Is it your mind that shapes you, or…… your body?

“Oblivion Battery” (忘却バッテリー), created by Eko Mikawa as a manga series and animated by MAPPA in 2024, finished season 1 in July and has announced season 2.

Kaname Kei (要 圭) and Kiyomine Haruka (清峰 葉流火) were a pair of Aces on the “Treasure Valley Youth Baseball Team” (宝谷シニア), but Kei lost his memory when he started high school. Since Haruka and Kei were a pair all along their life, Haruka decided to refuse the offers of prestigious schools to go with Kei into an ordinary high school. There, they met a few opponents they defeated during their middle school baseball competitions, and built a team with them against the schools they rejected.

Oblivious Catcher 

Kei is the catcher in the battery. He was different as he started baseball, but due to the pressure he was under, he formed his second personality of Shisho (智将), his perfect imagination of himself, while his main personality Aho (アホ) was muted deep inside him. At the point of graduation, his Shisho personality fell asleep. Aho did not have any memory of baseball and his experiences.

Shisho had a high ego and was arrogant, looking forward without caring about past experience. He became enthusiastic, making friends and making jokes as an adolescent male as Aho. Kei has Dissociative Identity Disorder, though he cannot play as Aho, so Shisho will sometimes step out and handle the match for him. Despite that, Aho was also educated and trained by his teammates in case Shisho cannot show up. The interaction between Kei’s alternate personalities overall is a shining point of the anime.

Oblivious Pitcher

Haruka is the pitcher of the battery. At the start of the show, he seems like one of the characters in most animes, such as Badini in “Orb: On the movement of the Earth,” nonchalant and skilled, being written to lead the team. But as the story goes, he is revealed as a pretty complex character who is highly dependent on others, especially Kei. 

He is also conceited due to his performance, mentally weak regarding emotions and has some sort of expression disorder that causes unresolved conflicts with Kei. Over the arc of the season, Haruka eventually eases his ego and conceitedness. His character’s arc was unexpectedly smooth, with no awkward or weird feelings as most  forced personality changes.

Effort or talent?

Across the episodes, the theme of talent over effort is present all over. As the supposed protagonist Yamada Taro (山田 太郎) was defeated, the teammates in their high school, Toudou Aoi (藤堂 葵) and Chihaya Shunpei (千早 瞬平), were also defeated by Kei and Haruka. Three of them went to the obscure high school to give up on baseball, even though they put almost their whole life into their baseball career, altering their habits for baseball and spending a huge amount of hard work. 

Though it seemed to be demonstrating the importance of “talent over effort”, the show placed more emphasis on the idea of “with or without talent, effort will always be the thing that keeps you from falling.” Rather than prioritizing talent as the most influential condition, the anime specified that talent only decided how much you could have and should have put, not how much effort you put in over others.

Behind the Battery

The production team, MAPPA, focusing on baseball, has created incredible visuals of baseball actions. Characters have clear muscle lines and smooth in-game animation, and there are also impactful visions of hitting the baseball and base running. The passionate atmosphere makes the audience immersed in the tense scenes.

With a balanced focus, the story is neither too passionate nor too calm, and it merges serious elements with funny character interactions between Haruka, Kei and Yamada. The contrast between these times and their actual matches makes it worthy of so much hype.

“Oblivion Battery” would be a great fresh anime to watch for sports anime fans, or for those who enjoy daily life anime but also want to try something different. It’s also enlightening for those who are frustrated or feel defeated in sports, academics or even life in general. Its influence is impressive.