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MANGA REVIEW: One Outs – Baseball and gambling mix well

 
One_Outs_volume_1_cover
One_Outs_volume_1_cover
One_Outs_volume_1_cover

 
Overview
 

Publisher:
 
FG RATING
 
 
 
 
 
3.5/ 5


User Rating
1 total rating

 

Raves


Great story; arcs are concise and filled with psychological twists; Tokuchi is a badass

Rants


Poor character development


To sum it all up..

Sports seinen manga, or those that have been adapted into an anime series like Major or Kuroko no Basket, [mostly] ridicules readers in advertently giving the central athletes and the team false powers fueled by friendship, heart, and not giving up. These things, in the eyes of Tokuchi Toua, are senseless – his devilish insights […]

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Posted January 28, 2015 by

 
FULL REVIEW
 
 

One_Outs_volume_1_cover

Sports seinen manga, or those that have been adapted into an anime series like Major or Kuroko no Basket, [mostly] ridicules readers in advertently giving the central athletes and the team false powers fueled by friendship, heart, and not giving up. These things, in the eyes of Tokuchi Toua, are senseless – his devilish insights and god-like gambling skills are all what he needs to manipulate the game of pro baseball, with a side dish of snide proverbs and politicking on the side.

Welcome to the dark world of One Outsan underground, winner-takes-all version of baseball, requiring only a pitcher and batter to participate in. The rules are simple: the batter wins if the bat makes actual contact with the pitch. The pitcher wins if he strikes out the batter accordingly. Tokuchi Toua held the most wins with an impressive 499 strikeout run, until his record was unconvincingly shattered by Lycaons’ batting genius, Hiromichi Kojima.

The whole story then shifts to Tokuchi’s performance-based pay system conventionally named as the One Outs Contract. To spoil it a bit further, Lycaons’ owner and president, Tsuneo Saikawa, is more interested in profiting from the team’s misfortunes rather than building a batter capable of winning the championship. Saikawa ‘co-authored’ the contract in the hopes of preventing Tokuchi from getting his yearly annual salary. The fun begins after that.

Winning with sense
Tokuchi Toua is different from Major’s baseball hero, Goro Shigeno. Unlike Shigeno’s blazing fast pitches, Tokuchi’s main weapons are his impressive senses and rapid adaptation to the opponent’s strategy, putting the Lycaons’ team owner at a hilarious disadvantage. Although there are still dashes of unrealism throughout the season, the traps set by Tokuchi are elaborate, skillful, and fun enough to understand, despite the mechanisms on how they were formed.

The Bugaboos, a baseball team that relies on smart tactics, particularly in stealing bases, were my favorite victim of Tokuchi’s cunning and razor-sharp psychology. You have to immerse yourself in the strategic output of Tokuchi and think, for a few minutes, if those tricks can actually be employed in a real game. One Outs offers more than hitting pitches and defending loaded bases.

Beyond baseball
A 25-episode anime adaptation of One Outs was released in 2009, but it will only show you a short glimpse of Tokuchi’s unbridled genius. Later chapters become riskier for Tokuchi, which only heightens the tension between him, Saikawa, and his chess pieces. Translation: his teammates and coaching staff.

What’s special with One Outs is its sudden pause from baseball, turning Tokuchi into the team’s owner. Scarily, Tokuchi already knew from the beginning that he had to become owner and fulfill his bet to the man that broke his One Outs record. Later chapters would repackage Tokuchi as an even more ruthless anti-hero with polished intel gathering and franchise ownership skills.

One Outs moves itself away from a pack of a few baseball seinen mangas with a few notable home runs. Though the manga had already ended in 2006, this is one series that actually takes baseball maturely through the eyes of a vicious gambler.

An instant classic the first time the opening pitch was thrown!


Derek Vicente

 
Derek has been with Flipgeeks for almost three years. His first video game was Sonic the Hedgehog for the Sega Saturn and after blowing their television set after playing too much Rambo, he has set on a journey to play some of the best (and worst) role-playing games ever spawned. He recently completed Wild Arms 2 without any cheat codes.


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