WARNING: The following article contains significant spoilers for Episode 1 of Tribe Nine, currently streaming on Funimation.
Tribe Nine has finally premiered on Funimation. The sci-fi sports anime takes place in a world in which gangs must solve their disputes by playing "Extreme Baseball," or "XB" -- a version of baseball with mech suits, arm cannons and electric shocks. Another surprising element of Tribe Nine's XB experience is how it conveys a player's approach to the game.
Episode 1 introduces Taiga, a character who introduces himself as "The world's best tuna fisherman from abroad." He appears to have a blustering, boastful personality, stepping in to save the meek Haru Shirokane from muggers but challenging legendary player Shun Kamiya to a game of XB. Ultimately though, Kamiya drafts Taiga to join his team, the Minato Tribe, as they are challenged to play XB against the wealthy Shinagawa Tribe.
When Taiga steps up to bat, Shinagawa's leader and pitcher Yutaka Gotanda is relieved to be up against a "straightforward type" with "simple thinking." Sure enough, Taiga misses his first two pitches. Minato's Manami Daimon calls out, "Too much power! Tone it down, Taiga!" Taiga responds, "Hell no! When you fish, you gotta set the hook like a boss!" At this point, the message of the scene clearly seems to be that Taiga is so single-mindedly obsessed with fishing that he forces everything he does into a fishing comparison, even to his own detriment.
When Gotanda launches the next pitch, Minato's other new recruit Haru is shocked to discover that the urban playing field is suddenly submerged in water, complete with fish swimming by his face. Gotanda's ball takes the form of a tuna and Taiga bats it away effortlessly. Haru gasps and bubbles escape his mouth. The scene returns to normal, but the image of Taiga hitting the ball fades into an image of Taiga catching a fish, his bat replaced with a fishing rod.
This image of Taiga might be a memory of his, especially as his stylish street clothes fade into overalls. This conveys, without dialogue, exactly how Taiga draws on his memories of fishing to help him with the game. Similarly, the earlier image of the field filling with water lets the audience into Taiga's inner world. Taiga may not be a perfect XB player, but when he thinks of the game in terms of fishing, he commands the field -- a far cry from Daimon and the audience's initial impression of him as an obsessed loudmouth. Visually replacing the field with the sea is a much more effective way of explaining this than simply having Taiga describe the comparison.
The scene takes advantage of Tribe Nine being an animated series. Filling a scene with water to convey a character's thoughts would be difficult in live-action format, but the sudden transition between land and sea would be all but impossible. A live-action would likely have to use animation to achieve this effect. Especially noteworthy is the scene of Haru gasping underwater; a complete fantasy that is powerful because of how it completes the transition from the strange but gritty world of Tribe Nine to a world of total imagination.
The scene is also beautiful in its own right. "Minato Tower" submerged in water, is a striking image, especially in the Tron-esque neon world of Neo Tokyo. The tuna themselves are impressively detailed considering that this sports anime will likely not demand that the designs be reused very often. Their animated movements vary depending on whether they're swimming peacefully to reinforce the visuals of the aquatic environment, or rushing viciously and inexorably toward Taiga as a stand-in for the ball.
When Taiga tackles a Shinagawa baseman, (XB has a lot of rule changes to regular baseball,) the image fades to him laying a huge bass out at a market. Taiga successfully reaches the base. Kamiya asks Haru, "Did you see the ocean, too?" This raises a fascinating question about the previous scene: was it simply a visual metaphor to convey Taiga's mindset and unexpected skill, or a visual filter created as a supernatural side effect of the bizarre game of Extreme Baseball? Kamiya could mean his question literally, or he could be asking Haru, "Did you also experience Taiga's skill so viscerally that you could see the source of the passion that motivated him?"
Only one episode of the anime has released so far, but the rest of the series will surely reveal more about the true nature of XB. Whether the effect is physically present in the world of the anime or not, the series will hopefully reveal the inner thoughts of the other players in just as a creative and visually inventive way.
