Moshidora - Episode 10 (Completed)

Despite all of the drama and emotion surrounding what happened to Yuki last episode, Minami eventually makes it to the final qualifying game for the nationals... but is her arrival too little too late, with the team losing quite heavily?

In true sporting drama fashion, it's Minami's arrival (and perhaps more importantly her shouts to the team not to give up and strut their stuff) that begins to turn things around, culminating in a closing of the gap to just a single run between the two teams as we move into the final innings of the game.

With everything at stake, it takes a flash of the unexpected and a bit of innovation to turn the tide, with Hoshide ditching the team's no-bunt no-ball strategy in a tactial move before a switch in runner leaves it up to Yunosuke of all people to perform what will have to be the winning hit to enable them to win.  This series being what it is, he succeeds, and thanks to a story about Minami related to him by Yuki no less.  Cue victory celebrations and tears aplenty as the team achieve their dream and reach the national finals.

Okay, so Moshidora might have effectively ditched most of its management discussion for the final couple of episodes (resorting to the odd token mention of its principles here and there instead), but by that juncture it had built up enough of a head of steam in terms of both its characters and their situations to be able to do so surprisingly well - you'd need a heart of ice not to cheer on the team after all they'd been through and Yuki's fate, and for the second episode in a row I found myself a little tearful by the end of it all.  It's the kind of sporting and human drama we've all seen countless times before, but the Drucker's Management hook acted excellently as a door into the series (with some thoughts that have actually motivated me at work to try and do things a little differently, we'll have to see how that works out) before it rolled us into its non-management related story telling with relative aplomb.  Sure, Moshidora is no tour de force of plot or animation, but it was a solid and well-delivered series that benefited rather than suffered from its daily airings to capture our minds, and then our hearts, to good effect.  Hey, it even managed to make baseball kind of exciting for someone who doesn't have a clue about it, which has to say something in its favour.

Moshidora - Episode 9

After foreshadowing it for at least a couple of episodes, it's time for baseball to take something of a back seat for Moshidora's penultimate episode as the truth about Yuki's illness is finally revealed by Minami's impromptu visit.

In fact, you could probably call this visit rather fortuitous, as it delivers Minami to her best friend on what proves to be the final night of her life as she enters a critical condition - news which sees the entire baseball team gather before the harsh reality is revealed to a disbelieving Minami herself, who continues to implore to an unconscious Yuki to fight for her life.

So, after many tearful scenes, Yuki loses her battle and life goes on with the qualifying tournament final to think of - a little too soon for a still shocked Minami it seems, as she refuses to see the point of having anything to do with baseball at this moment in time, even going as far as to reveal her hatred of the sport to the assembled players.  Of course, Yuki knew this would happen before her demise and she had already primed the team to make sure that Minami continued in her management capacity no matter what; a request which is easier said than done given Minami's mood, as she runs off for some time alone with Ayano giving chase.  This takes us on to the final itself, with things not going well for our team while Minami's absence continues to cause concern until her eventual arrival late in the game... but is it too late to turn things around?

If yesterday's episode got by on sporting drama, then today's instalment survived on raw human emotion and drama in itself.  Yes, Yuki's sudden downward spiral of health and death doesn't seem all that believable, but it's hard not to get swept up in a scene involving an entire baseball team in tears having followed them so closely on a daily basis this past fortnight, and to be honest even my eyes were a little damp by the end of it all.  Similarly, Minami's reaction  to Yuki's is hard to process on a logical level from a girl who has been so driven throughout, yet it "just works" in story telling terms to make for a rather clichéd but nonetheless interesting finale to the series.  Never mind the business management, the past two episodes of Moshidora have been all about drilling into the show's facets on a more raw level, with more success than I honestly expected despite its flaws.

Moshidora - Episode 8

Hodokubo High School's baseball team have made it all the way to the semi-final of the national qualifying tournament, but a place in the final means overcoming their toughest test so far in the form of an institution renowned for sporting excellence, and starring a pitcher who already looks set to hit the big time as a professional.

Nonetheless, there's no real change in our team's strategy for this big game, save for keeping Asano back until late in the game to keep him fresh for its closing stages.  Ostensibly though, this particular game is a match-up between two former friends with a score to settle, as that aforementioned big-name pitcher Kato pits his wits against arguably the team's best batter Hoshide.  With the game tightly poised, the winner of that particular battle of wits looks likely to be the difference between victory and defeat...

