Episode 4 – Sonny Boy

Every anime needs a baseball episode. I don’t play baseball, and I hardly ever watch it, but there’s something transformative—something inexplicably wonderful—about the crack of the bat in the hands of an anime character taking a short respite from their usual heroic duties. Recent favorites Jujutsu Kaisen, Dorohedoro, and BNA: Brand New Animal have each joined the home run pantheon, and now Sonny Boy‘s fourth episode supports my thesis, even if its take on the most favorite of pastimes is full of the gnarled and layered obtuseness we’ve come to expect from the show. It doesn’t help that its simian-based baseball stands in for multiple and competing concepts at the same time, which muddies any attempt to leave this episode with clarity. I’m going to do my best to break down what I think Sonny Boy is getting at here, but I also think it’s worthwhile to stress that the series’…