My dad loved baseball, and though I happily went to countless games with him growing up I did not really know what was going on half the time and found the slow pace of the game to be frustrating. So dad, I just want to let you know that you can be proud of me right now, because I’m reading a baseball book. I’m lifting it up right now so that you can see it from heaven. Uhh, don’t look too closely at the summary though…what happens in it you ask? Hmmm…baseball. Baseball happens! That’s all you need to know!
There should really be more dedicated sports yaoi out there, I don’t get to use the sports tag enough. If the amount of yaoi doujins out there of Prince of Tennis, Haikyuu, Free!, and Kuroko’s Basketball are any indication, nothing gets a fujoshi’s imagination going like the all-you-can-eat shipping buffet of a bishounen-stacked male sports team roster. Who knows, perhaps it is the sheer amount of sports anime BL doujins out there – combined with having to actually know about the sport to be convincing, and having to draw a decent amount of action and a minimum of like 8 characters – that dissuades mangakas from doing too many original BL sports series, because why put in the effort for all that when you can just spin up some lewd Kagami x Kuroko stories for Comiket for some easier dough? That’s just my guess anyway. Ah, someone should make an ice skating yaoi! I bet no one has done that yet…
Mamahara herself hinted at this knowledge and research requirement in the back of this book and also notes that her editor wasn’t wild about the idea of her doing a baseball manga because she didn’t know enough about baseball to catch any errors. She also notes that there isn’t even really that much actual baseball in the book, which is also true – in fact, I thought it was like, the perfect amount of baseball. It played into the story just the right amount without distracting from the romance.
Ellie Mamahara has two other titles that were licensed for print in English, Alley of First Love and Double Cast, both of which I have read and reviewed (and liked both of them too). This one completes the trifecta. Like these other two books, the story was the highlight, and it was well-written, well-paced, and an enjoyable read with a touch of humor here and there. The jist of the plot is that outgoing star rookie Eiji Uno crushes on shortstop Ogata, his fellow teammate on the Tokyo Elephants, but the older Ogata doesn’t want to get involved with a teammate so has to sort his feelings about this.
My comments about her art in my other reviews also apply to this one. She has a recognizable style that is somewhat awkward, marked by lanky limbs, weird proportions, yaoi hands, and a way of drawing lips I’m not really a fan of – sometimes it works and sometimes it looks like they went to a bargain basement medspa and asked for the Kylie Jenner special. She also has a way of drawing kissing where their mouths don’t really touch. Maybe they’re just leaving room for the Holy Spirit, like the nuns in middle school always asked us to do at school dances when they went around with a ruler between the couples (the Holy Spirit needs exactly 12 inches of space in case you didn’t know) so I won’t judge if they’re just trying to be good Christians. You know, good Christians who have gay sex.
Although this book is rated M, it probably shouldn’t be, as it’s really more of a shounen-ai – so if you go into it expecting sex, you’ll be disappointed. As a seasoned reader of DMP books I know that they (and/or whatever ratings board puts out the guidelines) and I appear to have quite different opinions on what merits an M-rating and what doesn’t, so I know where to set my expectations. Don’t let this dissuade you though – the story is well-done, the characters are likable, and better yet they even kiss sometimes! The ending is good too.
This book shares Alley’s peculiar feature of having Ellie Mamahara’s name more prominently preceding the book title, followed by a colon. This struck me as odd, because if Hinako Takanaga and Ayano Yamane don’t have their names on their book spines bigger than the actual title (nor does Akira Toriyama or even Osamu Tezuka for that matter), I’m not really sure how anyone else could be worthy. The only thing I can think of is that: 1) DMP often makes mysterious decisions that don’t make any sense (already proven) 2) DMP was simply copying the Japanese design and didn’t give it much thought – somewhat possible but unlikely given that the spines of Japanese books are usually the same by publisher 3) Ellie Mamahara is way more famous than we know in the west, or had some kind of 2006-era cult following on aarinfantasy or LiveJournal here that would give her instant name-recognition (unlikely, although this was before my time as a fujo).
I didn’t really give this spine thing much thought when I did the review for Alley, but decided to look into it for this review because you know, guys, I’m a serious and thoughtful writer, and enjoy bringing you pointless information you never thought or cared about alongside bad dick and butt jokes. So through my intense 5 minutes of research I discovered that: it isn’t #2, this book had a standard spine that looks like everything else the Japanese publisher puts out with the title first and the author’s name smaller at the bottom, and it likely isn’t #3 because I looked at her page on mangaupdates and didn’t see anything she did or was associated with that struck my eye as being something even close to a hit series. Something I did notice though was that her earliest work was from 1990, so she is somewhat of a legacy mangaka and was well into her career by the time she wrote this one in 2006 – and she’s still active in fact! So…maybe since she was perhaps one of the oldest & most experienced mangakas DMP had licensed, perhaps it was professional respect that led DMP to design the spines like this? Not sure. If not this, I am just chalking it up to #1, which turns out is usually the answer to a lot of DMP-related questions.
TL;DR: This sweet, slow-burn sports romance is a cute read with likable characters and a nice touch of humor, provided you lower your expectations about the M-rating on the back – it’s pretty much shounen-ai, but indeed a decent one. If you are ok with or can get used to her sometimes-awkward art style and yaoi hands (like really though, because all her books are like this), you should also check out her two other English works Alley of First Love and Double Cast, which are similarly enjoyable and well-written stories like this one.