English Dub Review: Mix “I Want A Trade”

Steeerike!

Overview (Spoilers Below)

This week’s episode sees The Meisei team heading into the Tokyo Tournament following their advancement through the prelims and school on summer break. While the episode does allude to potential player trades, it appears this notion is more tongue-in-cheek having to do with the catchers with the bigger storyline being that in the first round of the Tokyo Tournament, Daisuke, whose practice outings are few and far between, shows up nonchalantly almost at the end of the game and then gets rocked for a home run thereby giving the opposing team, who has a strong ace of their own, the foreseeable lead until we get into next week’s episode.

Our Take

FINALLY! We get some dramatic baseball action, however, the English dub suffers for lack of production for the English dub. If this were a Netflix series, I guarantee those graphics detailing the baseball players’ stats would’ve been fully dubbed which would’ve helped in not only getting each player’s name but their stats so that we the viewers can understand who the strong players are and who the not-so-strong players are. I also would’ve really appreciated a baseball diamond graphic that would show who is on base much in the same way every TV network broadcasts baseball. I also would’ve liked to have seen more of an effort in the play-by-play department. Effective play-by-play in sports dramas is a fantastic way of elevating the stakes of the game by helping shepherd the story. This trick has worked in countless sports films like Cinderella Man, Miracle, and The Mighty Ducks and I think had it done right, could’ve done wonders here.

That said, we’re progressively getting into some great baseball action and I’m having fun with it. If more attention to detail was given to the overall presentation of the series, this would’ve been one of the greats.