Battlefield Baseball

Also known as 'Battlefield Stadium'.

All high school baseball teams have dreaded the day they will have to face off against the Gedo High; with good reason. Gedo High's approach to baseball is to take it as a fight to the death, and they are notorious for leaving no survivors in the teams they face. The principal of an anonymous school, Kocho, while wanting to go pro with his present team, breaks down completely when he learns they will be facing Gedo in the upcoming championship.

A fight on the school grounds raises Kocho's hopes as he sees the troublesome transfer student (rumored to have killed a man, escaped prison, expelled from multiple schools) Jubeh fight one of the school's drop-out bullies, Bancho. The two square off using "Fighting Baseball" (with Bancho swinging and Jubeh trying to avoid the blows, each miss counting as a single Strike) and Kocho becomes convinced he can defeat Gedo using Jubeh's fighting skills. Jubeh, having sworn not to play baseball, decides to help Kocho out. Things are looking up until the day of the game. Jubeh fails to show up (having been imprisoned for no apparent reason) and Gedo High team does its usual game. Jubeh escapes captivity and arrives at the game after it is finished to find a handful of survivors.

The survivors then undertake the task of killing the Gedo High team in order to prevent further casualties and collateral victims falling to their brutal game style. The entire plot ends up in a one-on-one battle of Jubeh against the Gedo High Coach.

Starring Tak Sakaguchi (Versus) and directed by Yudai Yamaguchi (who was, interestingly, a writer in the movie Versus himself), Battlefield Baseball can best be explained as Shaolin Soccer turned Up to Eleven.

Tropes used in Battlefield Baseball include:
  • Calling Your Attacks: "Jubeh Special!", "Super Tornado!"
  • David Versus Goliath: Gedo High team annihilates their opponents. Literally.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Subverted. Despite being called "Battlefield Baseball" and thematically centering around the sport, there is precious little of it in the actual movie.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Played with Four Eyes keeping the Poison Bat from striking Jubeh and subverted when it turns into a case of a Unexplained Recovery.
  • Hammerspace: Jubeh's own bat, Gedo High Coach's humongous piece of wood and Bancho's bat all appear both out of nowhere and are too large objects to conceal.
  • I Know Madden Kombat: The players mostly use baseball bats and balls as weapons.
  • Golden Snitch: The final fight against Gedo is won by Jubeh's natural ability to stir people with his words and bring them back to life with his tears.
  • Luke, I Am Your Father: Played for laughs. Jubeh is actually the long-lost brother of Four Eyes.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: Jubeh, in trying to improve on his already-unstoppable pitch, threw the ball impossibly fast and killed his father.
  • No Name Given: Gorilla, Four Eyes, Vice Principal, Two of the Three Cheerleaders, Gedo Coach/Gedo Players.
  • Opposing Sports Team: Taken to horrific extremes as the Gedo High doesn't even bother with baseball and simply kills whoever gets on the field with them.
  • Our Zombies Are Different: Gedo High baseball team consists entirely of zombies, including the coach. They talk, walk, fight, even drink.
  • Power of Friendship: Played. Jubeh gives a speech about the power of friendship to the Gedo coach, bordering on a PSA, telling him he lost because he saw his players as tools and treated them horribly.
  • Tempting Fate: The Gedo Coach does this at the end of the movie in the form of wishing there was a Worthy Adversary for his team out loud, which is followed immediately by Jubeh's explosive (literally) arrival.
  • The Cavalry
  • The Cheerleader: Averted and subverted. Throughout the movie, three cheerleaders maniacally cheer on whatever they happen to be fixated upon at a given moment.
  • Unexplained Recovery: Played for laughs. Almost every main character dies once. One reincarnates as a kid. Two others are resurrected as cyborgs "thanks to advanced technology".
  • Up to Eleven: Constantly. Every single moment seems to have an active desire to top the one that came before.
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