...at least, it does until Yunosuke enters the frame once again, with a trio of fielding clangers that make you wonder whether they're planning to release a character CD for him that simply features three different versions of Yakety Sax.  Somehow, his mistakes don't cost his team the game, but it does bring about this episode's management quandary - should they stick with a player who seemingly always crumbles under pressure, or should they trust that he'll grow from the experience?  It's a tough question, but as this instalment ends it seems that there are more important things for Minami to worry about than baseball.

As per yesterday's episode, this instalment of Moshidora was light on management tips (and its only real dilemma was pretty sport-centric, unless you work in an office where someone keeps dropping all the staples) but high on the natural drama and tension of a major sporting event to keep things interesting before reaching the inevitable Yuki-based cliffhanger that the last episode couldn't have foreshadowed much more had it depicted the Grim Reaper in the background.  Still, by this juncture I feel sufficiently invested in the team and its story (and Minami herself of course) to want to see what happens next, so that lack of management advice and plenty of sporting drama still does a number on me.

Moshidora - Episode 7

Six episodes and untold amounts of hard work and planning later, it's finally time to the team at the centre of Moshidora's tale of management and baseball to come good and achieve their dream of reaching the nationals.  In their way however stands what seems to be a swathe of teams which make up their rivals in the qualifying tournament.

With their unique strategy, good teamwork and decent players, Minami's charges breeze through to the quarter final without too much difficulty, thrashing most of their opponents quite soundly.  Tougher times are ahead though, as reminded by a meeting between former captain Hoshide and an outright celebrity of the tournament in the form of an ace pitcher who is already decidedly confident that his team will meet Minami's in the semi-finals.

The only place where things don't seem to be going to so well for our protagonist is with regard to her relationship with Yuki, with a decidedly awkward feeling left in the air after Yuki's praise for Minami and assertions that everything she's done for the baseball team is a fantastic achievement in itself, no matter how far the team get towards their dream of playing in the nationals, is shot down as Minami finds herself focusing on results over process - asound move in business terms perhaps, but neglectful of what Yuki was really trying to say.  Indeed, it seems that there is more surrounding Yuki's illness than currently meets the eye if the overall atmosphere of some recent scenes are to be believed... a concern that is quickly put to one side as the baseball team find themselves slogging it out against a decidedly tough customer in the quarter-final of the qualifying tournament.

Given my interest in the management aspects of the series more than the baseball side of things, it's perhaps inevitable that this instalment didn't catch my interest quite as much as previous episodes, although of course the entire endeavour would be pointless if we didn't spend time seeing what becomes of the baseball team under Minami's management.  Where things do get hugely interesting and less predictable is with regard to the relationship between Minami and Yuki, which was heavy with prescience and importance above and beyond Minami's management speak (which was interestingly portrayed as both "management point of the day" but also not as a particularly positive response to what Yuki was trying to put to her friend) - something is clearly amiss here even if you look beyond Minami perhaps treating her "work" too seriously on that occasion, and I get the feeling it will feature heavily at some point over the coming episodes as we head into the closing stages of the series.

Moshidora - Episode 6

After a weekend break, we return to Moshidora's adventures in management, and although their last exhibition game ended in a thumping defeat morale is high amongst the team as they continue to work hard towards their goal.

Indeed, morale is only boosted by the sheer number of first year applicants to join the baseball team - over thirty in all, leaving other school clubs to pale in comparison to their might while the baseball club's current membership seem largely unfazed by the thought of additional competition.  However, with so many potential new team members, and with other jobs stacking up for the management team, Minami realises that it's time to give that management team a proper organisational structure by ensuring each of them has specific roles with an assurance that they don't encroach upon one another's decisions.

As for Minami herself, she finds her own role pertaining to human resources - an immediately tough task given all those new members knocking at the club's proverbial door.  Rather than taking them all on and ending up with an organisational nightmare, she instead opts to interview all the newcomers and pick and choose those that will fit into the team's goals, aims and style or play, whittling down those thirty-odd individuals down to just a dozen.  With that done and with practice still going well, it's time to choose a starting line-up as the summer approaches, leading to a team sheet that reveals an interesting (and not to mention surprising) choice of captain.

