Mai Ball - Ongoing Impression
Here it is, my promised writing on the sports manga
Mai Ball. This is my third impression of an ongoing manga after
Gunka no Baltzar and
Helck. If you don't know it yet, I try to avoid writing long impression on an ongoing series due to how they can become a subject of extreme changes, but I'm not entirely averse to it in case there's series that require my immediate attention.
I'm going to use this image again just because I can.
Mai Ball is a sports manga, and just like any of its contemporaries, it employs character cast compromised mostly with (cute) females. And since I said
mostly, of course there's a male main character amidst the girl. With all of that,
Mai Ball shaped up quite nicely to become another harem series with sport gimmick. Do I have to mentioned that it also contained a heavy dose of fanservice as well? With that art style, you sure will get a lot of it as the story goes on.
If you exposed to the series via single pages that posted around of the internet, especially the one that shows the girls taking bath or panels with convenience shots on thighs or asses, you probably going to have the impression that
Mai Ball isn't that much different from its contemporaries (just like me). The earlier chapters being lean heavily on fanservice and lewd aspect of it doesn't help
Mai Ball to prove otherwise. Mai's sexual fantasy put her supposedly skillful football play literally out of the picture, as if the mangaka confirm our suspicion that the sport aspect is just yet another gimmick to make cute girls flocking to the football genius Kunimitsu.
As the series goes on however,
Mai Ball slowly shows that there's football in it and the word "ball" in its title is not just euphemism for girl tits. The main team introduction the being shown to us not long after series of Mai's sexual fantasies established that most of these girls are going to play football for real. They've got motivation and background that solidify their role as football players, not just cute girls that somehow got stumbled into a sports manga. Even in the introduction where these girls tell their body measurement to Kunimitsu for no reason besides Reika started it first, the scene still shows their competitive spirit and they are playing the game for winning.
Admittedly the series still leans heavily on its ecchi and harem side, where there's an onsen chapter for every training match. However as the story progresses the amount of content between football and ecchi gradually shift. There are still onsen chapter, but less frequent. You can see convenience thigh, crotch, and ass shot panels, but the whole page still dedicated to the action flow of the ongoing match. The peak of the shift happened at the Franklin High chapters where Kunimitsu is absent, and almost all of the involved characters are female including Franklin High's coach. Yet Kijikita High managed to get through it because of Reika's own resourcefulness, showing that these girls are not reliant on Kunimitsu as a coach, strategist, and ultimately male lead character.
What thoroughly impress me about this manga is how Inoue Sora managed to draw the ecchi, the girls, and the sports without one degrading the other. It have been discussed before by OniBarubary where the nature of ecchi and fanservice of
Mai Ball is innocent and/or fluffy, an opinion that I'm in agreement with after reading through all the onsen chapters. The girl are showing tits and ass because they happened to take bath and of course naked during that time. They are never IIRC, show poses that served only for the eyes of the non-existent viewer (that is the reader) that doesn't make sense except as fanservice. This even holds true for the numerous ass, and thighs shot that spread across the manga where I feel it just the camera being conveniently placed that way, not the girls shoving their private part to the reader all of the sudden. Such execution and presentation have made ecchi and fanservice aspect of
Mai Ball rarely feel intrusive and kinda respects its character.
When speaking presentation however, it's not the ecchi-girl, but rather the sport-girl aspect that impress me the most. The girls are bumped to each other without making any weird and abnormal poses (not faces since Reika exist). They protest or trying to show innocence when a player got tripped down after a stands off. They exchanged technique, and lessons they've received from Kunimitsu to each other. They sweat, they shout, and they exhausted throughout the match like they're really into it. Youko even
dived to gave her team a free shot that proved to be vital to the team's victory against Franklin High. Inoue Sora shows that he's not writing a harem-sports, but rather a sports-harem story where the football actually matters more than the harem. It's no wonder that in later chapter we've got a panel like
this, something that I feel could only be found in serious sports manga. He even managed to transform Chidori, the seemingly token loli character from the first impression of her, into a relentless and tough player from the
first page of chapter 75. The girls are truly sportswomen playing football, and I really loved it due to how rare such portrayal is in manga.
While the harem is clearly a third hand matter here, I'd be lying if the story is not hurt by its harem framework. The main girls are competitive bunch that really love to play football and show off their skill. However, as far as the story goes, Inoue Sora haven't give most of these characters a proper motivation and goal
why they're playing. Mitsu and Shimagawa twins even have been shown that they stopped playing not too long before the main story starts. Their motivation as of now is to impress Kunimitsu and live up his expectation, which is very harem thing to have. Meanwhile such motivation just doesn't make sense for all of the girls, especially the likes Saki who play because she likes sport or the Shimagawa twins who probably is the same. One could argue that they seemingly like to fought over Kunimitsu only because they don't want to lose against Reika and they're not actually infatuated with him. I thought of that agree, but it still deny the characters of proper motivation that they should have got in the first place.
Thankfully Inoue Sora have shown that he's not against girls having a proper motivation to play football. The harem framework is just exist within the Kijikita High, and the opposition exist solely on their own right (so it's not like they become part of the harem after they got defeated like many harem series does). As such they've the benefit of freedom for their characters to have proper motivation besides craving for Kunimitsu dick. Tsubame, the cover girl of Franklin High is motivated by her dream and respect of the Japanese national female team. In return, her Russian friend is driven by her desire to have Tsubame meet her expectation and dream. While they're just two characters that's not part of the main cast, I really love to see those girls have proper motivation
why they play football. They're actual character, not just cardboard piece of tits and ass to be shown to the reader.
Speaking of characters, I think it's now the time to discuss the overall of the main cast. Undeniably, Reika Hakurai one of the best ojou-sama character archetype, even with her motivation to received attention, respect, and love from Kunimitsu. Being a sport manga about football however, it's not possible to have all the rest of the team to be fleshed out as much as Reika and Mai did. So it's just natural that the author try to make each of them memorable by assigning gimmick to them. What's unusual however, is how much of those gimmick are actually simple things that related to how they perform on the pitch. Mitsu are hot tempered, Youko tire as quick as she ran, Kiiro have stamina of a dog but just can't shoot a goal when the team needs it, even the Shimagawa twins take advantage of their condition to confused the opposition by switching places. Such grounded traits makes them stand out from each other whilst not devolved the team into a parade of freaks, a trapping where many sports manga falls into especially the hyperbolic one. There's something unfortunate however, because the grounded traits make the actually gimmick one much more stand out. Chidori can seemingly appear out of nowhere because she's hard to notice. Reika is defined by her masochist tendency. They are not that bad because their gimmick is actually matter to their position on the pitch. So yes, my main complaint over this is directed to Yuika, the worst girl in the series due to how strange and stretching her gimmick is by relation to football play. Not to mention compared to her team mate, she have the strangest appearance with that inexplainable nekomimi hair. She's like the embodiment of what could have wrong in female sports manga if Inoue Sora hadn't know what football really is and put harem in the front.
There's still a lot of thing that I want to talk about, but I'm feel this impression become too long for its own good (not to mention the writer's block that hit me while writing this). I'm just going to say that
Mai Ball is unexpectedly a solid sports manga. The characters depiction of doing sports is honest, and really feels like they actually playing. The amount of ecchis and fanservice especially during the early chapters however, makes
Mai Ball hard to recommended as people might've dropped it before the good part kicked off. I have great expectation on this series and I hope it doesn't take any odd turn by making (all) the girls become lesbian or some shits like that.
I promised to writer a whole paragraph about Chidori but since my writer's block doesn't allow, just let me post picture of her.
had some interesting battles forgot if it was based on real people or not
