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Kawahara Izumi: Kôshien no sora ni warae!
When it's hot outside, it's nice to be reminded of people who have it a hundred times hotter than me. In this case I'm talking of the highschool baseball teams of Japan, who gather at Kôshien (name of a stadium) in the middle of August to play god knows how many baseball matches in the heat and humidity of central Japan. Hah!
Anyway, Kawahara Izumi is an odd shojo manga-ka who doesn't draw well or prettily and writes stories about women and girls who can't really be bothered to do much. Like me. In this book a biology teacher at a minisclule highschool in the countryside of Japan is talked into training the school baseball team because ... well, because no one else will or can. The team's greatest wish was to win one match in the prefectural tournament, but for some reason seeds are removed that year for "fairness" and they end up going to Kôshien for the national tournament.
It's not a sports manga, however, because the matches described here are not particularly interesting. It's sort of a comedy, but not a laugh-out-loud one, and it's sort of a romance but at the end the two people involved only agree to exchange letters. I guess it's a manga where you enjoy the slowness of it all and recognize the oddities that are hidden in everyday living.
... I think.
Definitely picks its audience.
Category: Shojo/ladies | Posted by Alicia at October 1, 2004 11:54 AM