Battery is a really, really bad sport anime.
September 28, 2016 7:00 AM Subscribe
This is not bait. This is not subtle. This is there to be recognized by people who know what they're looking for. A deliberate hand put this together, and it's all part of the much bigger overall theme. Battery is about self-discovery and societal oppression by way of growing up gay in Japan.Redditor TheHaruWhoCanRead shows why the recently concluded baseball anime Battery might be more than meets the eye. Note: spoilers.
For those interested in watching, Battery is available via Amazon Prime and originally ran on the Noitamina programming block last (summer 2016) season.
A battery is the pitcher & catcher duo within a baseball team, who tend to form a very close relationship together. Pitcher and catcher are of course also somewhat sneering slang terms for gay sex roles. The Japanese equivalent being the uke/seme division as portrayed in shounen ai/yaoi/boys love manga and anime series, which tend to be written for a (heterosexual) female audience, often by female creators, rather than a gay male audience. As Haru discusses, Battery's two ending themes especially invoke the shounen ai genre in its imagery.
Fascinating! They did a great job explaining the tropes and how they played out in Battery.
posted by redsparkler at 1:59 PM on September 28, 2016
posted by redsparkler at 1:59 PM on September 28, 2016
Meanwhile, this season, a different, potential apt metaphor...
Keijo!!!!!!!!posted by maryr at 2:49 PM on September 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
Kaminashi Nozomi (17) is an exceptional gymnast. So much so that colleges with some of the best gymnastic programs are trying to recruit her. Unfortunately for them, she has other plans. Due to her family being extremely poor, money is everything to her. That's why she wants to step into the world of "Keijo." "Keijo" is a type of gambling sport where girls stand on a small floating platform and compete against one another. The aim is to push the other contestant off of the platform into the water, but they are only allowed to use their butt or breasts to push the others off. Will Nozomi be able to compete in the intense world of "Keijo" and bring wealth and fortune for her family?
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Now I have to go look up everything HaruWhoCanRead has ever written that was probably the best anime exegesis I've ever read.
posted by AxelT at 8:11 AM on September 28, 2016