Tuesday 26 April 2011

Moshidora - Episode 1

You know you've been in middle management for too long when you even start getting excited about learning management tips from your anime - such is the position I find myself in as Moshidora finally makes its hotly-awaited debut.

Moshidora is the story of sixteen year-old Minami Kawashima, a high school girl who has decided to embark upon a journey as the manager of her school's baseball team in lieu of her sickly best friend and former manager Yuki, with the hope of achieving her ultimate goal of taking her team to the nationals.  There are two problems here however; firstly, Minami hates baseball.  Secondly, whilst looking for baseball-related management books she ends up instead with a copy of the much-vaunted Drucker's Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices - a tome about running a business, not a sports team.


Nonetheless, Minami forges on as she begins her formative attempts at applying the concepts of this book to the baseball team - in this opening instalment she learns that integrity is supposedly the key to being a successful manager (a bit of a problem for a baseball team manager who hates baseball, huh?) and tries to figure out what the purpose and goals of her "business" are.  Just as importantly, we also delve into the relationship between Minami and Yuki, which also reveals that the former's hatred of baseball wasn't always the case - indeed, it seems that she was rather an astute player in her younger days.

Come the end of this first episode, I'm still as fascinated by this show's concept as I was before watching the opener.  Certainly, there's an interesting mix of slice of life elements and an obvious attempt to put across some management "training" (for want of a better word) in a single package, and I kind of admire the series at this early stage for that if nothing else.  Will this blend work for a ten episode series?  Who knows, but for now I'm still on board, and at least if nothing else I can kid myself that I'm learning something while I'm watching the series.  Maybe I can even get away with watching it in the office?

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