English Dub Review: Sonny Boy “The Great Monkey Baseball”

Overview:

Nagara might have the most important power of anyone. The ability to warp to different worlds. While spending time at the baseball field with Cap, Nagara and everyone learn of the Monkey League. A baseball league played by, you guessed it, monkeys. Mizuho and Nozomi really want to see the monkeys and luckily Ace has a way to. A special piece of gear but he isn’t giving it away for nothing. He challenges them to a one-inning game and if he wins Nagara has to take everyone home.

Our Take:

This show is so insane I don’t even know what to say about it half the time. I am going to expect just about anything after this episode. I mean monkeys that play baseball but are also somehow invisible to all but a select few? I mean yeah why not? Not like much else has made sense in this show. I also don’t mean any of this negatively, as long as you know to not expect anything making sense Sonny Boy is a fun ride.

On the animation side of things I really like how simple it gets at times. Some of the shots zoom out and when they do it gives off a watercolor aesthetic and a lot of the characters take on a more minimalistic form. It’s really cool and definitely something that stands out as a way the animators wanted to make a point with this show. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if it was on purpose and will have a thematic purpose at the end.

Nagara seems to have the ability to warp to different worlds but doesn’t know how to control it. They go to many different worlds before giving up and staying in the current one for now. I also get the feeling that time must move differently for some people or something. The way Cap described the Monkey League made it sound like it had been going on for years. But baseball was only just recently introduced to them by Ace. It doesn’t make sense and if the rest of this show did make sense it would bother me but for Sonny Boy, it’s just another drop in the bucket.

I have no idea where this is going to go but a new development has come up in the form of a teacher showing up. It will be interesting to see what her being there does to the dynamics of the students and what that might change. Sonny Boy is a wild ride and I feel like it’s worth it to watch it just to see the craziness and if it might make sense in the end.