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Despite a hard charge by soccer while hosting the World Cup, Japan is still the land of the rising fly ball. For some reason, baseball clicked with Japanese more than any other sport, and now forms yet another tradition in a country already rich in traditions. In Japan, as in America, boys yearn for glory on the green diamond. What Princess Nine makes clear is that hardball dreams are not just for boys.

Princess Nine is something almost unimaginable for American cartoons: a sports series for girls. The story follows the creation of a girl's baseball team in a prestigious High School. Their goal is nothing less than competing in the National Baseball Championships at fabled Koshien stadium. In the United States, this would be something like announcing the formation of a girl's football team with the intention of competing for the number one ranking in college football. Naturally, the girl's team meets a storm of mockery from players, coaches, and administrators. But when the team begins to win, scorn is replaced by incredulity, and then a fierce determination not to be beaten by a bunch of girls.

In a very Japanese way, the girls win not because of their individual talents, which are stellar, but because they become a team. Much of the series focuses on this transformational process, where each girl is integrated with the group in order to bring about a greater whole. It's a sports cliché, but a particularly appropriate one in our era of trash-talking, all-about-me millionaire athletes. The characters are engaging and interesting, each with their own quirks and mysteries, and the way they relate to one another drives the series. The baseball action is dramatic and exciting, but as with so much of anime, our interest is invariably drawn to the people involved.

A series like this will probably never be seen on American TV. First, despite the national obsession, there are few cartoons (or live action shows, for that matter) about sports. It's hard to pin down just why this is. There have been a number of good sports movies, especially about baseball. Perhaps television is averse to altering its episodic nature, which allows shows to be rerun in any order. Princess Nine makes for a powerful story precisely because it has a beginning, middle, and end. That structure, so basic to the nature of story itself, makes for drama, suspense, uncertainty, and ultimately the satisfaction of catharsis. The nearest equivalent to Princess Nine is something like Rocket Power, the Saturday morning cartoon on Nickelodeon. Here, four wise-ass kids engage in a dizzying array of "extreme" sports episode after interchangeable episode. The characters never change, never learn, and never grow. It makes for a sad comparison with anime series like Battle Athletes and Princess Nine, where the inner journey of sport is as vast and rich as the games themselves.

• Studio: ADV Films
• Format: DVD
• Episodes in Series: 26
• Series Completed: Yes
• Number of DVDs: 6
  

• Audio Tracks: English, Japanese
• Subtitles: English
• Genre: Shoujo, Sports
• Ages: 12+
• Cautions: Mild violence, mild sexual innuendo
• Reviewer: George
• Core Collection: Middle School, Sports