Forum - View topicAce of Diamond (TV).
|
Goto page Previous |
| Author | Message | ||
|---|---|---|---|
Edjwald
 Posts: 3513 |
|
||
|
@Gina - your mastery of images is impressive. If I tried half that, I'd just wind up with a lot of code trailing across the post.
|
|||
|
|||
|
Edjwald
Posts: 3513 |
|
||
|
Seido injuries right at the clutch. Classic. (Practicing fetal position and thumb sucking to prepare for the next three episodes).
Hmmmn....allow a player to risk injuring himself in a way that might be a permanent pain in the...forearm...for the rest of his life or make him sit out the finals and risk thinking about that no matter what happens for the rest of his life. Is this really a tough decision? Sure, there are never any guarantees about injuries in a sport, but when it comes to informed risks, I'd think that as the adult in the room it would be the coach's job to keep the kid whose prefrontal cortex hasn't fully formed from #$%@ing his arm up long term because of a short-term high school game where there are no guarantees of any sort - no guarantees he would or wouldn't #$@! up his arm. No guarantees the injury wouldn't be more or less serious if he did. No guarantees they'd win or lose if he didn't play anyhow. No guarantees he wouldn't throw a pitch that got smashed out of the park because his injury did flare up. Save all that springtime of my youth bull@#$+ for Japanese anime. Oh wait...this is a Japanese anime... |
|||
|
|||
Gina Szanboti
 Posts: 12734 |
|
||
|
Ep 5
Yeah, this team is plagued by injuries every summer. I don't think it's unrealistic for Nori's dilemma to at least be considered. High school baseball is huge in Japan, perhaps more so than the pros. I mean, I don't think any other country has "baseball schools" like Seido and Inashiro, do they? And they wreck a lot of promising athletes in the process. Pitch count? Who cares? (yes, they do give lip service to that in AoD but not so much irl. Otherwise you'd never see a game like that Japanese rubber ball game that lasted 50 innings over 4 days, with 709 and 689 pitches thrown by the two pitchers who pitched the whole game (ave ~175 per day). I think the US record for HS ball is ~ 25 innings) Personally, I think you made the best argument against - if he's not in top form he could cost them the win. Again. Ooh, Aso got a gf! I like Aso, cranky as he is. Seki, I can't stand. Man, that scene between Kousei and Manaka was rough, art-wise. And why are they showing us an extended shot of the freakin' sky while they discuss his pitch?? ::facepalm:: Ok, the sky was prettier than the artwork of the characters. I got a kick out of Okumura imagining Sawamura growing up in the "mountain wilds." And I always like it when Miyuki wears his shepherd's hat to wrangle his pitchers. There was a lot of good character stuff like that in this episode. It feels like the first four episodes were mainly concerned with table-setting and reminding viewers who all the main characters are. Hopefully now they can get on with the stuff that makes the series good in spite of its flaws. When Kousei was talking to his team, I did laugh at how they animated the instant head-turns. Finally a good excuse to dispense with key frames. 
So did Tanba convert to Judaism after graduation? His hair looks like an extra-large yarmulke. He's better as a cueball. 
Oh darn, Ochiai got a new seiyuu (Susumu Akagi). I suppose it's early, but he seems to lack the wry cynicism or whatever it was that gave him a personality beyond antagonist that Tōru Ōkawa brought to the role. Btw, Ōkawa also played Roy Mustang, JoJo's narrator, and holy cow, Iason Mink from Ai no Kusabi (2012)  , which are all very different! I'll miss him in this role.
Anyway, the pitching session with the Coach was pretty decent all around. See, they can do it if they want to. No spectator shots this ep, but I don't remember this guy looking like the yakuza extended his smile. I'll have to go back and see, but not today. 
