This article uses information that may be considered a SPOILER. Please understand that reading beyond this point may cause you to learn about things you may not have known about if you are not knowledgeable on the topic. You have been warned.
This episode of Ace of the Diamond continued to focus on the match of Seido vs Ichidai that we saw in episode 13, more-or-less focusing on Seido’s batters and the rhythm of Kosei Amahisa, Ichidai’s ace. We are seeing a rough start by Kosei, throwing a combination of fastballs, curveballs, and sliders but landing mostly balls with nothing in the strike zone. However, he begins to get into a rhythm after sometime and is giving Seido an extremely hard time, holding them scoreless after the first inning.
Furuya however, is the main part of this episode as his performance is completely lackluster and from his self-absorbed ambition to be the best once he makes his appearance. I believe that this (self-absorbed ambition) is what every person needs to be successful, but he is willing to sacrifice the team’s vision in order to do so because he believes that him becoming the best pitcher will be enough to make Seido the best high school baseball team in Japan.
Furuya can clearly see he needs to pitch better, that he is overworking the fielders to take care of his mistakes and his continued pressure on himself is only making things worse by throwing easy-to-hit pitches. Everyone wants to see the Furuya from Koshien Stadium, but unfortunately his ambition to rise past that without focusing on why he did so well is holding him back. You can even see Mei of Inashiro comment on exactly what Furuya is doing and attributing it to how he acted when his mindset was the same as Seido’s Ace’s and is disgusted with the sight of how he had once been.
I am hoping that Furuya’s lack of self-control and ability to rein in his passion continues to detriment his game enough so that they have to call in Sawamura to relieve him. I hope that Sawamura — if he is put in —completely shuts down the Ichidai batters by his newfound controller, speed, and assortment of balls that utilize his natural breaking ability by altering grips. I need the people in the crowd to acknowledge Sawamura as being just as good as Furuya since his performance in the last few games are often met by spectators and rival baseball team’s players hating that Seido’s ace is not currently pitching.
Ace of the Diamond has been notorious for giving Sawamura the shaft and I believe we are beginning to see a turnaround as far as his character development which will leave him on par with Furuya or even surpass it. This latent ability to throw natural breaking balls was shined upon in Season 1 during the very first time he became a part of Seido’s team, I hope they make good on it for all of us fans that want to see the main character shine.
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