Moshidora In Review [5.5/10]

So, I heard that things picked up in the final two episodes of this, which led to me picking it up again, as it just finished airing. Over the past two days, I've struggled through the episodes to get to the final two. Things were not unexpected, but it was more to my liking than the beginning.

Obligatory pic; it comes to mind whenever I think of baseball now.

Before I start this review, I'd like to point out some initial thoughts about this anime. I liked the idea of introducing management ideas in other contexts; what I don't like is baseball. I did not have very high hopes after watching the first episode, but things turned out better than expected. The linking of business terms was very loosely based in some cases and seemed almost forced. They did do some of them well, which is okay. So, anyway, on to the actual review:

Story
The majority of the story focused on the team trying to reach Nationals against all the perils that they had to face. If you're talking about the basic story, it wasn't too bad. It was pretty much a very simple and clean story, with a twist at the climax. It was so simple and straightforward that you can rate it high in either direction. The twist felt like forced drama, if anything. There's really nothing spectacular to say about this.
~6.5/10

Anyone else think those were condoms as gifts?

Immersion
I think the flow of the story was rather slow, especially at the start. Things picked up as the episodes rolled by, especially with the move into the summer tournament. The setting was pretty bland as well. It seemed very slice-of-life; go figure. Nothing stood out too much; it was a simple girl leading a baseball team with management techniques. It was interesting to see it all being connected, but I guess it's really nothing new to me since I understand all these core principles. I think it would be more boring to those that didn't understand,  or those that have no interest in these things.
~6/10

Animation
This felt pretty low quality. Many of the backgrounds didn't change and the characters didn't move much. Things felt pretty stale with such little movement in an anime. The drawings themselves were decent; it was more the actual animation. It felt very low budget to have so little movement. The actual "fast paced" baseball game had more movement but riddled with flashbacks and repeat scenes then new animation. At least the frame rate seemed high when taking screencaps.
~5/10

Characters
I guess, in a 10ep anime, you can't take time to give every character some development. The problem is that only three characters grew up a bit in this anime. All of these got a focus of roughly 10min, where they learned pretty quickly. The development is slim to none, with pretty simple characters. Many different routes could have been taken to improve these characters, but I think that there just wasn't enough effort or time that had been put in to give each a chance to shine.
~3/10

Personal Satisfaction
I think the major focus of this anime was plot, but it moved pretty slow at times. I think they tried to cram the entire book into a 10ep anime. There just wasn't enough time to expand on many things that would have explained things better. Things seemed to happen very suddenly. The only real joy I got was seeing them relate management terms to teaching baseball. This, like most business terms, can be related to real life; it is heavily based on common sense, which isn't very common.

~5/10

Spoiler:

I guess one big thing was the twist. It was portrayed at the end of the anime that they were friends since birth. (They're holding hands as babies, so... lulz) Yet, she doesn't know that she was in such critical condition, which was a bit iffy. She goes on such an emo trip for 10min, which felt pretty WTF? On this note, did anyone else notice how it didn't look like she ran very far and yet the taxi still took until 7th inning before getting to the baseball stadium? That taxi either took its time or she was running for 2 hours before catching up. The second huge issue I had was the huge turn in direction. It went from using management tactics (to improve their game) to your typical sports anime where everything happens in the last second, just perfectly so it builds suspense. Both things I disliked greatly.

On the other hand, I liked how they did try to take out the fail shortstop for failing so often. Realistically, he wouldn't have even made the cut, but I guess the other choices were even worse? At least they explained why such a failure was on the field. It also won major points with me when Minami proclaimed that getting to the Nationals is what mattered. Anyone telling you the journey is important is just feeding you loser talk. It's just a consolation so you don't feel as bad; you need to know your goal and saying the journey matters is for those that failed. It's like they say, "Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want." By the way, she looked horrible at the end with the hat and missing ponytail.

Overall
It was nothing spectacular, but at least better than the first impression I got. It felt sub-par with nothing too outstanding about it. It was almost like this was trying to tell you to buy the book rather than standing on its own feet. Many of the concepts could have been better explained, or at least stood out more. It left a pretty ambiguous impression for me. It's not something I can recommend or reject; I'm just pretty indifferent about it.

Final Score: 5.5/10

~Pearz