Edjwald, if you want to post images, just "quote" one of my posts and copy the html string, and replace the url with your pic's location. I prefer it over the Img tag, which often doesn't work for me, and Preview post is invaluable for resizing as needed. The width is the percentage of the whole line your pic will take up, not a percentage of the original image's width. |
|||
|
|||
|
Edjwald
Posts: 3513 |
|
||
|
Thanks Gina. I got a bit of a tutorial on adjusting the size of the images when Tony showed us how to make threads too, but I'm a technoramus. The big issue is that when I try to clip images that aren't from the ANN website, four times out of five they show up as strings of code. Hopefully that Img workaround you talked about will help.
|
|||
|
|||
|
Gina Szanboti
Posts: 12734 |
|
||
|
Ep 6
Very good episode. Pretty good looking too! They hid the lack of animation much better than they have been (I'm to the point I'm grateful they haven't put speed lines on the crowd shots). And where it was in motion it looked very nice. Even got a cool Dutch angle shot of Sawamura. Nice to see Eijun get to have a good start for once. But Amahisa had a good one too. Pretty rare to see Kuramochi get picked off. In fact I'm not sure we've ever seen that. Don't make Shirasu mad! You won't like him when he's mad. So yeah, I'm pretty much a happy camper this episode! I hope they keep it up. Except (you knew there'd be an except)... What's up with Sawamura drawn like he's wearing a diaper under his uniform? 
And Tanba's hilarious pencil neck? The interested guy in the teal hat is rendered better.  (click for larger image)
This crowd shot has a ton of unusual faces in it. I especially like the guy up top with the moustache, and the fellow in front of him in the legally distinct Flash t-shirt. Then there's the smug dork with his arms crossed and the salaryman who comes to a summer baseball game in a suit and tie. The man on the far left might be checking out the wall-eyed girl in pink, but it's kind of hard to tell. Anyway, I'm pleased that the new studio hasn't abandoned AoD's tradition of having spectators worth noticing instead of cut and paste designs scattered about with maybe some palette swaps.
 (click for larger image)
|
|||
|
|||
|
Gina Szanboti
Posts: 12734 |
|
||
|
Ep 7
Two good episodes in a row! And it looked pretty good too, with lots of nice character faces and expressions, if you like that sort of thing, and I do. It feels like maybe they're finally putting some effort into this now that the game is getting off the ground. Like they used a wipe I don't recall seeing in this franchise before, where they took a horizontal split screen of Miyuki and Sawamura and then slid Miyuki's half off the bottom to give the full shot to Sawamura. It's hardly a new transition technique, and they've always used a lot of vertical and diagonal splits and slides, but I'll give them credit for at least trying to mix up the visuals a bit. Great catch by Kuramochi. Just doin' his job, but I live for the little moments like that. I also like to see Kanemaru do well.
Miyuki's first at bat and his non-reaction to striking out seemed to really bother Kousei. I have a feeling that's going to be relevant in his next at bat, cause I think he's got something cooking behind that poker face. He barely even grunted at Eijun getting on his case. And Sawamura breaks into 140 kph territory. Makes me feel sorry for Miyuki trying to keep him focused. The silent body language here speaks volumes, though it's more eloquent in context. 
Furuya only got one cameo shot and Nori didn't get any screen time at all. This week's stand out spectator is this guy in his bucket hat. I don't know why, he just caught my eye. 
And there's all kinds of interesting faces in this crowd. I especially like the bearded dude and the girl in glasses, white hat and pink shirt hiding top center. The man with the necktie at top right is unusual looking as well. It has always amazed me how much creativity they put into their crowd shots, not to mention all the offbeat t-shirts all over the place (though I think the tees are a Terajima thing from the manga rather than the studio going wild).  (click for larger image)
|
|||
|
|||
|
Edjwald
Posts: 3513 |
|
||
|
I agree that Miyuki's got something cooking. I was wondering if he noticed some pitcher's equivalent of a poker tell or something...only sharing it with the big hitters so that it can pay off big before Ahasi catches on.
I'm also wondering if something has to go seriously wrong with the Eijun and Furuya duo so that the plotline with the backup backup pitcher will get some drama mileage. |
|||
|
|||
|
Gina Szanboti
Posts: 12734 |
|
||
|
Ep 8
Nice to catch up with Yakushi at the beginning. I always liked their third-year trio. Papa Todoroki knows just how to handle Miss Shima. I wonder what sort of therapy his friend is giving Raichi. Looks like Sanada showed up for Seido's game. I guess that's his therapy. This series has always done One Piece level recaps, but I don't recall them ever saving that (well except for the half minute flashback of Raichi's trauma) for after the OP. And the time they set aside for that wasn't even so much recap as just replaying three full minutes of the previous episode, right down to the misty freeze frame at the end. I actually checked to make sure I hadn't accidentally clicked on Ep 7 when I skipped over the OP. Yes, this is the face of a typical high schooler: 
Zono's error at first was damaging, but there was no excuse for Kuramochi to throw it that far off and low in the first place. I also have to wonder if Zono's foot injury played or will play a part in that (like he later overcompensates for his error or something like that). Good discussion of how the catcher's motion can frame how the ball looks to the umpire. Also Okumura's bursting into flames of jealousy was funny.
