Owing once again to the peculiarities in when and how I find volumes of Cross Game, we're getting to volume 5 before we get to volume 4. The first half revolves around a showdown between the Seishu Gakuen squad, led by Ko and Azuma, and the powerhouse Ryuou Gakuin, who are the #1 seed in this qualifying tournament to reach Koshien, which I guess is a big national high school baseball tournament that takes place in Koshien Stadium. I just know every baseball manga or anime I've seen (all three of them) is fixated on getting to Koshien.
Seishu already won two games to get this far, but Ryuou's a whole other matter. They have their own ace and slugging first baseman, although as the game goes on it appears their back-ups, both second years like Ko and Azuma, are even better. The game ends up turning on an event that really doesn't make much sense to me. Ko catches a scorching line drive with his glove, which somehow makes his hand so numb he can't properly lift this arm? This is something that gets hinted during the game and even after. Basically, the game-winning hit gets past him because he doesn't get his glove up high enough to grab it, and Mitsuru keeps making it seem like it's due to some inability to lift his arm, rather than not being able to feel his hand.
Seems like horseshit to me, but I guess he's going to make us wait until the very end of the series to see if they actually make it to Koshien.
In the meantime, there's teen romance angst plotlines to focus on, and oh geez, does this stuff get silly. In volume 4, Mitsuru introduced Aoba's cousin Mizuki as a potential rival for her affections (which Ko would insist he doesn't have anyway.) This also involved multiple characters assuring us that yes, first cousins can get married and, look, I know different people have different opinions on things like this. I am on the Internet, I have seen the sorts of fanfiction people write.
Hell, I knew a guy in high school that thought I was weird for being disturbed that in the movie The Devil's Advocate (with Keanu and Al Pacino), that Keanu is being encouraged to father a child with a woman with the same father as him (meaning, Al Pacino). Of course, Gregor was kind of an asshole on a good day. The point is, you can have as many characters say it's cool as you want, I'm still going to look sideways at it.
It doesn't matter too much in this story, because Mitsuru almost immediately undercuts the possibility by showing the Aoba barely notices Mizuki, despite his attempts to hang out or let her copy his English homework. Meanwhile, the similarities between she and Ko in everything (cleanliness, approach to fashion, sleeping habits, reactions to movies) are hammered at. So in this volume, we get a new complication: a new neighbor for Ko. A new neighbor who happens to look just like Aoba's deceased sister Wakaba would, if she hadn't died and continued to grow up.
So we get lots of people seeing her without realizing this is Akane, daughter of the owner of the new soba restaurant, and freaking out about Wakaba's ghost being out and walking around. I mostly feel bad for Akane, who has no idea any of this is going on until Senda comes barging into the restaurant and very bluntly says he's there to see the girl who looks like Aoba's dead sister.
Akaishi probably should have hit him harder, honestly.
Sigh. This is kind of a frustrating development. I'm interested in the baseball stuff. Ko trying to see how good he can be, Akaishi wanting to make Wakaba's dream a reality, figuring out how Aoba's going to get to play in an official game. Hell, even Azuma gradually starting to enjoy baseball again, rather than doing it to make up for ending his brother's promising career. Secondary to that is at least some of the humor. At least Azuma's brother is being slightly less of a pervert now that he's actually dating Aoba's oldest sister, Ichiyo. This relationship drama stuff? No thanks, especially when we're getting into daytime soap opera-esque "she's a twin for my dead sister" hijinks.
No comments:
Post a Comment