Gurazeni: Money Pitch

Guranazi is a story about this Megane-Hitler who is a professional baseball player. Much like every living person in our society, he is also the victim of capitalism. According to his contract, he gets payed based to his performance rather than based to his name and team ownership. He really likes shekels so this obviously sucks. Fortunately for him, he has a plan: to be the best payed pitcher in the world. To achieve this, he simply has to be the best at it (at pitching). Hence the English name of this show: Money Pitch. Good for him, I guess. Apparently, the initial target audience consistsof working-class citizens who are interested in slice of life comedy centering around sports, but not really sports -- rather salary and statistics related to sports. Basically, the more time you spend on creating meaningless Excel sheets, the more likely you are able to enjoy this show. There really isn't much else to say about the story, so let's not. The characters are great tho. Natsunosuke Bonda, the main character, is really special. His only merit is how not a single person on this website has added him to their favorite characters list. His favorite past time is studying statistic centering around other players. He has memorized everything about every player except their salary. Random characters ask him to guess how much some player earns and he guesses with almost 100% accuracy how much their income is. Amazing skills, bro. The other main character was not even introduced before the series ended. Talk about change of plans. The art and sounds are based Deen. Not exactly as gloriously animated as the original F/sn nor as cute as Ito Junji anime, but overall passable production. Weird choices have still been made. For one, they constantly change between CGI and hand-drawn on the fly when it comes to the actual pitching scenes. Looks pretty bad and messy. Overall this show is not especially good nor bad. It suffers from niche target audience which is the main reason for its low mean score. This series will not appeal to many. Most viewers will find it boring. Even those who became fans of it will be disappointed by how short the series end up being. One cour length despite the source material having content for 50-70 episodes. Personally I found this approach to be rather interesting and also truthful, considering how much role money has in the business. Guranazi offers variety to the sports genre and I can appreciate what it did to some extent, but that's all there is to say about it.

Gurazeni is an anime about professional baseball in Japan, and as simple as they may be, that is really the best description of the show you'll get in a single sentence. This isn't a sports anime with over-the-top shounen tropes or hype scenes, but instead this is an anime that takes a more realistic approach to sports and gives viewers a look at what goes on behind-the-scenes of Japan's largest professional sports competition, baseball, and I think this is a pretty unique and fresh take on the genre. The Story - 7 Gurazeni is a fairly episodic anime. What happened in the last episode most likely won't getmuch mention in the current episode, like how most episodic shows are. Each self-contained episode brings in a new aspect of professional baseball to expose to the viewer which keeps the series from getting stale. Each episode also brings in new characters, which I will go into more details in a bit. Something I found cool about Gurazeni is that the story isn't focused on a baseball prodigy at all, but instead a near-bottom ranked professional player just trying to get by. The Art/Animation - 5 There isn't too much to say about this show visually. The art is nothing amazing but it's not like it's bad by any means. Same goes for the animation, it gets the job done and for the most part it. The only bad thing I can think of is the CG pitching animation that they use a few times throughout the show, which feels out of place as a lot of CG animation does in a 2D show, but admittedly it could be a lot worse. Sound - 5 Gurazeni's sound is for the most part mediocre but I would give it credit for it's upbeat rap OP which I find pretty catchy. The rest of the soundtrack however is very forgettable. Character - 6 Like I mentioned before, each episode brings in new characters. There are hardly any characters that get reused for episodes, with the exception of course being the main character. Most of the weekly characters aren't particularly interesting by themselves, but become interesting when they interact with Bonda, the MC. The main character doesn't have any noble or honorable goals like you would expect, but instead just wishes to pitch better in order to get a higher contract, and make more money, hence the title. Enjoyment - 7 Gurazeni has an odd pulling factor. I can realize that there is nothing overly great about this show and yet it for some reason became one of the shows I looked forward to the most each week. I wanted to see Bonda get more money. I wanted to see what goes on in a bottom-ranked pro player's daily life. If I knew this was what I was getting myself into beforehand I probably would've turned away from this show to save myself from boredom, but somehow Gurazeni managed to keep me intrigued. Overall - 7 If you are looking for a realistic sports anime, or just something to relax and watch every now and then, then I would definitely recommend for you to give Gurazeni a try.

