Cross Game

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Alternative Titles

Japanese: クロスゲーム

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Information

Type: TV

Episodes: 50

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Apr 5, 2009 to Mar 28, 2010

Premiered: Spring 2009

Broadcast: Sundays at 10:00 (JST)

Producers: TV Tokyo, Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions

Licensors: None found, add some

Studios: SynergySP

Source: Manga

Genres: Drama, Romance, Sports

Themes: School, Team Sports

Demographic: Shounen

Duration: 23 min. per ep.

Rating: PG-13 - Teens 13 or older

Statistics

Score: 8.38¹ (scored by 50,958 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #193²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #1770

Members: 124,477

Favorites: 3,047

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Synopsis

Kou Kitamura and Aoba Tsukishima are often at odds—even though their families happen to be close friends and business partners. Although the only child of a sports shop owner, Kou has never been interested in playing baseball. Despite this, he possesses an impressive batting ability honed by frequent visits to the local baseball batting center run by the Tsukushima family. On the other hand, Aoba loves to play baseball and is a star player with exceptional pitching form.

However, these two seemingly complete opposites share something very important to them—Wakaba Tsukishima, Aoba's older sister and Kou's destined sweetheart. Admired by the quarrelsome duo, Wakaba often finds herself the catalyst to their never-ending rivalry. But whether or not they realize that they have more in common than either would care to admit, only time will tell. The game of baseball may just be what the pair needs to ultimately overcome their own personal struggles.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Adaptation:

Cross Game

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Characters & Voice Actors

Kitamura, Kou

Main

Irino, Miyu
Japanese

Tsukishima, Aoba

Main

Tomatsu, Haruka
Japanese

Azuma, Yuuhei

Supporting

Sakurai, Takahiro
Japanese

Tsukishima, Wakaba

Supporting

Kanda, Akemi
Japanese

Akaishi, Osamu

Supporting

Nomura, Kenji
Japanese

Azuma, Junpei

Supporting

Madono, Mitsuaki
Japanese

Nomo

Supporting

Nozawa, Masako
Japanese

Tsukishima, Ichiyou

Supporting

Toyoguchi, Megumi
Japanese

Senda, Keiichirou

Supporting

Kishio, Daisuke
Japanese

Oukubo, Hiroko

Supporting

Kameoka, Mami
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Kyoutani, Tomomi

Assistant Producer

Sekita, Osamu

Director

Takadera, Takeshi

Sound Director

Kawaguchi, Keiichirou

Episode Director, Storyboard

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Opening Theme

"Summer Rain" by Kobukuro

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Ending Theme

	1: "Koikogarete Mita Yume (恋焦がれて見た夢)" by Ayaka (eps 1-13)
	2: "Orange Days (オレンジDays)" by SQUAREHOOD (eps 14-26)
	3: "Moeru You na Koi Janai Kedo (燃えるような恋じゃないけど)" by Tsuru (鶴) (eps 27-39)
	4: "Rehearsal (リハーサル)" by Natsuko Kondo (近藤夏子) (eps 40-49)
	5: "Koi Suru Otome (恋スル乙女)" by Natsuko Kondo (近藤夏子) (eps 50)

Reviews

Aug 27, 2010

LiLSatania

Recommended

This is the first anime that I watched that was written by Mitsuru Adachi. I love baseball anime so I give this one a chance, I never thought that I'll love it so much~ :D Just finished re-watching it for the third time.

Story:
Honestly, i was blown away by the first episode, what a very strong start for an anime. It was all unexpected, Just the first episode and it already made me cry... The story was about the cat and dog relationship of Kou and Aoba. Adachi-sensei used his usual pattern of story, the childhood friend route. With a lot of twist ... , surprise event and a roller coaster of emotion that you will like. We have comedy, romance, drama, Baseball action in one place.

