Tribe Nine Assembles Its Own Suicide Squad of the Series’ Strongest Opponents

WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Tribe Nine Episode 11, now streaming on Funimation.

The climactic Extreme Baseball game between Minato Tribe and Chiyoda Tribe's villainous Ojiro Otori looms over the dystopian world of Tribe Nine. Before Minato can confront him directly, Chiyoda Tribe's second-in-command Yui Kamiki has challenged them to another game to prove themselves worthy of playing against Ojiro.

Minato Tribe was faced with an elite group of Chiyoda members, whose exaggerated proportions could only exist in animation, but it was Kamiki's skills that proved especially formidable. To her surprise, a rogues' gallery of Minato Tribe's past opponents stepped in to act as substitutes and help turn the tide of the game. Even so, there was no guarantee that this would be enough to overcome Kamiki's assault, or that Minato's more dangerous opponents would be able to resist their worst impulses.

When Minato Tribe's Santaro Mita was knocked out by a hulking Chiyoda runner, Adachi Tribe's Hyakutaro Senju took the ball from his hand and said, "There's no rule against substitutes from another tribe, right?" This technicality set the precedent for the variety of tribe members that would join Minato's cause. Adachi's Rankichi Umeda caught a ball after chasing it on his motorcycle, technically just an advanced set of boot spikes. What seemed like such a frustratingly contrived loophole when Adachi opposed Minato in Episode 4 must now have been a considerable source of relief for the team.

The second group to join Minato's side was the business-minded Shinagawa Tribe. Shinagawa's Yutaka Gotanda arrived to assist Umeda with the justification that "Battle data about Chiyoda will fetch a lot of money." Given that Ojiro's excessively brutal new version of XB made the game more popular and successful than it had ever been, one might assume that Shinagawa Tribe would want his reign to continue so they could sell more of their premium equipment and data. This implies that Shinagawa's members had a surprising moral opposition to Ojiro that was even stronger than their desire for material success, and it's unexpectedly inspiring to see the least "cool" of Minato's opponents sacrifice their bottom line to do the right thing.

At this point, Kamiki herself had no choice but to join the game. In a touch of anime surrealism, she used her own leg as a bat, kicking away Senju's fireball pitch with the jet propulsion thrusters on her jumpsuit. She used this same technology to run to base. Shinagawa's analyst Minami Oi pitched a strategy for Gotanda to tag Kamiki, but he interrupted that he was already ahead of her because "While you're brilliant, your analysis can be a little slow." This banter is part of their relationship that couldn't be explored when Shinagawa served as a minor antagonist in Episode 1. This episode's spotlight on other tribes gave the anime a chance to explore these supporting characters' own dynamics in more depth.

Kamiki perhaps expectably defeated Gotanda in one-on-one combat, but she didn't expect his escape in a cloud of steam. Ota Tribe's leader Fucho Sonoda appeared behind Kamiki, already holding the ball -- the chaotic tribe evidently didn't feel the same need to announce their arrival as Adachi. Sonoda fought Kamiki, but it soon became clear that Oda's support of Minato Tribe would not be as heroic as the others'. It wasn't clear why Ota's Kiyoshiro Haneda had chosen not to kill Sonoda as was implied in Episode 9, but he probably would have if he knew that Sonoda would remotely detonate explosives attached to him in order to blow up the bridge he and Kamiki were fighting on.

Fucho Sonoda sneaks up behind Yui Kamiki in Tribe Nine.

As Sonoda explained to Kamiki, his motivations were not to save XB from Ojiro but to cause as much chaos as possible by taking down the powerful Otori family. It seems that, unlike Shinagawa Tribe, there is no hope of Ota Tribe having a heroic side, but Minato Tribe can't be picky about its allies when facing an enemy like Kamiki. However, when Kamiki survived the blast, Sonoda commented, "For real? You're more immortal than Kiyoshiro." This could be a hint that Kiyoshiro somehow survived the explosion. It would not be the first time an explosion in Tribe Nine turned out to be less fatal than it appeared, as Setagaya Tribe's Eiji Todoroki was revealed to have escaped the bombing of his house in Episode 7 completely unscathed.

One more relief batter stepped up to challenge Kamiki: Taiga's mysterious mentor Hanafuda Sakura. Finally, it seemed as though Kamiki had met her match, Sakura's body remaining still as she kicked him repeatedly in the head. Ultimately though, Kamiki shot Sakura in the chest with a pistol. Even though this move was perfectly legal under Ojiro Otori's twisted new XB rules, the fact that she resorted to these means after taking on the other tribes in combat only served to highlight Sakura's strength -- and make Kamiki look desperate in comparison.

Just as Kamiki was about to shoot Sakura again, Ojiro himself stepped between the two. If Kiyoshiro survived an explosion, surely Sakura can survive his gunshot. Ojiro's motivation is apparently to keep XB as violent as possible. With so many tribes united against Ojiro, they might just be able to win and demand the rules go back to the way they were -- but not without the brutal fight he always wanted.

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