English Dub Review: Tribe Nine: “It Takes Guts”

Overview: When a scared young man by the name of Haru is rescued from a group of thugs by the strong willed leader of the Minato Tribe, Shun Kamiya, and a energetic fisherman, Taiga, he will learn the joys involved in that of Extreme Baseball and his own self worth. 

Our Take: How do young future Japanese gangs handle disputes and tribe supremacy that would otherwise spiral out into violent aggression? Apparently with America’s favorite pastime in that of some good old fashioned baseball. 

Truthfully, not knowing much about this anime going into it, sports was the last thing I expected these gangs to hash out their issues through. That mostly has to do with how futuristic and vibrantly colorful the city of Neo-Tokyo is. The brief narration in the show’s opening moments does the bare minimum of offering just why these various delinquent gangs accepted the terms set forth by the government or how the rules and regulations of extreme baseball differ from the vanilla variety, but alas here we are. 

And where we are is absolutely bizarre but to lead us through this crazy city is that of Shun Kamiya, leader of the Minato Tribe. As far as main characters go, he’s very much business as usual as he comes as your everyday cool guy standing up for the little guy. Which in this case takes the form of a scaredy cat, Haru, and an enthusiastic wide-eyed fisher in Taiga, who Shun decides to help out and eventually recruit for this gang’s baseball team. However, surprisingly, is how both Shun and Taiga differ from their formulaic characteristics, in confronting Haru about his true nature through the observations they make about him and wanting him to empower himself rather than relying solely on others to do so. Other supporting cast members introduced help fill out the roster well in Saori, the team technician and strategist, who is kindhearted and bold and undoubtedly being a point of fanservice as shown by Haru’s clumsiness 

When challenged by a rival gang and with their pride on the line, the Minato tribe showcases the excitement that comes with XB (Extreme Baseball). There are some really cool concepts at play in various futuristic engine-like baseball ball enhancements or pitcher power enhancing machines, or even just the scaling and traversing the long range of the baseball “field” that takes place over an entire section of the raspberry blue neon drenched city. These ideas are executed, to a certain extent, with mixed results in terms of animation quality that is not enough to make this a grand slam. Coming off of Akudama Drive from Studio Pierrot, Liden Films thus far with this debut episode that they’re not yet on the level of that masterful sci-fi franchise, in terms of adapting Rui Komatsuzaki’s gothic pop character designs for beautiful animation. Considering Liden Films’ recent shoddy work on Tokyo Revengers, they don’t instill the most hope for visuals getting an uplift, however there is enough substance here with characters and the world that I’m excited for what the future holds for this forward thinking sports series.