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.
So I’ve been meaning to write about this since chapter 88 came out, but, eh, laziness and RL got in the way (and I honestly thought others would be talking about it in more depth so I didn’t have to)
But here I am.
See, the reason I really love this chapter is because it gives us a completely new angle into Miyuki and Eijun’s relationship. Or rather, it gives us the key to reading their entire dynamic differently in Act II compared to what we’ve been able to do until then.
I love Miyusawa/Misawa to death, don’t get me wrong and I think as a ship and as a battery, nothing’s better. BUT hear me out please.
Kousawa/MuraMura isn’t bad, it’s not not bad because it’s actually good! This pair has something that Miyusawa don’t give me enough and i dont have a word for it so listen, i’ll explain it.
We can’t deny that the chemistry between Miyuki and Sawamura is such a stroooong force, and tbh mostly it comes from Sawamura as he’s the one who desperately wants to prove himself to Miyuki, he’s the one who wants acknowledgement from him and all. And as readers we know that Miyuki acknowledges him, recognizes his strength and his ability to rapidly but steadily improve. But does Sawamura feel this enough? Definitely not enough. Not as much as he gets it from Okumura.
Because see, Sawamura Eijun entered Seido with a Miyuki Kazuya that had the duty to find and raise an ace. And that time, Furuya was the initial prospect, so naturally, they’d focus on him more. This put Eijun in a spare position in most of dna characters’ eyes, and tbh i feel like in Miyuki’s eyes too. Especially, when he said Furuya was so lucky that someone like Eijun is in his year, strongly implying that Eijun’s simply someone to push him forward to better himself and be more fitting to be Seido’s ace. Not only that, even at the infamous Ichidaisan vs Seido in Act 2, Miyuki and the coach prioritized Furuya over the team, leading them to a loss, that’s how you raise an ace, and that’s what they’re unconsciously doing. Of course it’s all changing now and i know, i understand.
What I’m trying to say is, Miyuki had never felt like a partner to Eijun, and tbh? He feels like a prize, at the end, along with the ace number. Miyuki Kazuya feels like an end goal of the first book or arc.
Unlike in Okumura’s case, where it’s almost reversed, but not really, Okumura went to Seido specifically to catch for Sawamura, which makes him already an ace for Okumura. It’s Okumura who wants to prove himself to Sawamura, but the thing is Sawamura is already very vocal about the fact that he trusts Okumura and really, while it may not seem Okumura is a vocal person, he is, and he knows what to say and do at crucial moments. He’s honest and this can be seen at the way he easily and explicitly compliments Eijun’s pitching and skills.
While, yes Miyusawa is still the best (IM FOREVER A MIYUSAWA)! Kousawa has this… unique charisma too that i just can’t turn away from.
IT’S JUST, I got so tired of people always putting Sawamura aside. I got so tired of watching him fight for everyone’s attention. I got soooo tired of watching him work his ass off just for everyone to give him the fucking time of the day. I got sooooo fucking tired of watching everyone putting him under a pitcher he’s already caught up with that it gave him this inferiority complex that just breaaaaks my heart so much. So when the first years who put him into some kind of a pedestal, especially Okumura, came into the picture i lost it! Because Sawamura deserves this, he worked for this. He worked so hard for this and I’m getting so emotional right now.
just moving along like everyone else 