Happy to see Sawamura's fam at the game, but I barely recognize Wakana they way she's drawn here. I knew they'd make us wait for Miyuki's at bat. I wonder what monumentally important emotion Kousei got off his chest that they're saving for next episode. Nori and Furuya are still relegated to mere cameos, though Nori's clearly about to do something. Likewise I find it a little odd that Ichidai's coach gets way more screen time than Kataoka does, although to be fair, he's never really had much interiority and normally isn't very expressive outwardly on the sidelines. I didn't spot any really notable spectators this week, so instead I give you Kousei the Elastic Man! 
|
|||
|
|||
|
Edjwald
Posts: 3513 |
|
||
|
I also had an impulse to double check and see if I'd accidentally clicked on last week's episode, but I had a vague sense that the scene in question hadn't occurred at the beginning of the episode.
And I agree that it's no surprise that they ended with Miyuki at bat. One of the big questions is whether or not Miyuki's psychological mind games with Amahisa will bear fruit or not. That said, the episode did surprise me at several points. I wasn't expecting Sawamura to straight up strike out their batting ace, and while I was waiting for something to go wrong with both Sawamura and Furuya in order to further that back-up back-up pitcher plotline, the show had Sawamura get undermined by Seido errors instead, which I totally did not see coming. |
|||
|
|||
|
Gina Szanboti
Posts: 12734 |
|
||
|
One other thing that's been nagging at me all season is that, despite still using the superb OST from previous seasons, this studio doesn't seem to quite grasp how to use it to heighten the drama. Even when they do use it, you can barely hear it so that it loses its impact, if it registers at all. AoD's OST is one of the best things about the franchise, so it's sad to see it wasted like this. Or maybe it's just me.
|
|||
|
|||
|
Gina Szanboti
Posts: 12734 |
|
||
|
Ep 9
Ok, so that 3-6-1 double play was pretty sweet for Ichidai, or it would've been if not for the deceptive animation. In the last frame we were shown of it, that ball was long gone past Hoshida's glove. No way he caught it. Jeez, the entire top of the fifth inning was still frames with only camera movement. Nearly a full minute where the only animation was a couple seconds of uniform and lip flap. But then they give us nice artwork like this and I can't stay mad at them. 
Bottom of the fifth was no better, plus it included a weird shot of Tojo's hit where only the ball was moving over a still of the player going after it. This is Kagewani level animation. But then they finally used some great music to back it up, so I can't stay mad at them. I was surprised to see this reporter from early Act II S1 back on the job again. That's some fine continuity there, even if he has bleached his hair out a bit!  ....S1 >
Poor Kuramochi is just not having a day. I expect that to change for him as well as Miyuki. I love Sanada so much. Just seeing him onscreen makes me happy. He's my favorite after Miyuki. And have I mentioned how much I like Ichidan's catcher? Looks like Nori's still clearly about to do something... |
|||
|
|||
|
Edjwald
Posts: 3513 |
|
||
|
@Gina - I have to say, usually I pick up on music and it makes a big difference, but I hardly notice the music in this anime. Maybe it's because I'm so intent on whether the baseball's going to get smacked or not that I'm just not paying attention to the mood enhancing background stuff.
Before we got to the fourth inning, I was wondering if this one game was going to take us all the way to the end of the season. I don't know if "The Attack of the Killer Still Frames" was to condense the goings-ons enough for the season to reach a desired plot trajectory or to make a production budget, but either seems possible. Or both. I sometimes think Miyuki should be the series protagonist. I'm almost halfway rooting for Ichidan - it's why these sports anime shows are so cruel in a way...they're more likely to have respectable rivals than villains, and we get to see how hard the other team has worked and how high their hopes are so we get the schadenfreude effect no matter who wins. But I will say that the Ichidan coach and his thumbs ups and trigger fingers are getting on my nerves. If he doesn't give the team a middle finger when they screw up, I'm going to feel robbed.
