Welcome to This Week in Shonen Jump, our weekly check in on Viz’s various Shonen Jump series. Viz has recently changed their release format, but our format will mostly remain the same. We will still review the newest chapters of one title a week, now with even more options at our disposal. The big change for our readers is that, even without a Shonen Jump subscription, you can read these most recent chapters for free at Viz.com or using their app.
This week, Ken checks in with “Nine Dragons’ Ball Parade.” If you have thoughts on this or any other current Shonen Jump titles, please let us know in the comments!
Nine Dragons’ Ball Parade Ch. 1
Written by Mikiyasu Kamada
Illustrated by Ashibi Fukui
Reviewed by Ken Godberson III
Sports manga and I have a complicated relationship. I always hear the massive praise they get and even the ones I have read I can acknowledge their quality. The thing is… it’s sports and I don’t care about sports. I could go into my reasons (the big one lately a big societal reverence of people who can hit or throw a ball well and give them lots of money as opposed to… you know… frontline workers during a global pandemic) but I’ve gone into books where I’ve never been a fan of the premise but were won over by strong character work. With that in mind: “Nine Dragons’ Ball Parade” is Shonen Jump’s latest manga centering around baseball. So does it do enough to make me want to enjoy the characters doing the things that they do?
The answer to that is… kinda? Maybe?
Our story begins with a young student named Tamao Azukida, whose dream is to play for the super elite Hakuo Baseball team. While he isn’t the most athletically gifted, he has an incredibly analytical mind and he’s spent the last two year calculating a perfect training regime and studying his competition to become a catcher for the team. But none of the other players will give him respect and don’t follow his strategies for pitches.
Enter the other half of this book’s duo: Tao Ryudo. Ryudo barely understands the rules of baseball but has a pitching arm like a tactical missile strike. He’s all heart and instinct but without being abrasive or annoying. I really enjoy the fact that these two very different people aren’t going to be rivals, but instead are working together. It’s a nice change of pace from introducing the “hero” and their “rival.”
The subversion of Azukida and Ryudo’s relationship wasn’t the only one I enjoyed. I’ll lay out some spoilers here: Azukida does not get picked up for the team but Ryudo does. The reasoning Hakuro team doesn’t select Azukida for the team comes off as reasonable: they think he has a great analytical mind…but they already have an analysis team. They don’t need that. And they don’t come off as condescending or find him an inferior. It sets up the final hook for the series without ever dipping into a stock rival team.
The artwork here is very good. I like the variety of individuality Fukui adds, even to background characters where you could forgive an artist for going a bit samey. Azukida and Ryudo’s facial designs remind me to a degree of the artwork of “Hunter x Hunter”’s Yoshirio Togashi, in particular around the eyes. The action shots taking place during the tryout game are very well constructed and have a cohesive flow, culminating in a fantastic double page spread of Ryudo showing what he can do at the pitcher’s mound shooting off a 140 mph pitch like a maniac.
Is “Nine Dragons’ Ball Parade” going to get me to care about Baseball? No, probably not. Will the characters get me to care about their care for baseball? Possibly. This inaugural chapter has certainly put it on the road to do that. So I can say if you are into baseball and want a new sport manga, this one has provided a good start at the very least.
Final Verdict: 7.0- Avoiding some nagging shonen cliches, “Nine Dragons’ Ball Parade” provides a good start to Shonen Jump’s newest sport manga.
