Moshidora (Moshi Koko Yakyu no Joshi Management o Yondora) (!) traces what happens when Minami Kawishima steps in for her sick friend Yuki as manager of a high-school baseball team. Not knowing anything about management, she picks up Peter Drucker’s classic management opus Management and goes about applying its principles to high-school baseball.
Moshidora proceeds in a mostly light-hearted way with tinges of sorrow, but unfortunately devoid of much greater resonance. The principles themselves strike gold, but these aren’t followed through as much as they should be. As a result, Moshidora comes across heavy-handed in the beginning, and not as convincing as it could be, by the end. Still, it’s watchable and not preachy.
The animation style is as detailed as say, To Heart: Remember My Memories, but with a lot less actual animation. Zoom shots and pan shots are relied upon, sometimes to distraction. The colors are bright and not muted or otherwise skewed for effect; the voice acting is decent, and the opening theme song grows on you. A few times in the series the music is better than average, but usually it’s just there.
No sexual innuendo shows up, despite the easily-drawn connotations from the sports world. There are a few profanities scattered across ten episodes; some cultural Shintoism references pop up, but on the plus side, infrequent examples of silent prayer do too. As you might expect, no gore.
Episodes 1-3 are ok, and the series slowly improves each episode after that, with highlights in episodes 5, 8, and 9. The series is only 10 episodes long, which is a departure from the norm.
On the whole, Moshidora feels like a wistful summer’s dream — largely warm, positive, seeded with a slow growing-up feel, and occasionally tinctured with sorrow and setbacks. It’s not as emotional as it could (and should) have been. Both the animation quality and the overly-general writing style contribute to this, however, it’s not a disaster. It’s just that it’s ok-to-good when it could have been fantastic.
For your downloading pleasure:
Oduza, Okasa 