In her Junior High years, the pitcher Yomi Takeda was not able to get very far in a cross-school
baseball tournament. Since the catcher on her team wasn't at her level, she couldn't use her signature
move, the "Magic Throw," and eventually regretted not being able to use it. After Junior High, she
decided to stop playing baseball and went to Shin Koshigaya High School, a school without a baseball
club.
There, she found her long lost childhood friend, Tamaki Yamazaki, who used to play catch ball​ with
her when they were kids. Tamaki also played baseball during her Junior High years as a catcher, and
could even catch Yomi's "Magic Throw!"
Their promise with each other during their childhood could now be fulfilled! Walking together on the
road of baseball once again...
The first episode pre-aired on March 8.
Tamayomi is not an anime about cute girls doing cute things. It's a sports anime that just happens to include cute girls and that's an important distinction. A CGDCT anime is less about whatever they're doing and more about the characters, their relationships to each other, and how damn cute they are. You care about the protagonist's relationship to her childhood friend more than you care that they're playing survival games or cooking beno or whatever. A sports anime on the other hand will focus more on the game itself. The characters aren't sidelines but it's presented in a way that should provide the viewer a greater appreciation for the sport. *Tamayomi* surprisingly does that. Tamayomi follows the relationship between Yomi and Tamaki, childhood friends who are reunited by their shared love of baseball and restart their high school's baseball team which was disbanded due to some odd controversy that I honestly don't remember. The cast of characters is vast, they do need to fill an entire field with them, but there's only a few who matter at any given time. They play baseball and that's really all there is to know. The biggest flaw of _Tamayomi: The Baseball Girls_ is that the animation is bad. Any characters who aren't important to the scene or entire scenes that aren't as important to the episode are done in CG. Not good CG either but on par with youtube MMD videos. When the characters are actually drawn they are inconsistent with odd angles and off-putting proportions. Most of the time and energy seemed to have been spent on specific scenes and close-ups of thighs and biceps. It's a shame that the show looks bad because the content can be so good. So how does Tamayomi increase your appreciation of baseball? My experiences with baseball are minimal. My brother played on a team and I sat on the sidelines, reading a book while whatever was happening on the field happened. I cared very little for the sport. Tamayomi gives a very in-depth look at the relationship between a pitcher and a catcher. The decision tree that a catcher has to go through in order to suggest a pitch is summarized repeatedly as are many other strategies that a layman like myself would have never known. Where a batter should hit the ball in contrast to the fielders, when to bunt, when to throw a ball vs. a strike. It's all there albeit never explained but only shown in a way that doesn't impact the show's pacing. That's not to say there aren't other anime that do this better. I'm sure there are. But as a viewer who was baited into the show on the premise of cute girls and instead found an appreciation for baseball; I'm pleasantly surprised. Overall; I'd recommend it with caveats like most every other anime out there. Ignore the animation quality, ignore the fact that there's really no good music outside of the OP and ED, ignore the fact that it's pure yuri-bait and maybe you can enjoy the show as much as I did.