English Dub Review: Tribe Nine: “Walk-off Win”

Overview: Taiga (Phillip Sacramento) makes his heroic return to help Haru (Casey Mongillo), Saori (Brittney Karbowski) and the rest of the Minato Tribe trounce the Ota Tribe. 

Our Take: With Taiga officially back on the scene, he is very much the glue that holds the Minato Tribe’s morale together when they are brought down by Aoyama’s betrayal. He inspires the team to play to win and not let Aoyama’s dishonesty ruin their fight against the Otori Tribe. It is a nice extra shade to his fiery character in, despite how he acts, there is real maturity that he has grown into in keeping the spirit of the team alive when no else will.  

Besides his character, what has also improved is Taiga’s batting average on account of his training with him having immense raw strength, enough to change the wind direction and blast the ball though the skies. Doing what they do best, the Chiyoda Tribe continues to play dirty, bringing in a plethora of lackeys to step on the plate and rack up a huge sum of points, with no robot referee to stop them due to them tampering with the machines. The gang stops the psycho woman of Ota, Enoki, who becomes humorously infatuated with Taiga’s tough persona. If Haru’s moping around was as bothersome for you as it was for me, thankfully he finally snaps out of it to get Minato the victory with some words from Aoyama that feel long overdue, especially with how long he was in that state and how he has done this song and dance before. 

There is a weird transition where suddenly Aoyama and Fucho are transported to a remote highway underpass in what feels like out of thin air. Fucho delves into his ‘chaotic shtick’, as Aoyama nicely puts it, that does start to feel a mustache-twirly by the end with how clichély desperate he becomes, blowing himself up with C4 in the process. Joining the Minato Tribe in their celebratory drink is Enoki, who hopefully sticks around with how personable she is in her maniacal obsessiveness and sweet disposition around Taiga. One person who tries to hit the road, however, is that of Aoyama feeling the guilt of what he did. Of course, Minato, with the familial vibe they have, encourages Aoyama to stay in a sweet forgiving make-up scene between him and the gang. 

Fucho, surprisingly, manages to survive an explosion at point blank range because why not, right? Whether or not he stays that way remains up in the air with Kiyoshiro having found him, out for blood and trying to finish the job he set out to do. One person who is most certainly not in the land of the living is Otori with his dishonorable XB playstyle becoming too much for Ojori to handle. Ojori was always a more imposing villain anyway and him dispatching and usurping an eyesore of an antagonist is a crucial development point to progress his downward path. How Aoyama will play into Ojori’s tortured mindset moving forward will be interesting with how little is known of any humanity or softer side to the masked brute.