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, Brian 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, Chapter 4
Written by Mikiyasu Kamada
Illustrated by Ashibi Fukui
Translated by Camellia Nieh
Lettered by Snir Aharon
Reviewed by Brian Salvatore
The last time someone on staff was talking about “Nine Dragons’ Ball Parade,” it was Ken, who enjoyed the manga despite his lack of love for baseball. Ken and I are alike in a lot of ways, but in on way we are polar opposites, and that is in our relationship to baseball. I love baseball, have loved baseball since I was a kid, and dedicate a huge chunk of my spring/summer months to watching, writing about, and podcasting about baseball. And yet, I was not initially very excited about “Nine Dragons’ Ball Parade,” because it can be hard to properly enjoy something if they are getting the facts wrong. While Ken was worried that his dislike of baseball would hamper his enjoyment, I was worried that my love for the game and general pedantry would hamper my enjoyment.
I’m very glad to say, we were both wrong.
One of the most endearing aspects of “Nine Dragons’ Ball Parade” is the balance between the characters’ pure love of baseball and the readers’ potential indifference. For folks who get the Satchel Paige reference, there is plenty of nuanced baseball information here. But for those who couldn’t care less, the story is really one of chasing a dream and blossoming friendship. While, yes, this is a sports manga, it’s based around characters that would be interesting and enjoyable even if they weren’t talking athletics.
Ashibi Fukui manages to walk that line with the artwork, as well. While the introductory shot of Yoshitaka Tsurugi has him holding his bat like Craig Counsel, it also resembles He-Man lifting the Power Sword to the sky. The reader can choose to interpret the artwork either way, but what isn’t up for debate is Fukui’s ability to present a story that is full of drama and emotion, even when mundane things are happening. The facial expressions are classic manga, and using the over the top reactions to relatively mundane revelations gives the book both a more playful reading experience and a winking nod to the reality that high school baseball maybe isn’t quite so serious and important.
This chapter continues the Moneyball meets Bad News Bears thread of finding baseball players who have flown under the radar from the bigger schools in order to give their school a shot at beating the ever-winning Hakuo team. The first recruit the trio goes after is the aforementioned Tsurugi, a power hitter who, one day, just quit the game. While Mikiyasu Kamada makes the reader wait until next chapter to find out why, there’s a continued sense of creating characters that are more nuanced and interesting than a sports manga may initially bring to mind. Tsurugi is a mild-mannered, caring person from first glance, a far cry from the hulking behemoth we are led to believe he is. His secret may not wind up being too important, overall, but Kamada treats it like the Dead Sea Scrolls, examining it from different angles and giving the characters a trail of crackerjacks to follow.
While this is the first chapter to feel a little decompressed, it isn’t stretched so thin that the plot drags or that it as in unsatisfactory read; that said, if the story continues to take multiple chapters per recruit, it may begin to lose its ‘sports’ tag. Hopefully, the pace picks up a bit, because the story is fun, hopeful, and a perfect addition to Spring Training.
Final Verdict: 7.9 – A bit sluggish, but the incredibly fun ride continues.
