News
Funimation Acquires Big Windup! Baseball TV Anime
posted on by Egan Loo
Funimation has announced that it has acquired Big Windup!, the 26-episode baseball television anime known as Ookiku Furikabutte in Japan. The series adapts Asa Higuchi's manga about Ren Mihashi, a losing pitcher who quit his middle-school baseball team after his teammates harassed him — they think he only became a pitcher because his grandfather ran the school. At high school, Ren is forced to become a pitcher again, but he and his new team eventually recapture the spirit of the game.
Tsutomu Mizushima (xxxHOLiC, Kujibiki Unbalance, Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan) directed this anime with Aniplex's newly formed A-1 Pictures studio. Yousuke Kuroda oversaw the scripts after working on Honey and Clover II, Ring ni Kakero, and Saint Seiya: The Hades Chapter. The manga has been running in Kodansha's Monthly Afternoon since 2003, and the anime ran from April to September of last year. The manga won the 10th Osamu Tezuka Cultural Awards' New Hope Award in 2006 and the 31st Kodansha Manga Award in the General Category in 2007. Voters chose it as one of their 100 favorite manga titles in the Japan Media Arts Festival's 10th anniversary celebration in 2007.
Image © Asa Higuchi • KODANSHA / Oofuri Project. All Rights Reserved.