After a couple of days away from Moshidora, I actually felt somewhat refreshed and ready for more, just like a Monday morning after a weekend away from the office.  Well, okay, not at all like me on a Monday morning, but let's ignore that fact and pretend that my analogy still stands.  Anyhow, after paying almost no attention to Drucker's Management last episode, this instalment gives it plenty of thought, with the trials and tribulations of allowing an organisation to grow in size and employee numbers without losing sight of its core aims and goals, or indeed without allowing morale to drop within the existing core membership.  It's tougher than it sounds, and to be honest it's tougher than it's portrayed as being here (what, nobody in the team was unhappy about the squad selection?), but it still makes for an enjoyable viewing experience and somehow I like the series all the more for not placing Minami up-front and centre as the "genius" behind it all - she is but one cog in the wheel of her management team, and the baseball club as a whole beyond that, which makes things that little bit more satisfying to watch.

Moshidora - Episode 5

Moshidora reaches its half-way stage as the high school baseball team at its centre embarks upon their brave new journey of trying to innovate in the world of baseball at this level via their "no-bunt, no-ball" strategy.  Uh-oh, is this the point where my complete lack of baseball knowledge starts to give me a headache?

Certainly, it takes a while for the show to really explain this strategy in its entirety, although effectively it concerns the pitcher focusing only on delivering strikes, while the fielders are expected to work harder and stand closer to the base to deal with the inevitable hits that are going to come from such a strategy.  With a college side featuring several national-level players as their first opponent of this strategy, it's going to be a tough test, while Yuki is undergoing a stressful experience of her own as she goes into surgery that same day.

With this major experiment in place, needless to say the match itself is the main focus of this episode (with Drucker's Management taking a back seat), and perhaps equally inevitably this new strategy initially seems to be a disaster with our team getting the proverbial pants thrashed off them by their opponents.  However, as the coach tells his players before the game, he doesn't expect instant results and that he should be the only one to blame if things don't work out, and with a determination to stick to their plan this new strategy eventually bears fruit - it might be too little too late to win the game by a long shot, but it proves that the team are making progress and that there is still hope for their new tactics.

After all of the management-centric discussions of this week's instalments of Moshidora so far, it was actually a nice change of pace to focus on an actual game for once, and I'm always grateful to sports anime that doesn't certainly turn a losing team into serial winners instantly after one quick change or alteration - these things are much more believable when any such changes take time.  Although I did feel a little thrown under the bus by how slowly the series explained its new strategy I managed to make it through somehow (and let's face it, I do live in a country where baseball effectively doesn't exist, so I'm not exactly the target market here), and my interest remains piqued as to where this series is going to head next week in the dual names of baseball and business management.

Moshidora - Episode 4

With a new training regime implemented, things are looking up for Moshidora's central baseball team... yet they still aren't consistently getting good results, and their latest match suggests they're still some way off the kind of quality required to win the nationals.  So, what next for this Drucker-inspired side?

The next suggestion to catch Minami's eye is that of "innovation"; to (quite literally in the sense of baseball) to something game-changing in the hope of getting a step up on the competition.  While the end-game of this is obviously rather grandiose, we do see innovation coming in a more subtle form in this episode courtesy of Nikai.  Despite not being the best player on the team in practical terms (indeed, he can't even break into the first team) he clearly has an eye for the technical aspects of the game together with a fair bit of business acumen himself - thus, after some self-searching he decides to hang up his boots as a player and join the team's management.  I can't help but feel that the team has entirely too many management-level individuals now, but oh well...

As a result of this change, the team finds ways to interact with other relevant clubs within their school in the hope of gaining an all-important edge by the specialist training that other clubs can provide - thus, they assist the home economics club in the hope of improving their diet (although we only see them eating cake, worryingly) and hold sessions with the track and judo clubs to improve their speed, strength and so on.  All of these moves are pretty innovative in their own right, and certainly good ideas, but Minami and company aren't done yet, as they have even bigger fishes of on-field innovation to fry...

I know you're probably going to get bored of hearing me say this every day (talk about intensive 'blogging!), but I'm continuing to enjoy Moshidora as a quietly entertaining and mildly thought-provoking affair.  It might not be the most intensive management training you can imagine, but it does throw some important concepts out there without either over-complicating matters or being too preachy, so as a digestible slice of something to ponder every day it continues to work wonders.

