One Outs 12 ーワンナウツ

 

 
Welcomed escape from the dominating moe trend in anime though it may be, my enthusiasm for One Outs is beginning to wane. I’m actually really surprised by my disaffected response to this episode because only very recently I was hailing One Outs as having the potential to overthrow Akagi as the pinnacle of the mind-game gambling genre. Because this episode didn’t introduce anything that was new or particularly exciting it suffered from a mild case of over-familiarity. Despite the director’s talent for crafting tension, which made his previous two shows so successful, the episode ultimately fell flat because it followed an overly structured, routine narrative. I think we’ve reached the endpoint now, where repetitive explanations of Toua’s strategies have lost their impact. Without the same life-and-death risk-factor involved in Akagi and Kaiji to fall back on, One Outs could see its audience retreat from the edge of their seats. And if One Outs cannot keep its viewers caught in a flow of suspense then they may be forced to face the fact that One Outs does not have a lot else going for it – no intriguing plot, dramatic pull, or deep characterisation. The series is due for a shake-up or a change of pace. Hopefully, the master-strategist coach will put in an impressive counter-attack next episode and give it a bit more momentum.

Ｅｔ　Ｃｅｔｅｒａ　。。。

1. “Johnson can’t be stopped this time!”
2. Toua noticed something
3. The play goes down and Johnson is miraculously defeated
4. Other shocked players/coaches iterate and marvel Toua’s strategy and thought-processes

This 4-step sequence of events was repeated for the episode’s duration, each time further hammering home the predictability of the show. The tagline of the series is “Nobody wins but I!”, which is a clear indication of who’s likely to triumph every time Toua’s ‘in a pinch’. So the fact that he always wins should really be sidelined by a focus on the ramifications of his success (ie. Further enraging the owner) , or any genuinely clever tactics he employs. But there wasn’t much of either this episode, resulting in something that was only mildly entertaining at best. I think the constant setting is beginning to take its toll as well. The series can’t really help being set in a baseball stadium, but by now every scene is beginning to look much the same. It’s not really something that’s in your-face annoying but I think it could ultimately make the series feel a bit tedious. Hopefully the storyboarding will be able to spice things up and stave off tedium.

◆　It was good to see some commentators actually doing their job for a change and unloading their share of explanations of Toua’s techniques. I think I’ve seen his own team go through the phases of “what is Toua doing?” to “Wow, Toua did that!” far too many times now.

◆　Something was a bit off about the production quality this week, which is certainly very unusual for this series. There weren’t any glaring problems, other than reuse of soem pieces of animation (namely, Toua’s pitching), but overally it just didn’t seem to be drawn quite as well as usual.