One Outs is a show about mind games and gambling… in baseball. It follows the career of a sinister pitcher - Tokuchi Toa who not only looks down on sports, but uses baseball to gamble neat money. There is no character development and you wont see anything besides baseball in this show, but the existence of a gambler mastermind kind of cancels those shortcomings out. It doesn’t matter whether you like sports or not, you might want to check this show out if you are into mind games. Don’t expect much and it will make your day.

In a world where there’s only winning or losing, it’s only called “cheating” or “violating” if such behavior is exposed. Once the game has ended, it’s no longer cheating. It’s justice. It’s only your stupidity which can allow others to cheat.

Originally created as manga by Kaitani Shinobu and directed by Satou Yuuzou (Akagi, Kaiji) One Outs is a show about mind games and gambling… in baseball. So, yeah, Tokuchi Toa, a punter who favors baseball-themed pitch-the-out-to-win gambles, finds himself hired by one of the weakest teams in Japan’s professional baseball league, Lycaons, under a weird contract - he gets ~50.000$ for every out he pitches, and loses 500.000$ for every point he gives up. While any other pitcher would soon go bankrupt under such conditions, the above-human talent and sinister mind of Tokuchi Toa soon proves his employers that their decision to hire him might have been the worst in their entire lives. So starts the career of the richest pitcher in the world, Tokuchi Toa, a player whose biggest enemies are not in the opposing team, but in his own.

I was genuinely surprised with One Outs. In my entire life, it’s the first sports-themed anime I see which prefers mind over spirit, intelligence over hard work. And since I’m all for mind games and I don’t even know the rules of baseball I was inclined to give this show a warm welcome. Unfortunately, while One Outs might as well have the most intelligent plot and best main character in the history of sports anime, it’s also flawed in pretty much every single other aspect. Mind games are cool, I admit that, however, since all the pressure is concentrated on “Tokuchi versus his employer” battle of wits, it leaves no one to care about the games themselves. I never really cared if the team will win or not, and sometimes it isn’t even clear if they did, since all you ever see is Tokuchi and his schemes. The show also discards absolutely everything what are not baseball matches, in other words, you will never see any character development or even baseball-free interaction between characters. At the same time while I was delighted by the One Outs’ mind games, I was also frowning at its many shortcomings, making it hard for me to honestly tell how much do I actually like the show. The ending of the anime, or rather the promised halt, led me to decide that the good parts cancel the bad parts quite well, making this anime stay somewhere in the middle of all the stuff I have watched. It might have been much better if they let it go to the real end. Not like I have seen many sports anime which actually do something as innovating…

Animation: 3

Animation done by Madhouse is, how should I put it, deceptive. While from the first sight backgrounds seem attractive and character designs detailed, it doesn’t take too long to realize that pretty colors hide barren wastelands and character detail masks unimaginative design. All you ever see in the backgrounds are huge fields of grass, given One Outs never shows you anything outside the baseball court it sounds obvious. However the annoying blur which is used to cut corners whenever you are supposed to see audience in the stands or anything similarly complicated makes you double-check whether your are wearing your glasses or not. Majority of scenes, however, are spent on up-closes to characters fitting the whole screen with their ugly, generic heads. Which leads me to comment on character designs which, save for the awesome Tokuchi, are all more or less the same. It gets really hard to tell people apart sometimes, body build being virtually the only factor which makes them stand out from each other. Another problem with designs is that when characters are not up-close their bottom and top are weirdly disproportioned making the legs look awkwardly thin when compared to the upper body.

There is little to complain about fluidity however, this being TV series and all. All things, be it people or thrown balls, have believable motions and some running animation is almost cool. On the other hand, there is surprisingly little movement in the whole show, so, I guess, they could afford to make it look good. Direction is, for the most part, simplistic, concentrating on either close-ups to Tokuchi’s sinister expressions or dumbfounded faces of his teammates. Otherwise, I found the delusions people have when fighting Tokuchi cleverly animated, showing off either deformed forms of the stadium or just fuzzy colors meshing around.

Sound: 3

Sound stage in One Outs is, at best, atmospheric. Combination of laid-back OP Bury by Pay money To my Pain and relaxing ED Moment by Tribal Chair comes off as pretty good giving the show seinen-like feel. Background music, on the other hand, is hardly noticeable. There are some neat tunes which fit baseball well, however, not a single one of them stands out and you will likely forget everything you’ve heard the moment you’ll close the episode. There is one cool melody which sounds like it was taken directly from Silent Hill, making it sound as if Tokuchi is really prying into someone’s brain there, but, again, it’s atmospheric at best.

Voice-acting doesn’t stand out either, not surprising given the fact that most of the cast have virtually no records in the business apart from voicing some generic characters in Dragon Ball. There was but only one adequate voice I’ve noticed and it was that of Tokuchi by Hagiwara Masato. Having no roles apart from the other two famous gamblers, Hagiwara Masato sounds fresh and manages to bring Tokuchi’s sinister nature to life quite well. Not captivating, but nice. Yamaguchi Kappei, on the other hand, sounds quite boring with his generic character role.

Story: 3

There is very little to say about the story actually. You get 25 episodes of mind games in baseball and that’s about it. One match ends, another starts, and you don’t see the in-betweens. Absence of horrendous training episodes and hideous fillers is probably attributable to Tokuchi’s lazy nature as he neither trains nor really cares about anything outside gambling itself, and thank the gods for that. The matches themselves, however, are drawn waaay too long, especially since they play the same team three times in a row, the last one took more than eight episodes if I recall correctly. Sudden halt in the end hurts the show quite hard as well, if they’ll ever go for a second season I’ll definitely watch it. Anyway, as long as you will know what to expect - that is, interesting mind games, sinister lead and some baseball to spice things up, you wont be disappointed. Don’t come expecting anything else though.

Characters: 3

While Tokuchi Toa is, likely, the best main lead to grace the world of sports anime ever, it’s also true that there is absolutely no character development present in this show. It’s hardly a secret that all other characters are generic rip-offs with barely five words of dialogue not about baseball and that female characters don’t even exist. I guess I shouldn’t be bringing female characters into the question, the show being about baseball and all, but was I the only one starting to feel somewhat homophobic observing all but men for 25 episodes? They could have at least thrown in some cheerleaders or something. Anyway, that’s not really a complaint so you can forget it if you want.

Anyway, my point is, Tokuchi Toa is damn awesome. He is nothing like any other male lead in sports show. He’s smart, he’s sinister, he likes money and he never trains. Furthermore, he looks down on about everyone in the field, be it friend or adversary, not forgetting cruel remarks to shut up the losers talking about spirit and hard work. So yeah, he is cool. Now that I think about it, there is surprisingly little to write about him. All he ever does is mind games without a single hint at his own feelings whatsoever. But he is still damn cool, so that’s okay, right? It’s not like this show strives to exhibit the complexity of human nature anyway.

Conclusion: It doesn’t matter whether you like baseball or not, One Outs is a show worth watching by anyone who is interested in mind games and falls into 13+ demography. If you love intelligent, albeit undeveloped, leads you might be able to turn a blind eye to this anime’s many shortcomings. I can hardly call One Outs a good show, but it is fun nonetheless, especially if you are into such things as gambling. You might want to check Akagi or Kaiji if you’ve liked this one, or, of course, you could watch few hundred times more intelligent, the king of mind games, Death Note, if you haven’t already.