Moshidora - Episode 3

Despite seeming borderline disastrous and a sign of an impending implosion, the big row at the end of Moshidora's second episode has in fact galvanised the team thanks to that airing of all of its proverbial dirty laundry.

Thus, what we see as this third instalment begins is a baseball side full of motivation and willingness to trail and improve... until exam time rolls around and practice stops.  Ten days later, a very different set of players return to practice, with their motivation shot to pieces and the hard-working atmosphere that went before replaced with one of relaxation and apathy; indeed, some of its number are barely even turning up at all while others pay more attention to other classes.

So, how to fix this malaise?  Eventually, Minami realises that the problem is that (in Drucker's terms) the team has lost its "consumers" by failing to provide for their needs and requirements - in short, something needs to be done to make practice sessions feel "fresh" and more interesting once again.  For this task, Minami recruits Ayano to siphon ideas from the team coach (as these two individuals understand one another better), and the result is a slew of concepts surrounding the idea of splitting the team into three sections and effectively having them compete against another as well as them themselves.  The result is a reinvigorated interest in practice... at least, it is for all but Yunosuke, whose previous failures for the team still haunt him until some serious persuasion from Minami.

All in all, this was another enjoyable episode of Moshidora - its core concepts are certainly important material for any business (where keeping people from going stale is far, far tougher than it is running a sports team), and the idea of making good use even of failure is something that gets forgotten about and passed over way too over in my experience where people are too busy to sit down and ask exactly why something didn't go to plan.  In a similar vein, trying to remove the fear of failure to enable a person to perform better and live up to their potential can be very difficult indeed at times, especially when the stakes are perceived as high for whatever reason.

Thinking about it, I rather wish the average business was as easy to turn around as Moshidora's baseball team; we'd probably all be wealthy people if so.  Regardless, this series is still feeding my mind and making me think about things I probably wouldn't otherwise, which is enough alone to make watching the show feel like a positive experience.

Moshidora - Episode 2

A baseball team managed by a girl who doesn't like baseball any more doesn't seem like the best of starts for any outfit, but things are about to reveal themselves as being a whole lot more complicated as we hit episode two of Moshidora.

First things first, I should probably mention that nothing more has been said about Minami's dislike of baseball in this episode, which I find a bit odd, but oh well... with the decision that the high school team needs some marketing work, Minami teams up with bed-ridden Yuki to interview the entire squad and staff and find out their feelings for the team, from what they hope to get out of being part of the team through to any dislikes they have.  This arguably doesn't get off to the best of starts, with quiet girl Ayano reduced to tears as we learn that she only joined the team in the hope of making friends, and as the interviews progress we build up a picture of a team with myriad problems - some individuals full of self doubt, others with a waning interest, and topping the bill a complete breakdown in the relationship with the team's coach and their star pitcher Asano.

The issue between said coach and Asano is an instantly recognisable one - here we have two guys who are, to all intents and purposes, speaking different languages, with the coach living in a world based around logic and statistics while Asano plays and makes judgements with his heart over his head.  Courtesy of Drucker's management, Minami realises that she needs to act as the interpreter between these two sides, and following their first game of the season things only get worse as other players turn on Asano without understanding what his real issue is.  This disintegration of further relationships within the team finally persuades the coach to speak up and back Asano, but it is too little too late for the team?

In terms of the management aspect of this episode, it was certainly fare that I'm more than familiar with - working in a technical position means having to translate my own thoughts from the cold, hard logic of that kind of role into something more easily comprehended by higher level management and customers (and more broadly, to understand that different people think in very different ways that you can break down into three or four groups and pick up on by the way someone behaves) - something which isn't always as easy to judge as it sounds.  It's a shame really that having posited this need to "interpret", this episode left Minami unable to do anything but look on - perhaps it's too early for me to expert her to come out and take charge but it seemed to almost undo the educational moral of the story by seeing it relegated to a back seat role.  Still, it made for an episode of Moshidora that was fascinating enough to watch - it might not be as exciting and nerve-wrenching as Giant Killing, but I'm still interested in what it has to say for itself through the remainder of the series.

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?