Dropped: H2 (TV)

Running time: 24 minutes
Number of episodes: 41
Vintage: 1995-06-01 to 1996-03-21
Age rating: ???
Genres: Comedy, Romance, Shounen, Sports
Animation Production: Ashi Productions
Broadcaster: TV Asahi
Production: Shogakukan Productions Co., Ltd.

Source: Anime News Network

The Good: It’s a baseball drama.
The Bad: Focuses more on romance than sports; Premature ending destroys it.

Status: Dropped

My impressions and review:

H2 is a baseball romance drama with a very special dark mood. It begins with Kunumi Hiro, an ace pitcher during middle school who alongside his pal Atsushi Noda became an unparalleled force to be reckoned with. They were also aided by their good friend Tachibana Hideo, their 4th batter who later becomes their rival. Together they were champions two years in a row during the middle school tournaments.

In one particular game, Seinan Middle School was up 3-0 and Hiro was set to end the last inning. However, he couldn’t complete the pitch because he felt a sharp pain in his elbow. This pain caused him to go to a clinic where a doctor told him he had a glass elbow. According to the doctor his condition was so bad that if he played baseball for 3 more months he’d shatter his elbow for good and never be able to use his arm properly. Knowing this he had to make up his mind to quit playing baseball. Deep down inside he loved the sport, but he knew that reckless behavior would lead him to no good. His good friend and sidekick catcher, Noda, was also injured during a middle school game. The same doctor told Noda that his waist was in bad condition and he should not play anymore or he’d cause permanent damage to his hips. The dynamic duo of legendary proportions was severed to a life of common high school foolery because of their injuries. Thus, they decided to enroll in a school without a baseball club so they wouldn’t feel tempted to fiddle around with the sport anymore. However, beginning their high school life, they come across a baseball fan-club, a girl that’s crazy about high school baseball, and a strange soccer club. Hiro and Noda get fed up with things and end up playing baseball again when the soccer club tries to belittle baseball as a sport and the hardworking members of the baseball fan-club. If you don’t mind a small spoiler, later on Hiro and Noda find out that the doctor they went to see was a phony with no license, and after a real checkup they find out nothing was wrong with their bodies. This begins their reentry into baseball, with their first obstacle of trying to get their fan-club promoted to an official club so they can go to the Koshien, the high school tournament.

It’s important to say that the whole time I was watching H2 I kept thinking about how it compared to Major, a similar baseball drama that is much more recent and still being aired. Major starts with a very similar dark tone as H2, and continues on with a little romance and a little slice of life, but it sticks to being almost exclusively about baseball. There’s much to learn and to appreciate from Major because it makes the sport of baseball seem more active and fun for an outsider like me who’s never really been interested in the sport. I was very surprised when I watched H2 that some of the music used in H2 is used in Major too. I couldn’t find any key person who worked on H2 who is also behind Major, so it’s hard to confirm it. However, I’m pretty sure Major is inspired by H2 in some ways, but in many ways surpasses it and creates its own mold.

Contrary to Major, H2 handles the appeal of baseball in a different manner. The show paces itself just like real life baseball by being very slow and mundane. This is accompanied by typical Japanese acting where the characters speak to each other and go blank for a moment and utter some kind of response, be it a simple phrase or just a sound of acknowledgement. This creates very robotic characters and makes it very hard to relate to them. I was tempted many times to skip over episodes because they dragged on. When things finally got heated up and exciting, it goes downhill because it slows down to a crawl again. Instead of showing baseball the show focuses on other things and very little of it is actual baseball content. This is what makes it so slow, you’ll watch and watch and see how characters think and walk around and go on dates talking about their hopes and dreams but hardly play baseball.

To make matters worse H2 ends prematurely without much of an explanation as to what is really going on. There’s just a speech about hopes and dreams and why people should go after said dreams with random baseball animations in the background. I’m guessing Hiro, Noda, and Hideo are duking it out at the Koshien because they mention their goal to reach the Koshien, but it really doesn’t matter. The end screams budget constraints so they likely had to cut it loose. I’m sure there’s plenty more information in the manga, but I’m not going to read it just to find out what really happens.

I’m glad I watched Major before H2 because if it had been the other way around I would of skipped Major. I had hopes for H2 since I enjoy Major, but H2 just doesn’t deliver along the way and just falls apart at the end so I wouldn’t recommend it. Major’s two separate seasons totalling 52 episodes and new upcoming season provide much more enjoyment than H2’s 41 episodes with no ending.