized in Business Jump), the character designs have a close similarity; think Fukumoto's character designs but with normal noses and you're close to what this show looks like.

The opening theme, "Bury" by Pay money To my pain, is a really nice song that almost made me think it was done by an actual American band; the band's english is really good. Listening to Toua's voice, I could tell easily that Hagiwara is tapping more into Akagi than Kaiji for this show; I have to say that while his Kaiji was really great, I still have prefer his Akagi in the end so hearing that kind of performance so Toua gets me all the more excited.

Unfortunately, that's all I can really say about this show right now. Again, hopefully it will be subbed soon so that I can really start talking about this show, but this "First Look" certainly didn't deter me from wanting to watch this show.

[LordGeo]

Well, now that episode 1 is now fansubbed, by two groups now even, it's time for this topic to really get started.

Anyway, I did like how this episode was. Unlike most sports animes, this starts off with the gritty style by showing off a gambling form of baseball, One Outs, where people bet on whether the pitcher strikes out the batter or the batter hits the ball inbounds and beyond the infield. Frankly, it is an interesting way to make a bet through baseball. Obviously, the show is not about this so I'll stop about it right now.

As for the rest of the episode, I found it interesting that, while the original manga was not done by Nobuyuki Fukumoto, the staff still used a few of the same types of shots for this anime. The dark, purple backgrounds used when characters are realizing where they went wrong is pretty much taken straight from Kaiji (and I was almsot expecting to hear "Zawa zawa" during those scenes). Even the character design of Toua looks almost like a Fukumoto character, but with a traditional-styled nose.

All in all, this episode did keep me interested and I'm looking forward to more of this show.

[untoldsorrow]

I skimmed through episode 1 and was pleased. I will watch it normally when I get a chance. I enjoy the gritty style very much.

[LordGeo]

Episode 2: This episode certainly focuses more on the psychological aspect of how one plays baseball, and that style of focus surely makes this show different from most baseball animes.

It's interesting to find out that Toua's actual pitching abilities are nothing really amazing and that he mostly works off of the batter's mind, personality, and mannerisms in order to win. I do hope that during the story his actual pitching skills improve, since that would just make him even more dangerous. Right now, if Toua was to pitch against a really good batter who knows how to play psychologically and that Toua can't pitch a breaking ball he would certainly be in trouble. So I do hope to see his actual skills advance during the story.

Again, there are hints of the style that Akagi and Kaiji used in this show, but it still feels to be different from those shows. The music is also appropriate for this show so far, and now I can honestly say that I don't feel that Hideki Taniuchi would have been the best choice to do music for this show... His style fits a show like Akagi and Kaiji perfectly, but it most likely would have clashed with a show like One Outs.

Anyway, I did like this episode and I'm really looking forward to episode 3, where the real story starts up.