Cross Game - I Took A Screenshot That Wasn’t Of Azuma The main thing that bothers me about Cross Game is that I hate waiting a whole week for the next episode. I guess this is why I have been marathoning Touch and various Adachi mangas during the rest of the week to give myself a koukou-yakyuu fix, which of course forces me to compare Kou to Tatsuya and Azuma to H2’s batting monster Hideo. Hideo and Azuma are effectively the same character except that Azuma’s been painted with a much darker “rival” brush (and if you read further in the manga you’ll know the reason for his more serious nature). In short, WANT, and gimme both plz now. Kou also shares a number of character traits with our boy Tacchan, many of which were highlighted in his first outing as the Prefab-gumi’s pitcher. Starting baseball extremely late, he’s long on natural talent but short on stamina and control and that’s starting to show in the later innings. Azuma still can’t believe it’s his first game, however (which of course mirrors Nitta’s intense interest in Tatsuya as a rival in the rough). Kou’s also a bit of a lazy ass (see above) and shows signs of having a brief but explosive temper after getting hit by Azuma for 3 consecutive homers. But besides that, I just don’t feel the magic from him that I get from Tatsuya and I think it might just be the voice actor. Kou sounds kind of wet, and it’s also just hard to beat Yuji Mitsuya’s epic characterization of the slacker ace. Actually I just looked up Kou’s seiyuu and it turns out he also voiced Tsubasa’s Syaoran (totally not as badass as Cardcaptor Sakura’s Syaoran) and Zaitsu Mamoru in this season’s Hatsukoi Limited who I also consider a massive wuss. Damn it. Regardless of voice actor (and the fact that he will never surpass Azuma or Tatsuya in my burning fangirl heart) Kou manages to pull off that Japanese masculinity remarkably smoothly. Like the koi fish who lies still on the chopping board and accepts his fate, you know what I’m talking about. From the manly way he grabbed Aoba’s collar that one time (before asking to borrow a nabe pot) to his calm and unspoken challenge to Azuma from the pitcher’s mount, Kou’s a master of that quiet coolness when it really counts. He might not pull it off with the same iconic brilliance as Tatsuya but hey, it’s 2009 and we’ll take what we can get.
Read the rest of this entry Entry meta