Strangely, in no less than three of the anime I’ve watched within the past week, there have been featured characters swinging baseball bats (this doesn’t include the sweaty anorexic characters of One-Outs). In Kurokami it was simply being used (poorly I might add) as a weapon, but in the other two there was a deeper meaning than just using it to hit a ball or bash the heads of residents of Hinamizawa. I’ve always seen swinging a bat as somewhat more threatening than swinging a sword. Whereas a sword is razor sharp and will slice you into ribbons at the drop of a hat, a bat will smash, mash and crush; it’s a brutal and inferior weapon and in the right hands is meant to injure and cause suffering rather than kill.
But of course in these other two shows that wasn’t what the action represented. The swinging of a bat is a focusing device. It represented the determination of the character in either achieving or forgetting something. To lose yourself in a repetitive excercise and forget your troubles, or to use that same exercise to demonstrate your resoluteness and conviction; never did I realise how great a metaphor swinging a bat is.
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Grand Punk Railroad 
Swing Batter Batter Swing.
Posted in Editorials, tagged Bat, Commentary, Lil' Slugger, Short Post, Swing on January 9, 2009| 3 Comments »
Strangely, in no less than three of the anime I’ve watched within the past week, there have been featured characters swinging baseball bats (this doesn’t include the sweaty anorexic characters of One-Outs). In Kurokami it was simply being used (poorly I might add) as a weapon, but in the other two there was a deeper meaning than just using it to hit a ball or bash the heads of residents of Hinamizawa. I’ve always seen swinging a bat as somewhat more threatening than swinging a sword. Whereas a sword is razor sharp and will slice you into ribbons at the drop of a hat, a bat will smash, mash and crush; it’s a brutal and inferior weapon and in the right hands is meant to injure and cause suffering rather than kill.
But of course in these other two shows that wasn’t what the action represented. The swinging of a bat is a focusing device. It represented the determination of the character in either achieving or forgetting something. To lose yourself in a repetitive excercise and forget your troubles, or to use that same exercise to demonstrate your resoluteness and conviction; never did I realise how great a metaphor swinging a bat is.
Read Full Post »