First, let’s discuss comedy, Adachi-sensei never missed any opportunity to crack a joke, the very important thing about delivering a joke was the Timing and that was done perfectly. He will happily use anyone or anything (old or new) as a punch line, so even its just an ordinary day you will find it funny and interesting. Next is Romance, the romance in the story isn’t rushed, you can see it develop little by little, with love triangle in every corner makes it interesting so you can enjoy the love and hate relationship of the two protagonist until the end~. Drama, when Adachi-sensei put a drama in his work it become the key point of the story, just like what happened in the first episode, it will leave an impression until the end of story. Baseball action, Maybe because Adachi-sensei have his own baseball team that he can deliver such an exciting baseball game. He knows When and how to make incredible events to happen, totally surprising, that's why I love the baseball manga the he writes.

Another key point of the story is memories~ Every now and then you'll see a flashback in the story, well I didn't find it annoying, it plays a major role in the character development of the main characters. Sometimes those memories makes me teary.Ending, I'm somewhat contented with it, all the feelings was sorted out and finished the climax of the waited battle in the baseball tournament. Somewhat because i wish he continued it until koushien XD

Character:
If u already read some of Adachi-sensei's manga you will find that all of his male protagonist has the same kind of character and i think same goes for the female. This time its Kitamura Kou, only son, cant even play catch ball till 5th grade, hard working and good at lying. The Ace Pitcher of the Seishu Academy, a typical character that you will like. Tsukishima Wakaba, same age, birthday and birthplace as Kou and love him more than anyone else. She plays a major role in the story despite of her status. Tsukishima Aoba, wakaba's little sister, who hates Kou very much and love Wakaba. If there's a word to describe her its "Tsundere". Kou's teacher about pitching. Very talented in Baseball despite of being a girl. Akaishi Osamu, position catcher, 5th batter and later the Captain of the Seishu baseball team. Like Kou he loves Wakaba too. Azuma Yuuhei, 1st base and the 4th batter and a talented one. He first appeared as an antagonist. He's emotionless when talking and only shows different emotion when playing baseball. Takigawa Akane, I'm really surprised of her appearance in the story, almost jaw dropping. The girl that moved next door and the daughter of the Soba Restaurant owner and a great painter. Her appearance takes the story to a new height.

Art:
Here's another trademark of Adachi-sensei. Imagine a classic drawing and add modern day coloring and you will get a remastered feeling. His character design is all the same, specially the ears and the hair color were black, blond and brown. Same goes for the character faces, i had read in one of his manga that even Adachi-sensei criticize his own work for having the same face design for some character. Overall, the classic animation style that used in this anime was some-what refreshing if you want to escape the modern day animation style.

Sound:
The Opening song "Summer Rain" really suits the anime, it gives the listener a tropical kind of beat, maybe because of the guitar. Good thing that they didn't replace it until the end of the series. The Ending song Koi Kogarete Mita Yume fit perfectly to the 1st quarter of the season~ that slow and sad song can easily make u cry if added in the scene specially in the 1st episode~ The 2nd one is Orange Days, a Rap song, IMO it doesn't fit the anime, its not like the song is bad or anything, just that using a song like that in an anime with a classic style of animation isnt good. The 3rd Moeru You na Koi Janai Kedo got a nice beat and slow rhythm . And the last ED song is Rehersal, one of my favorite song. The piano is great and the lyrics too.

Enjoyment:
I really enjoy Cross Game. I laugh on the jabs, cries in the sad and touchy scenes and get caught in the suspense and excitement of baseball action. that you will ask for more. Well if you Want more baseball action, read H2 and Touch.

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Jul 13, 2017

shimokitazawa

Mixed Feelings

"Simple is best" isn't always an accurate statement. So instead of doing the usual score / followed by explanation, I'll give you a rundown of why I liked and disliked this show.

I know I'll probably get some hate for saying this, but this show isn't as perfect as 95% (or so, or more) of the reviews would have you believe. That doesn't mean it's bad though, it's actually a very solid show.

What's wrong with it then?
In MY opinion, some of the characters (or rather, how they were used), the sound and art aren't up to par with a "perfect" show. I also think the Studio ... made more episodes than were needed as "fillers", which made them sort of rush the ending to complete the story.

I believe a character like Azuma could have received more time on screen during the first half of the show, with more time allocated to him, rather than simply tagging along with Kou or the rest of the squad. He's a nice and important character which wasn't explored as much as he could have been. After his ''bad guy'' act when he's first presented, he seems to turn into a Kou magnet - he goes where Kou goes and often scolds him or "tags along" with him, but that's that. He does receive some love later on though...

