Big Wind-Up/Ookiku Furikabutte (anime)
July 11th, 2010 by Lianne
PG-13 as far as I can tell; official FUNimation site
I love sports manga and anime. I haven’t liked actual sports in many years, because it’s only so many times you can see sports nuts revel in the fact that their geekery is the only socially accepted kind and be super loud/obnoxious in public spaces before you start to develop a distaste for sports culture. Professional players who cheat on their wives and/or push said wives down the stairs don’t help, and neither do the back-door dealings of stadium-making that make or crush cities (*cough*Hartford*cough*) or the cash-cow industries that teach little girls and boys that they have to spend months of allowance money to buy, say, a cap that has a team name on it in order to properly worship the sports idols for being good at, say, throwing a ball.
But personal issues aside! I love sports manga/anime because they aren’t about those things. They’re about teamwork and training and the love of competition. They remind me of intramural games in middle school, where I could go to the field/court/wherever with a bat/racket/nothing and just run around for a few hours with friends. It’s like how they make kids high-five the opposite team after a match and say “good game,” a practice that seemed lame when I was a tyke but now makes me cry because dammit, that’s so beautiful.
The Big Wind-Up is everything amazing about sports manga and then some. It’s more obvious than usual that this sports tale is a coming-of-age story for its lead, a dishrag of a teenage pitcher with such severe social anxiety disorder that it’s hard not to pity him. The Big Wind-Up lovingly buries itself in all the comfort of teamwork while still acknowledging that getting along as a group takes a hell of a lot of work. It shows how relationships during your teenage years can make or break you while you try to grow up, and that sometimes, you need to push aside embarrassment and just hug someone who really needs it – because a well-placed hug can change everything.*
And since I can’t seem to stop making this review personal, I’m going to give credit where it’s due – this series is a seinen that has a big-breasted female who is really awesome, and not in a gimmicky way at all, and also has a male lead with a bevy of traditional “feminized” manga traits but no desperate machismo backpedaling. See? I don’t hate all seinen and they don’t all hate me. Also? This series won the freaking Tezuka Award.
Initial impression: FUNimation has streamed the first four episodes of this anime for free. I’m now doing the “I need it now” dance (not unlike the “I have to pee” dance) until my box sets arrive in the mail. I should’ve listened to the recommendations of everyone I know and watched this a long, long time ago. And why hasn’t anyone licensed the manga yet? (Lianne)
*Note: I’m biased, because hugging manga has always been my favorite genre.
I’m sure some of the non-standard seinen stuff is thanks to the author of the manga being a woman (not that this always prevents misogyny in other female-authored series, but still…). She’s hilarious, too. I heard an interview with her on a blog somewhere, and she talks a mile a minute and clearly loves what she does. It was pretty great.
I hope that Funi eventually changes its mind and releases season 2. It’s a half-season, but contains some extra great character development, and still leaves you wanting more.