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| Big Windup! | |
|---|---|
 Cover of volume 1 |
|
| おおきく振りかぶって (Ōkiku Furikabutte) |
|
| Genre | Comedy, Sports (baseball) |
| Manga | |
| Author | Asa Higuchi |
| Publisher |  Kodansha |
| Demographic | Seinen |
| Magazine | Afternoon |
| Original run | 2003 – ongoing |
| Volumes | 11 |
| TV anime | |
| Director | Tsutomu Mizushima |
| Writer | Yōsuke Kuroda |
| Studio | A-1 Pictures |
| Licensor | Aniplex FUNimation Entertainment 1 |
| Network | TBS, MBS, Animax     Animax Asia |
| Original run | April 12, 2007 – September 28, 2007 |
| Episodes | 25 |
| Anime and Manga Portal | |
Big Windup (おおきく振りかぶって Ōkiku Furikabutte?), often shortened to just Ōfuri (おお振り?), is a baseball manga series by Asa Higuchi, serialized in the monthly seinen Afternoon magazine since 2003. It has been adapted into a TV anime series, animated by A-1 Pictures, which premiered in Japan on TBS. It received its international television premiere on Animax's English language networks in Asia, Animax Asia.
The manga series won the prestigious Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize for best creative work in 2006. In 2007, it won the Kodansha Manga Award for general manga.2
Contents |
Story
- See also: List of Big Windup! characters
The series, set in Saitama, follows the story of Ren Mihashi. Mihashi was the previous ace pitcher in his middle school's baseball team, but it seems that he only got the position because his grandfather was the owner of the school. His teammates (especially the team's catcher) hated him, and they always lost their games. Mihashi is thoroughly convinced that he is a lousy baseball pitcher and he graduates to high school with extremely low self-esteem. He then transfers to Nishiura high school with plans of quitting baseball, because he does not believe he is good enough to succeed at baseball. However, he is dragged into Nishiura's baseball team by their coach. Assisted by his new teammates (and especially the catcher, Takaya Abe), he grows in stature, confidence and skill, helping his team excel with his own abilities.
Development
While growing up in Saitama, Asa Higuchi became familiar with baseball by reading the manga Dokaben. When she was in high school, the story of a local baseball team wound up inspiring her to come up with the idea for her own baseball manga. In the original version, Mihashi never spoke and characters like Momoe, Kanou and Haruna didn't exist yet. Following that, she collected data on high school baseball for over 10 years in order to create the manga, and she worked with the school she had attended, Urawanishi High School, in the year prior to the serialization.3
Five months prior to the serialization of Ōkiku Furikabutte in Afternoon, Higuchi published a one shot in the magazine titled "The Basic of Basics". The story was centered around the characters of the Musashino Dai Ichi school, who would show up in the series itself.3
Anime
The series is adapted into a TV anime series, animated by A-1 Pictures, which premiered in Japan on TBS from April 2007. It also aired during the same month across several of TBS's affiliated TV networks, including MBS, BS-i and CBC. One month later, the series also aired on the Japanese Animax.
Staff
- Original Work: Asa Higuchi's Ōkiku Furikabutte (serialized in the monthly Afternoon magazine)
- Director: Tsutomu Mizushima
- Series Composition: Yōsuke Kuroda
- Character Design and Chief Animation Director: Takahiko Yoshida
- Action Animation Director: Jun'ichirō Taniguchi
- Accessories Design: Takuya Suzuki
- Art Director: Yukihiro Shibuya
- Color Design: Miyuki Satō
- Photography Director: Ei Rōhei
- Editing: Shigeru Nishiyama
- Sound Director: Hiromi Kikuda
- Mixer: Riyō Yamada (Sound Team)
- Sound Effects: Tomozaku Mitsui (Sound Box)
- Music: Shirō Hamaguchi
- Production: A-1 Pictures
Theme songs
- Opening theme
- "Dramatic" (ドラマチック Doramachikku?)
- Performance: Base Ball Bear
- 2nd Opening Theme
- "Seishun Line" (青春ライン?)
- Performance: Ikimonogakari
- Ending theme
- "Medaka no Mita Niji" (メダカの見た虹?)
- Performance: Kozue Takada
- 2nd Ending Theme
- "Arigatō" (ありがとう?)
- Performance: SunSet Swish
Episodes
Reception
 |
Please help improve this section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page. (October 2008) |
Big Windup! has achieved both critical and commercial success. In 2007, it won the Kodansha Manga Award for general manga,2 and the 11th volume of the manga was the best selling manga volume in its week of release,4 and sold over 400,000 copies in its first three weeks of release.5
References
- ^ Funimation Acquires Big Windup! Baseball TV Anime
- ^ a b "過去の受賞者一覧 : 講談社漫画賞 : 講談社「おもしろくて、ためになる」出版を" (in Japanese). Kodansha. Retrieved on 2007-08-21.
- ^ a b Higuchi, Asa (2005). "Omake". Ōkiku Furikabutte Volume 3. Kodansha. pp. 165-173.
- ^ "Japanese Comic Ranking, October 21-27" (in English). Anime News Network. Retrieved on 2008-10-29.
- ^ "Japanese Comic Ranking, November 4 - 10". Retrieved on 2008-11-13.
External links
- (Japanese) Official website of the anime
- (Japanese) TBS's official anime website
- (Japanese) MBS's official anime website
- (Japanese) A-1 Pictures's official production blog
- (English) Funimation official site
- (English) [1]
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 8 January 2009, at 17:01.
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