Moshidora 5 – drama

Prepare to have your ass handed to you.

Moshidora episode 5 changes things up a bit. Instead of expounding upon the ideas of Peter Drucker, three key plot lines are advanced. Oh, yeah. Get ready for some dorama.

Plot line #1: Yuuki's illness.

This was a bit of a surprise to me. I think I really underestimated the ambitions of this story. I would have accepted Yuuki as sickly by nature, and a good excuse for Minami’s sudden need to manage the team. I imagined that she would always be in that hospital bed, ready to hear how the team was doing.

Plot line #2: Minami's hidden bitterness.

This I was expecting to surface, just not this soon. Minami, usually has a lot of energy, but she showed a lot of negative emotion towards baseball in the first episode. She was also seen quitting the sport in some kind of rage. We understand the cause of that bitterness now. Unfortunately Minami is still held captive by it, which prevents her from understanding how much people appreciate her.

A performance record must include mistakes. It must include failures. It must reveal a man’s limitations as well as his strengths. -- Peter Drucker

The third and final plot line was the unveiling of the coach’s “No Ball, No Bunt” strategy. As should perhaps be expected, things don’t initially go well. In fact the team ends up losing by a humiliating margin. On the plus side: the strategy is designed to help the team avoid their specific repeating weakness. In their case they tend to crumble late in the game. The coach’s theory is that they can play a better game if they avoid dragging the play out under the hot sun. To do this they need to play aggressively. Unfortunately the line between aggressive and reckless isn’t always clear.

It is hard to believe that there is only one week left of Moshidora! Having a new episode every day was really fun. I’m looking forward to seeing how everything pulls together next week.