So, some of you may know I’m watching Cinderella Nine this season, and with that comes an internal battle I haven’t had in quite some time. It’s a battle between what I know and what I’ve done against watching a show for the story and not digging too far into the plot so I can simply enjoy the show.
As it turns out, I’m having a difficult time with Cinderella Nine.
Now, if you don’t know what Cinderella Nine is maybe this will help: A girl played baseball growing up (not softball), and has decided that she’s going to start her own female-only baseball club at her new school. Apparently female baseball clubs have been popping up in Japan recently (according to the show, let’s just go with their information for the show’s sake) and our main character wants to field a team of her own!
Well, why do I have a problem with this? For starters I played baseball from the time I can remember being able to run (so like two years old) until I was fourteen. That’s a lot of baseball to be honest. It’s practically all I did. I played catch with my brother and parents and some friends when the weather was nice, I did little two-versus-two games in my backyard, I played pick-up games with groups of people on actual baseball fields, and was part of the Little League association playing every spring into the summer…every single year until high school where I played on my high school team for one year.
The nuances of baseball are lost on this show, and that bothers me because of what I stated above. Their hands are wrong when holding a bat (making contact with the ball with how they showed some characters holding a bat could break their wrists if the reverberation of the bat and ball and how they swung the bat concluded); they’re throwing the bat when they leave the batter’s box (which you can’t do in Little League or high school games); the characters are so timid they’re cowering from the ball when playing catch–I’ve never seen that in my life, even with people who didn’t actually play baseball. They have gloves, so stick the glove out and catch it? (I think this is my own problem, sorry…)
Also, (for the love of god) baseball teams need more than nine people to actually work. The main character is so pumped about having nine people because they can finally field a team, but UGH…there better be more than nine in the main cast. Sure, there are nine positions on a baseball field, but what happens if a player is injured? they’re just supposed to keep playing? Okay, I sort of lied, and technically you can play a baseball game with eight players–the infield and two outfield players–but it’s much harder to do… I think they should at least have a cast of twelve characters to fill out each position and have subs if they need them, but early stages of anime shows… (go here for a laugh about baseball positions! Abbott & Costello are amazing!)
Anyway, what I am sort of finding enjoyable about this show is the fact that for some reason I can disassociate myself from my baseball roots and think of it as anime. While I don’t usually like doing that with shows and enjoy being totally immersed in a world with rounded characters, a decent plot, some great animation and artwork, I think I’m going to have to in order to enjoy this show even a little bit. If I disassociate myself I can take a look at the characters, try to see where the plot may be going, and enjoy it for what it is even if it ends up being a horrible show (I’m on episode 4 and nothing has really happened…)
When all is said and done I’ll continue watching Cinderella Nine because baseball, and probably nothing more, even though I’m finding myself critiquing the little things and sighing about certain aspects because they’re either correct and not fleshed out enough, or wrong and should be changed. However, like I said earlier, it’s anime.
Thanks for reading my rant!
Alexie 🙂
Alex's Arena 