[KFCC] Battlefield Baseball Review

Story: Getting First Place in the High School Baseball Championships is highly coveted in high schools in Japan and director of Seido High is ready to do anything to have the best team. However, Gedo High, a rival high school, and their zombie maniac team are a big obstacle to all the other high schools .

During the first game between Seido High and Gedo High, most of Seido High team is literally wiped out. By chance, Megane, one of the few players left alive, discovers that Jubeh, a newly arrived punk student, has the strength, power and a super throw that could match the power of the Gedo High team. Though, Jubeh lost his father previously while playing baseball and now blames himself for this and nothing will convince him to play baseball ever again. It is up to Megane and the High school director to build a new team before the next match… but how will they convince Jubeh to join the team?

Review: Reading the synopsis, you might think this to be similar to SHAOLIN SOCCER, except with baseball elements instead of soccer. The movie indeed shares characteristics with the Stephen Chow comedy, but quality wise, it can’t even be compare. Simply, it’s a shame that BATTLEFIELD BASEBALL doesn’t even live up to what it could have been.

SHAOLIN SOCCER had a sport and competition aspect in it. Are they going to win the next match, how is the team going to reach the finale, can they beat the evil team? In BATTLEFIELD BASEBALL, there’s not even one single baseball game and even if you are not a fan of baseball, you can easily feel the lack of the competitive elements in the plot. This removes almost all the thrill in the movie, which only leaves the struggle between the characters, which is not very interesting to begin with.

BATTLEFIELD BASEBALL, being a Manga adaptation, uses a very over the top style for the overall presentation and this aspect is very well executed. At least for those who like this style as people who don’t appreciate silly and slapsticks jokes won’t enjoy it very much. To fit the animated style, the story is fast paced, the characters look hilarious and the action scenes are hyper and totally unbelievable. Most of the film’s aesthetics are extreme and ridiculous, but is obviously meant to look this way and that’s what makes it enjoyable to watch.

Fans of VERSUS will be delighted to see Tak Sakaguchi, main actor in VERSUS, playing the role of Jubeh. His dark and lone hero style really matches the looks of what Jubeh should be. His martial art skills are also put to test in a few scenes too. Most of the characters have a very distinctive funny design that can’t be taken seriously. The funny aspects really help in compensating for the pretty low acting level of most of the actors in the film.

As mentioned before, the story is very fast paced in a way that there’s always something going on. However, even if there are plenty of silly moments, the action is very light on the violence. With the exception of a few short explosions and cheap plastic body part, we don’t see any violence directly on screen. Don’t expect violent fights like VERSUS or you will be greatly disappointed. This is a very strange concept in a movie called BATTLEFIELD BASEBALL to almost completely cut graphical violence. Especially when you have a Zombie team! You want to see them fighting and spilling blood over the field, but to our disappointment, this never happens. The movie also uses 3D special effect sparingly, probably because of budget restriction. The very few fights include a good use of wire work and over the top camera work to make them very entertaining.

BATTLEFIELD BASEBALL is probably a perfect example of what a beer and pretzel movie should be. It’s a good start for director Yudai Yamiguchi, who was Assistant director on the Ryuhei Kitamura movie VERSUS and we can probably expect much better and more from him in the near future. For the moment, though, BATTLEFIELD BASEBALL is not much of a good rent.