Gurazeni


Gurazeni or Money Diamond, is a Japanese baseball manga series written by Yūji Moritaka and illustrated by Keiji Adachi. The manga was serialized between 2010 and 2014 and has been followed by two sequel series. An anime adaptation by Studio Deen covering 26 chapters of the manga ran from April to June and a second season from October to December 2018, each season lasting for 12 episodes.
The manga is about the unforgiving money-and-statistics-centric world of professional baseball, in a similar concept to Moneyball, but through the eyes of players: A relief pitcher and left-handed specialist, Bonda Natsunosuke, and Tokunaga, a retired pitcher turned color commentator. The fictional teams in the series are based on real teams in the NPB, particularly the Central League.

Characters

;Natsunosuke Bonda
;Tokunaga
;Akira Shibuya
;Yukio Ohno
;Tanabe
;Sakota
;Yuki
;Yasuda
;:ja:松本秀夫|Hideo Matsumoto
;Segawa
;Roppa Itsuki

Anime

An anime television series aired from April 6 to June 22, 2018 on SKY PerfecTV!'s SkyPer! channel. Produced by SKY Perfect JSAT, Kodansha and Studio Deen, the series is directed by Ayumu Watanabe, with Hideo Takayashiki handling series composition and writing the scripts, Kenichi Ohnuki designing the characters and Akifumi Tada composing the music. The anime's theme song is Merigo feat. SKY-HI by Cypress Ueno to Robert Yoshino. The closing song is Shadow Monster performed by Asako Toki. Well known actor and film director 'Beat' Takeshi appeared as a guest star in the final episode of the first season.
A second season aired from October 5 to December 21, 2018, which included baseball player Masahiro Yamamoto and comedian Yuki Iwai in cameo roles.

Episode List

Reception

It was number two on the 2012 Kono Manga ga Sugoi! Top 20 Manga for Male Readers survey. It was also nominated for the 5th Manga Taishō and it won the 37th Kodansha Manga Award for Best General Manga. Mike Toole of Anime News Network praised the anime, in particular the main character Bonda but acknowledged it was difficult to sell to most western viewers.