Good day! I loved the thing you wrote about Chris and the yips. It made me see the situation from a new perspective! I’m wondering what your thoughts on Okumura and if they’re same as when he was introduced? I’m not gonna lie, I didn’t like him at all. I saw him as the worst sides of Miyuki and Furuya. I’m still on the fence, but I think he has potential

xstonehill:

Dear anon!

I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get to your ask! I haven’t really been in a daiya frame of mind for a while and I wanted to give this your question a proper think before I responded.

Well. I feel like I don’t have enough on Okumura to make a final assessment of his character. At first I was suspicious, and I admit, I felt the threat of Misawa’s eventual separation in his introduction and I might have  been very on the fence about him.

After that I got rather worried about him because that middle school coach seemed creepy AF (and I’m a Worst Case Scenario gal with a colorful imagination), but again, I’ve had to discard my worst fears because they are… in the end, rather irrational. And Tera-sensei isn’t That Kind of writer (thank God).

I actually quite like Okumura to be honest.

I’m not sure what you mean with “the worst sides of Miyuki and Furuya”. I think that depends on your position, and I think my opinions of Miyuki and Furuya’s worst traits are probably very different from what most people think about them (or maybe I flatter myself in that regard).

Either way, I think Okumura deserves to be read on his own and not in comparison with others and I think that’s probably going to give you the most fleshed out version of my impression of him. So here goes:

(And please remember this is my personal opinion)

I think that Okumura is a Catcher at heart.

What I mean with this is that he’s most comfortable in a situation where he gets to call the shots from out of sight. He’s kind of shy and not all that good with people, but he’s also very prideful and very principled.

I think he thinks he knows what he wants.

In other words, I think he has specific goals in mind, that he’s ambitious and that he plays his baseball the way he’s been conditioned to through bad experiences. I think the betrayal of his old coach has left him somewhat jaded at an early age and because he sees things in black and white he’s forgetting to trust.

But I think he chose Seidou because he ultimately wants to trust other people, because he looked at the way Miyuki and Eijun play baseball, at how much fun they’re having in the diamond, and I think he wants to regain that childlike love of his sport.

Most of all, I think he’s a very kind, honest child, and I think that’s really beginning to show. Especially in the way he acts with Miyuki and Ono. He was happy that they trusted him to breeze through his tests, and he’s devastated that he didn’t meet their expectations.

And when it comes to Eijun, he’s going to be the perfect successor to Miyuki. Eijun plays best with a catcher that’s aggressive, that meets him halfway with everything he’s got, with somebody who likes to pick a fight. And Okumura has shown himself to be all that. He’s also not afraid to speak up against his Senpai, which is going to be important, because Eijun is the one with the last word in that duo, and while I do believe he’s growing into a leader, he’s also impulsive AF, and he needs somebody who encourages that he thinks things through.

That being said, Okumura isn’t Miyuki. Okumura has faults of his own, and those are not entirely understanding yet that the pitcher is a person with limits, that Eijun isn’t so amazing that he can accomplish anything Okumura asks of him. Okumura isn’t as good at reading people as Miyuki and he’s going to learn that to become as good as Miyuki.

And I think in the absence of that experience, Eijun is going to flower as a leader and an Ace once the third years retire.

So yeah! Definitely give the boy a chance. I think he deserves that.

Thank you for your ask!