|
|||
|
|||
|
Gina Szanboti
Posts: 12734 |
|
||
|
No one seems to know how many episodes this is getting, but they never seem to announce continuations until the last minute. It looks pretty clear to me that Ichidai will last up through Ep 12. I think it's obvious that Seido will pull this out because they have to face Mei and Inashiro. The entire series has been setting up for that with Seido wanting revenge for the previous third years' loss, being thwarted by Inashiro's loss to Ugumori, and most important, Miyuki needing to prove he wasn't wrong in rejecting Mei's offer and choosing Seido. That's been a running theme almost from the start. Seido losing now would be one helluva coitus interruptus. Fans would riot.
I not only agree with you, I think that Miyuki actually is the protagonist. Instead of Ace of Diamond, the series might just as well have been called How to Raise an Ace, because the story as a whole is not so much Sawamura's journey to becoming the ace, but Miyuki's version of what Mei was trying to do at Inashiro: raise and guide a team that can win at Koshien. Of course he doesn't have a coach's power to do that, but the end of S2 made it clear that he's the indispensable core of the team, whereas Sawamura, ace or not, is a replaceable cog in Miyuki's machine.
Warning: essay incoming! 
Casual baseball watchers may not be familiar with this idiom. So what does it mean? Well...it's kinda complicated. What the Japanese says is "狙いうち" (neraiuchi), which roughly means sniping or taking precise aim, or setting a goal and seeing it through. "Keyhole it" is a pretty good analog in English. I've mostly seen it used for batters, as "keyhole it" refers to a batter's ability to identify and hit a pitch that falls within their preferred hitting zone. However, I've also seen pitchers say they need to keyhole their pitch, especially when talking about their slider or curve. That usage would seem to fit the Japanese neraiuchi. But why "keyhole"? Well, the keyhole is the strip of dirt between the pitcher's mound and home plate (when the infield is grass). Viewed from above, it resembles a keyhole in the diamond. No MLB parks still have keyholes since Detroit got rid of theirs a couple years ago. But why even have it in the first place? Some say it's a holdover from when baseball and cricket shared the same fields, some say it's just easier to maintain (while some say it's a pain in the ass) and the catcher walking to the mound and back wears a path anyway, some say there's no real reason, and some say it helps the umpire determine the strike zone and/or it helps the pitcher and batter track the ball to the plate. If that last reason is true, you'd think they'd want to keep it. There's another use of "keyholing" that comes from the military (probably from a keyhole's potential as a peephole) that means to place a unit in terrain where it can see and be seen only from a narrow angle. Which brings me back to the sniper/precision aiming meaning of neraiuchi. Ok so now we've got a pretty good idea of what "neraiuchi" and "keyhole it" mean. But the question I still can't answer is who is that aimed at? Are they urging Kousei to snipe the batters with his pinpoint accuracy, or are they calling for Seido batters to pick their pitch and whale on it? I don't know. Since the sign is raised after two consecutive comebackers to Kousei, my best guess is that it's directed at him (ok, it's actually directed at the stands, but never mind). If that's right, then it's kind of ironic that the best translation for neraiuchi is an idiom mostly used for batters. Unless it is meant for Seido's underperforming batters. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ /tl:dr |
|||
|
|||
|
Gina Szanboti
Posts: 12734 |
|
||
|
Ep 10
So Kousei thinks Masashi is zenned out, what does he think of Hoshida chanting to his bat? At least it's nice to see Masashi actually hitting the ball instead of just spinning under his helmet. Lol at Kousei's mental commentary. "What kind of jerk makes us play sports on a day like this? Someone's gonna wind up dead!" "Did they pay off the umps?" "They're out to kill me!" But they still couldn't get it done. How could anyone hope to hit a pitch that can pull a nearly 90° turn at the plate? Miyuki had to turn his mitt sideways to catch it! 
And Nori did something! I like how the spectators imprint their idea of him warming up without a ball as him being just that good. Who needs a ball in the bullpen, right? Overall, a decent, tense episode. Now it's probably Haru's turn to shine next week. So...I thought weed was seriously illegal in Japan. And yet, the two girls on the left and the guy on the right clearly have their bases loaded. 
(click for larger image) |
|||
|
|||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group