I’ve been looking forward to watch the Major series for a while now, and with this I finally managed to check out the first season. The baseball series form a truly underrated genre in anime, with most people getting turned off because they don’t know anything about the games. Well, let me tell you that I’m in no way a sports fan, and yet I’ve enjoyed myself quite a few wonderful baseball series, and I was hoping to add Major to that list. Well, that’s definitely taught me not to get my hopes up too high before starting a series.

The premise seems solid enough: this season shows a young boy of nine years old named Goro as he challenges the little league with his team, and the succeeding series will show him as he slowly grows up into adulthood. It would have been a fine series if it wasn’t for the damned cheese that this show overflows with. I know that passion and manliness can spice up an anime, but this show is really taking that way too far.

This series just tries way too hard to create as much drama as possible. Just as an example, they really try to make Goro’s past as sad as possible. Whenever things are looking a bit too happy, you can bet your hat that very soon something unexpected will happen that will put everyone in despair. The characters are always eager to angst, and especially the way in which Goro just keeps yelling and whining at everyone really doesn’t help anything.

This would have been excused if it wasn’t for the other flaws of this series: the characters. There’s definitely development among them, but it’s handled so badly at times that it gets really hard to take this show seriously. The worst example of this is the bullies: one episode we see a bunch of bullies turn one of their classmates’ life into hell, the next episode we see Goro yelling at them and suddenly they’re begging for forgiveness, professing their love for baseball from out of nowhere and completely change character.

And this formula really appears pretty often, by the way. Whenever a side-character is feeling down of has his issues, then within an episode we see Goro yelling at them and giving a speech about the power of friendship and they’re completely healed again. In the second half of the show, a bit of pointless romance also pops up that never gets anywhere, and especially since we’re dealing with nine year-old kids here, I really wonder why the creators bothered with it anyway.

Then there’s the baseball. Granted, it’s not the worst part of the show and the creators are able to create some interesting situations and fun games… but the fact remains that the matches are just too forced. This isn’t the first time in which a baseball series has an incredibly good pitcher as a lead character, but even when taking that into considation, Major is really stretching it with Goro. He needs a team full of incompetent idiots in order to prevent him from God-moding himself through every single game with ease. Within six months, he transforms a team that started out with a bunch of random kids with no talent for baseball to the best team of their age in Japan. All through the power of friendship.

It’s therefore no wonder that the baseball matches become utterly predictable, in a bad way. Characters become incredibly good or bad, depending on the writers’ wishes. Even though all the opposing teams use interesting strategies, the only tactics in Goro’s team are ad-libbed. But the worst thing is that every single game is set up exactly so that Goro is the one to save the day, by scoring a point at the very last possible moment.

Usually I can excuse a flaw here and there in a series, but Major just has way too many of them, not to mention that Goro himself is completely unlikable. He really is your typical shounen lead character with a dark past and a simple mind, and really doesn’t do anything to diverge from it. Most of the opposing teams would have been more interesting if they didn’t simply turn into stereotypes. There are some interesting characters, like Joe Gibson and Shigeno, but the two of them hardly ever appear.

And as for some positive comments: the baseball matches are definitely exciting. when you watch them for the pure entertainment value and don’t mind how it ends, then they’re going to keep you busy, because there is lots and lots of passion in this series. The graphics look simple, but the animation and music also do their job and don’t stand in the way of anything. But the thing is that there are many baseball shows that are so just much better than this one. Try Adachi’s works, or if you want more excitement there is also Princess Nine, while for the tactics you can go to One Outs and I’ve also heard that Ookiku Furikabutte is awesome. I’m just not going to bother with Major anymore.