Then you have Senda - though I suppose he is simply doing what he's supposed to do - being an annoying arse. If that was the intention, then they surely hit the spot.

There's one "character" which I do despise though and I'm not sure if any other reviewer covered this. The cat. That cat honestly almost made me drop the show - He serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever and he's not even ''cute'' or anything of that sort, he's just a disturbance.

This cat will show up at random times, FOR NO REASON, and simply ''meow'' it out. Ok, had it been once or twice, or thrice, I wouldn't have minded it. But more than THIRTY times? Yes, I did count it and I'm not talking about him being present in different situations either, I'm talking about this freak showing up to *MEOW* with the exact same face and annoying sound, THE EXACT SAME - they didn't even bother recording a different sound for most of the time he's on screen. That alone brought the quality of the show down quite a lot - also, it's not only during the episodes either, during the 2nd half of the show they add an Intro Quiz and the Answer to that Quiz after the ED, in which he's ALWAYS present doing that stupid annoying *MEOW*. Good Lord is that annoying, and now DOUBLY so since you'll be seeing that shit in the INTRO, episode and after-ED. Good luck with that - talk about Anger Management....

But I digress - since I mentioned that intro right above, I'll talk about the OP and the ED. As Yuuhei, Azuma would say ''Who are they?'' - I think there were 2 different OPs and 3 or 4 different EDs. I say I think because all of them were so ''so-so'' that I really can't remember them even right after watching an episode - in fact, the one thing I can remember from two of the endings is that they were really "forced", the vocals annoyed me a lot. I believe that I started to skip the OP and ED right at the 3rd episode, and simply stopped to check them when there was a new one. Oh, add a DOUBLE SKIP to that because there's the annoying Quiz with the cat and another annoying song sung by MOMIJI before the Quiz. Maybe it's the case that I'm just not the target audience.... yeah, maybe, but maybe not, I don't think I'd have liked this even in my early teen years. Actually, I'm sure I wouldn't have.

Enough of that now, let's talk a bit about the art. What's the problem here? Not much, really. It's just that, it's just cookie cutter "modern" anime art, there's nothing outstanding about it, absolutely nothing. At the beginning some of the characters looked a lot like each other and I had some trouble identifying which one was which, but that quickly stopped being the case once the characters grew up. The backgrounds are not as great as I hoped them to be, even during the action scenes, which sort of let me down. There's one thing that sort of irked me though, there are times when the art looks "flat" - you'll get this if you pay attention to game scenes - look at the stadium, it seems like the audience and the characters look like "bent flat papers" - it's hard to explain but you'll see what I mean if you just look closely during the game scenes. I've also noticed this lack of "depth" at other times. Having seeing great art in other Anime, even anime from as far back as 1994, I was disappointed by this.

The one thing that does deserve a lot of praise is how Cross Game manages to captivate you despite all of its flaws, it has a gripping power hard to find - you want to know if X will confess to Y, or if they actually hate each other, and how Z will develop throughout the show. There was a "twist" mid-season which was mildly entertaining - I won't spoil it though. I also like how Cross Game deals with the loss of a loved one and relationships within the family and friends, growing up etc. Teenagers will get the most out of it, but even adults will probably take the time to remember their own hardships and moments of sadness/happiness when watching it.

Have you noticed that I still have not mentioned Baseball? That's because Cross Game is able to present something other than "just" Baseball, which I appreciate. This doesn't mean that Baseball is left aside, so if you're a ban of Baseball, you'll not be disappointed.

If, like me, you had no knowledge of Baseball beforehand, you don't have to worry - even though they could've explained a little bit more in detail how things like conceding a walk / safety bunts work, you'll get the gist of it soon enough just by watching the show. Actually, I do have to say what an amazing job they did here, because not only did I not know anything about Baseball, I had this idea that it was a very boring sport and that worried me before watching Cross Game, but I was fairly surprised to discover what Baseball is like - I actually may end up watching real Baseball now, because I quite enjoyed what I saw from the games in Cross Game. I think this concludes what I set out to achieve here - explain why the show is worth a go if you were unsure about watching it, while at the same time keeping in mind that it is definitely not perfect and you will notice its flaws if you're paying attention.

