Anime: Moshidora

The ace is avoiding the coach to the point he skips practice, due to a decision to pull him out of a game which was lost the past tournament; the catcher doesn't want to catch for that ace pitcher; the captain doesn't want to be captain; some players aren't really feeling comfortable in their current positions; some players are not performing well under pressure and breaking down due to errors, and feel depressed and guilty for causing the loss of the last tournament; the coach isn't really attempting to get his points across; and there's an abundance of new players who just joined.

The concept of running a baseball team like a business is nothing new. Actually, it's a pretty common theme in coach/management side of sports drama. 'Moshidora' is unique in that it specifies a single book and focuses on select concepts, but this presents a new set of problems. What happens is that the protagonist basically picks up Peter Drucker's "Management", then becomes a mindless drone who literally follows every single teaching on the book as if it really was the life's Bible. Last time I checked, management was an art that has best practices, but not an instruction manual!

Peter Drucker's book for a high school team is a very poor choice, because his books are written mainly for large corporations and nonprofits (like the Red Cross), whose ultimate goal is profit (or raising funds). That's why the concepts introduced in this series are like "organizations should be socially responsible", or "employee responsibility fosters morale/motivation" etc, that large corporation often neglect. It's also why the book focuses a lot on importance of marketing, because raising customer awareness and building lasting relationship with customers ultimately accomplish large organization's objectives. On the other hand, high school baseball team is a small organization, and their success is not measured by number of fans and revenue generated, but how far they advance into the tournament. This organizational objective was defined in one of the earlier episodes by the protagonist, to win. Marketing is not required to achieve that goal.

There were some interesting application of theories to a baseball team, but also stupid mistakes like confusing marketing with internal marketing and HRM (Human Resources Management). However, there were also many instances where things went way too conveniently just to prove the concept works. Especially, the application of "Innovation" was absolutely retarded. Anyone who knows anything about baseball knows that guessing the type of pitch and location is more than half the challenges a batter has to face against a pitcher. By pitching nothing but strikes, you're voluntarily abandoning the location aspect of guesswork, essentially allowing batters to swing every pitch without hesitation. Such a strategy would never work, unless the pitcher was a prodigy who throws at 100mph or nasty breaking balls with startling precision (he was not). And the opposing team is still surprised at the regional semifinals that they don't bunt? No, they would send scouts to spy on opposing teams way before reaching that far.

Baseball aside, it didn't even make sense from business management perspective. "Innovation" from management and HR perspective is not telling your employees never-seen-before strategy and have them to follow that. It's about creating an environment for employees that encourages innovation. 3M's Post-it Notes and Google's "20 percent time" are probably the most famous examples. Creation of strict employee guideline by upper management, and blindly following a single book as a manager is not "innovation" from the management perspective.

While excessive fantasy is acceptable, sometimes even preferred in sports drama, using inconceivable scenarios to demonstrate a business concept is not the way to educate. The thing with business concept is that it must be used on a case-by-case basis, a strategy that works for one firm does not work for another. There are hundreds of theories and many influential business theorists around. A manager's job is to determine which strategy should be used for their own organization, and how it should be implemented. By forcibly twisting the outcome in order to demonstrate a theory, the lesson becomes invalid.

I was actually watching this series with a faint hope that the protagonist would eventually decide to abandon the book. To my surprise, it actually happened, but in the most undramatic way imaginable. No matter how you think about it, she should've strayed from the book after the eye-opening event of a best friend's death, at the very climax where she ended up pointlessly trying to convince the coach not to change the batter. That would've been solid drama, maybe even teach a real lesson from the story. In the end, the show severely underplayed the realization of the book's limits, and missed the chance to show that one must choose what she believes is right rather than blindly following a manual, or should I call it "innovation in management". As it stands, the choice of keeping the batter who eventually hit the winning run seems like yet another convenient scriptwriting. It also appears to be done on her whim, as they were still living by the book after regional finals. It didn't even make sense they're trying to play the way "customer" wants, when they're not even a professional team that plays for direct revenue and fan base. Apparently the producer didn't understand the concept of organizational objective because he only read "Management". The climax, that fake swing sequence was extremely clever and dramatic, made possible by canny plot device in earlier episode. Unfortunately, it's too little too late by this point.

Characters in this show are just puppets. Their emotions are limited, their behaviors are fabricated to advance the story (I mean, what was with the protagonist's reaction in front of the team after her friend's death? "Can't read the atmosphere," as the Japanese call it, beyond belief). To be honest, I forgot all their names already, because I simply was not even close to connecting or caring about any of them.