Moshidora 10 – final

This post covers my final thoughts on Moshidora (What if a female manager of a high school baseball team read Drucker’s Management?).It is based on having seen all 10 episodes, but I avoid spoilers. My aim, principally is to tell you why you should watch it. More detailed coverage can be found here.

The coach is a man of few, but well chosen words.

Moshidora breaks down into two principal parts. In the first part, groundwork is laid, and our heroine, Minami, uses the principles she finds in a management text to transform her high school’s baseball club. Some of this groundwork lays out motivation, some is character exploration, and some is foreshadowing plot development. As manager of the baseball team, Minami’s impact on the team is most substantial here, where issues such as smoothing out inter-personal misunderstandings, and getting the team members to show up for practice, develop the conditions needed for the second half. I found the ideas raised during this part to be thought provoking, and I know I was not the only one.

Organizations are "the means through which individual human beings find their livelihood, find their access to social status, to community and to individual achievement and satisfaction." -- Peter Drucker

In the second part, Minami finds herself in the midst of drama that she has no control over. This is perhaps obvious, as, in baseball, the manager’s role is to look on from the stands, or perhaps the dugout, but not the playing field itself, and we have often heard the saying that the manager hires good people and leaves it to them to do the rest. What is remarkable, however, is that, in this second half of Moshidora, the drama becomes quite personalized, and emotionally effective.

A sense of awe and wonder.

I started watching Moshidora, expecting an animated “how to” about management, and to some extent, it does deliver that, but somewhere along the way the story becomes much more. Ultimately Moshidora delivers a satisfying emotional experience, as we watch the trials and tribulations of some interesting, appealing characters. As I’ve already remarked elsewhere, I can easily recommend this show to others, and intend to watch it again myself some day.