I had high expectations when starting to watch this movie, since I really like Japanese drama series and movies not to mention sports theme is always cool. Sadly this movie wasn't even close fulfilling my expectations and really just left me annoyed. So what went wrong here then? Well, I think movie just lacks some important things to reach level of actually good sports movies. main character is just one annoying brat who doesn't have enough respect for other people, when he is having hard time I really don't feel it for him at all. And it's not only that I can't feel for main character, movie actually doesn't stir up my emotions at all in a good way until in its very end. Plot is also just damn weak, simple, not original at all and not good enough to make it up, it's actually just plain boring and unbelievably unimaginative piece of crap. Plot still actually had some potential since it was a bit different for a sports movie, but somehow they were able to mess it up almost completely... It's just that things happening in movie and how those things are happening aren't really interesting enough, some parts are actually even pretty horrible. Obviously this movie was also made for whole family to watch (not that it would be kids movie) and that might actually be the reason why they ended up making such a horrible mistakes. Not that it would be sufficient reason for what they've ended up doing here...

Despite it flaws movie still actually got some goods, The way movie ends actually has pretty nice feel in it, acting is mostly fine and production and direction aren't too shabby either. It is also nice that this was really baseball movie, story is actually about promising player, so movie is not just using baseball theme as and stepping stone to make a movie that's a bit different. And As already mentioned above basic idea isn't really that bad, just poorly executed. It was also at least a bit different from those normal sports movies where some team goes for success after first being just bunch of idiots who can't even play properly which ever sport movie happens to be about. I also kinda get it what they were going for here, but in the end movie just couldn't make it, often line between movie making it and not making is thin and that might have been case here too, if story just had been a bit nicer to watch, movie just might have been decent, but things being like this flaws are just too deep...

If you've never been to Japan, you don't know how big baseball is there. At this point, it's probably bigger there than it is in America where it's supposed to be our national pastime.

Anyway, this film tells the tale of a young Japanese boy who just so happens to be a very gifted baseball pitcher. The problem is that he has a little brother who is ill all the time. The mother of these two boys seems to resent her older son's health since her younger son is always sick. The family moves to where the mother's dad lives supposedly because it's a better environment for her sick son. There the older son meets another boy his own age that just so happens to be a baseball catcher and the two strike up a friendship when the catcher is finally able to handle the pitches thrown his way. The older son, being that he is so gifted at something very important to him, goes through life alienating just about everyone because he feels so superior. The only thing in the world that seems to matter to him is pitching and everything else, including his family, he treats as though it's in his way.

I don't want to give away too much of the film but I liked it a great deal and baseball is my favorite sport so the movie just appealed to me naturally. If you don't mind watching a foreign film with English subtitles then I recommend seeing this movie. Two thumbs up!