Gurazeni is a baseball anime with a few things that set it apart from the more regular ones that you may be accustomed to seeing. The main focus isn't so much on the playing of the sport but rather it's on the things you may see around it. This would entail the livelihood of the baseball players(ex-players and current),the staff, media etc. Most importantly however is the money that would be involved within all of those things which is where the show gets it's name from. With Gurazeni being a seinen series, it will bring with it a different vibe as opposed to the shounenones that may be more recognizable. Related to this point, Bonda, the main character of the show is a relief pitcher which is a stark contrast to the ace pitcher protagonists that are the norm. I had expectations of good things going into the first episode but those were shattered pretty quickly as the episode had a really rough start. The main causes of this is the CGI which felt jarring and also the story which felt like it was weak. After a while the CGI becomes tolerable as it doesn't happen often and you learn that the story of the show is an episodic one and after about three or four episodes it starts to become enjoyable, so much so that in terms of enjoyment it ranks highly among the shows I've seen in the season at the point in time this review was written. Apart from the CGI, the art of Gurazeni is average at best which would make it the worse component of the anime unfortunately. The soundtrack itself wasn't really memorable however the show does have very good, catchy tracks for it's Opening and Ending songs. The characters are a selling point for Gurazeni as they would need to be in slice of life type of show like this one. The aforementioned Bonda, may take a while to warm up to but you eventually grow to like his character as the stories unfold. As the show is episodic, each of the mini stories within the show are tied to newly introduced characters and for the most part they are enjoyable as well and some will even appear again from time to time. Overall I think Gurazeni is a nice niche show but it's a difficult show to recommend because of some of the issues it has. If maybe you're looking for a change of pace from the regular baseball anime then Gurazeni is one that you can consider giving a try.

An episodic sports anime with frankly C-grade animation shouldn't have gotten a second look from me, but I actually found myself enjoying it well enough as a once a week diversion. STORY There is no glory in being a middle relief pitcher in professional baseball. These guys are the sports equivalent of a plumber, necessary but nobody would call it glamorous work. They're typically called into bail out starting pitchers when the situation starts going south, deal with one specific batter, or simply eat up innings in lopsided games. Main character Bonda Natsunoske is a middle reliever for the Tokyo Spiders (a thinly disguised version of thereal life Tokyo Swallows) and this series is episodes in his life as he tries to claw his way up from an expendable middle reliever making $180,000 a year to a much more glamorous (and well-paying) job in the starting rotation. There isn't much continuity, few other characters stick around for more than one episode and there aren't many plot threads that affect things over the long haul. But the more self-contained nature of each episode makes it easier to put down and pick back up again. ART & SOUND There's no delicate way to put this: the animation just scrapes its way over the passing bar in most shots and Gurazeni loves to switch to a CGI model that nobody would confuse for the original 2D animation every time Bonda is pitching. There just isn't anything remarkable in this department at the best of times. Except perhaps for the character designs, which go outside tropey looks to give the cast some identity. Sound is also unmemorable too. CHARACTER As the only character who gets significant screentime across the entire series, Bonda is clearly the glue that holds everything together. And he's not a bad character: he's keenly aware of the incredibly tenuous nature of the job of a professional athlete and keenly tries to both save his money and bump up his stats so he can earn more next season. His keen awareness of where his salary ranks in comparison to other players reinforces this trait- it's a running gag that he can bulldoze batters who make less than him but tends to become intimidated when pitching to players who make more. It makes him relatable since when you strip away the baseball elements he's basically a 20-something guy trying to turn his (relatively) low paying job into a more permanent gig. Other cast members usually get one episode in the spotlight then may make one or two cameos in the rest, so there isn't much to talk about beyond their one gimmick. ENJOYMENT I enjoyed this as a weekly diversion, but I don't see this as a very binge-able show or the kind of series where you get hooked and just HAVE to keep up. OVERALL It's basic, and just OK at best. But for some reason I didn't get bored or start to hate it and actually want to see the upcoming season.