Hachigatsu wa Yoru no Battingusenta de (2021)

Life is Baseball

As the proverbial phrase goes, when life gives you lemons you make lemonade out of them. Or in baseball terminology, when life throws a curveball at you, hit it right out of the park.

Hachigatsu wa Yoru no Batting Center de revolves around a mysterious ex-pro baseball player, Ito Tomohiro, who hangs out at a local batting centre helping a variety of female customers deal with their life problems using what he calls Baseball Theory. He is able to discern their predicaments by observing the way they bat and has an uncanny ability of psychologically projecting their psyche into an utterly immersive fantasy world - a baseball stadium where he draws upon his experience in baseball competitions and strategies to deal with their respective problems.

Central to this premise is 17-year old Natsuha Mai, a part-timer at the batting centre and who happens to have her own troubled past. Joining Tomohiro’s efforts in helping these customers enables her to eventually exorcise her own demons.

Running at 30 minutes each, this 9-episode medium-budget production features slice-of-life themes presented in an episodic format that involve the workplace, family and relationship dynamics. Although the themes are not explored with profound depth, as expected of a short series, the storytelling of each story arc is rather engaging and still manages to tug at the heartstrings, particularly in the final episode.

The leads are decently portrayed by Sekimizu Nagisa and Nakamura Toru, as Mai and Tomohiro respectively. A Japanese baseball legend makes a cameo appearance during each episode, along with the multitude of guest stars. The catchy and upbeat J-rock intro and outro themes are performed by CreepHyp, namely Shoumona and Konnani Kanashiinoni Hara ga Naru.

All in all, Hachigatsu wa Yoru no Batting Center de is a well-produced quality short format series which I would categorise as a lighthearted healing drama. The baseball terminology isn’t too challenging to comprehend, provided you have good quality subs, while the life lessons conveyed are contemplative rather than outright didactic. A wholesome viewing experience indeed.

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Coming from a country where sometimes you'd think that only one sport exists (call it soccer or football as you wish...or "calcio", as we do), you might understand how difficult it is for me to make people here understand why baseball is my favorite sport!
Well, this drama actually happens to sum that up pretty nicely: because there's so much more to "the old ball game" than most people would actually think!
On the one hand, while other sports as well could act as a metaphor of how life is (for example soccer itself, what with the rich ones having the refs on their side, like, always...and the "divers" rarely being punished for their unsportsmanlike conduct - quite the opposite, often being rewarded with fake penalties and free-kicks!), I honestly can't think of any other sport that so well could act as a metaphor of how life *should* be (quoting from a pretty nice - if a tad too star-spangled propagandistic for my taste and possibly also for its own good, LOL - YouTube clip from PragerU: "Three strikes and you're out, and not even Washington's best lawyers could help you avoid that!"). But all in all, that's just me being partial to my favorite sport, and I'd bet any fan of any sport could probably state the very same thing, LOL.
On the other hand - and this lil' dorama really shines at this! - we could definitely say that baseball can indeed teach us so many precious lessons that we could apply to our daily life, with all its ups and downs: for example, how to be a real leader, or how to accept not being a leader but the best sub we can be, instead; how to make a stand and be respected, or how to know to be humble and listen to those who know more than us; how to accept a failure as long as it means living on to fight another day...etc., etc....
Each episode of this brilliant series shows us exactly that: how much we can all learn and improve, day by day, step by step....because if life is baseball, as long as you love it and give it your all, everything will be alright.
A superb premise masterfully developed in a great script, some wonderful acting by the leads as well as by the weekly guest stars, a great photography...and an endless love for baseball and for life.
What's not to like? Perfect 10! Or, to adopt baseball terminology: a perfect game! ^___-

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