birdlandmemories

Baseball and isekai? Baseball and isekai. Yep, 2 things I never could've imagined together are combined for this bizarre yet intriguing manga. Let's review it.

So, imagine if 2-way phenom Shohei Ohtani got sent to the worst MLB team and was the centerpiece of their rebuild. Oh wait, you don't have to imagine that, because that's pretty much reality. Ohtani plays for the Angels, who are awful, and without Ohtani (and Mike Trout) would arguably be the worst team in baseball.

Jokes aside, that's pretty much what this manga is about. Our main character is Taichi Tokonatsu, who, like Ohtani, is a 2-way phenom taking Japan by storm. He's the next great Japanese baseball superstar, except he dies on the mound. He's then sent to another world by God, and tasked with transforming a horrible baseball team named Freedom into the dominance force of their world composed of beastmen and other animals.

Now, in Freedom's world, baseball is war. Baseball settles conflicts, determines territory, and even decides life or death. Freedom is close to no long existing by the time Taichi arrives. Their team is bad because almost all the adult men have been taken captive. Thus, Freedom's team is entirely compsed of young women, kids, and the elderly. Their best player when Taichi arrives is a young woman named Krusche.

Now that the synopsis is over, let's talk about what I like and don't like. The premise? It's definitely interesting. Heck, the manga does a good job playing on the importance of the pitcher-catcher relationship, and other key elements of baseball that might be overlooked, and there were some humorous moments about it. Taichi's a solid MC. I like how despite his impressive skills the other teams overlook him. 

The bad? Well, this manga likes to inject fanservice, and lots of it. Most of it is pointless too. It's not fanservice where there are mascots or cheerleaders or ballgirls or stuff like that where it's at least semi-relevant to the plot. It's sequences where the manga could be talking about pitch selection or not tipping your pitches, and they'll just throw in some pointless fanservice scene, usually involving Krusche. It's annoying and ruins the manga a bit.

You know, as I was typing this, I just couldn't think of giving it any score other than 5/10. It's not outright bad, but it is a bit disappointing. Once the pointless fanservice scenes started they didn't stop, and everyone outside of Taichi and Krusche is mostly forgettable.