I hope you enjoyed reading this review as much as I enjoyed writing it, I'm always trying to improve and will gladly read any criticism you may have towards the things I wrote - send me a PM if you feel like it!

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Aug 3, 2010

Rampant

Not Recommended

Well, I will say first of all that both this manga and anime are perfectly nice, perfectly pleasant, and probably perfectly enjoyable for a lot of people. It is all smiles (except for Aoba who is, you know, completely incapable of anything but frowning or looks of indignation), all optimism, and simple but sweet. Unfortunately, that keeps it from being very good either.

The story is your typical "gets one star, enjoys a meteoric rise to the near top, loses anyway, probably eventually wins but ONLY in the very last year" formula. Typical to this, ONLY the protagonists and "notable" opponents ever in ANY way matter. ... The only real gags in the entire anime revolve the few times they do not have the protagonists/notables easily succeed...which is not a very good gag element. The only real change to the overall plot tendencies is that they throw in a tragedy, and the tragedy is not a very good one...having to see people get all sadfaced and wax nostalgic about it is pretty annoying, and the onslaught of flashbacks repeated, while not as bad as it could be, is fairly overboard.

To the actual baseball parts of the action, since pretty much the largest negative emotions it displays are an "oi oi oi" "are you kidding me" attitude, there are not really any sore losers or sore winners. I know that the cliche "big personalities! ridiculous action!" shounens are not that great either, but all this manages to produce is a baseball team with no personality, taking matters to the other extreme. The baseball games are never really interesting because of this, and there is no real reason to sympathize with the team and want it to win no matter how much time they spend on all of the characters.

The characters are pretty weak. It is nice that Ko is not a brat, but he is also pretty bland, having no real personality to speak of...this goes for a lot of characters, probably everyone but Aoba really. Their personalities are pretty much all "stare around thoughtfully/at another person, crack a smile, play baseball". I appreciate that they wanted to use silence to set some sort of tone, but they failed to craft any meaningful personalities because of it. Unfortunately, Aoba is your standard grade unenjoyable tsundere who does NOTHING but complain and lie about her "true feelings" for 50 episodes, so she is not a good break from all of this at all.

The art is a nice style, but it has some major problems. The character art becomes very chunky and bold in a lot of zoom ins for some reason, despite having previously looked fine zoomed out just seconds before. The next biggest problem are the mouths, which are some of the least expressive I have ever seen in an anime...just because you chose a simple style does not mean you have to totally cop out of drawing faces! They pretty much are just a barely open o ( or closed | all of the time. The other biggest flaw with the art is the coloring - everything is vivid, but nothing actually has any detail! Pay attention and you will notice this is true...it does not ruin the anime, but it makes it difficult to find much interesting.

The animation is very smooth most of the time, a real treat to watch actually, but it also deals in most of the major problems of modern anime. It has a ton of slow zoom ins on characters to simulate movement that is not there. It has tons of white action lines to simulate false excitement in the sports scenes (no idea why, they ACTUALLY decently animate most of the time, so why do this?) - this happens more as the anime goes on, initially it was rare. There are lots of repeat moments (as in triple takes et cetera), lots of white outs during action scenes to try to draw out and create a bigger impact, and other various tricks that really fall flat...again, it is not bad enough to destroy the in episode pacing or destroy the "feel", but it is overboard and slightly distracting.

The voice acting is completely average, and the music is terrible and interferes with a lot of moments.

A final miscellaneous flaw is that the transitions are incessant and really poorly done. Oftentimes they will flash to some random scenery and pan straight up, this happens literally about 30 times. Also literally about 30 times they will use the terribly drawn cat (worst part of this anime) to clumsily transition.

This is a decent sports anime/manga, but really I would say that not only are there better slice of lifes around, and alternately there are better hot blooded sports anime/manga around, and that I would fill my time with either of those alternatives first before looking to a work like this.

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Kitamura, Kou

Tsukishima, Aoba

Azuma, Yuuhei

Tsukishima, Wakaba

Akaishi, Osamu

Azuma, Junpei

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Tsukishima, Ichiyou

Senda, Keiichirou

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