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Big Windup! (Ōkiku Furikabutte), often shortened to just Ōfuri, is a baseball manga series by Asa Higuchi, serialized in the monthly seinen Afternoon magazine since 2003. It has been adapted into a TV anime series, animated by A-1 Pictures, which premiered in Japan on TBS. It received its international television premiere on Animax's English language networks in Asia, Animax Asia.

The manga series won the prestigious Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize for best creative work in 2006. In 2007, it won the Kodansha Manga Award for general manga.


While growing up in Saitama, Asa Higuchi became familiar with baseball by reading the manga Dokaben. When she was in high school, the story of a local baseball team wound up inspiring her to come up with the idea for her own baseball manga. In the original version, Mihashi never spoke and characters like Momoe, Kanou and Haruna didn't exist yet. Following that, she collected data on high school baseball for over 10 years in order to create the manga, and she worked with the school she had attended, Urawanishi High School, in the year prior to the serialization. In fact, Urawanishi seems to have been the design for the school that the Nishiura boys attend. The two names are similar as well.

Five months prior to the serialization of Ōkiku Furikabutte in Afternoon, Higuchi published a one shot in the magazine titled "The Basic of Basics". The story was centered around the characters of the Musashino Dai Ichi school, who would show up in the series itself.


List of Big Windup! episodes

The series is adapted into a TV anime series, animated by A-1 Pictures, which premiered in Japan on TBS from April 2007. It also aired during the same month across several of TBS's affiliated TV networks, including MBS, BS-i and CBC. One month later, the series also aired on the Japanese Animax. The series was also subsequently aired in English across Animax's English language networks in Southeast Asia and South Asia.


- Original Work: Asa Higuchi's Ōkiku Furikabutte (serialized in the monthly Afternoon magazine)
- Director: Tsutomu Mizushima
- Series Composition: Yōsuke Kuroda
- Character Design and Chief Animation Director: Takahiko Yoshida
- Action Animation Director: Jun'ichirō Taniguchi
- Accessories Design: Takuya Suzuki
- Art Director: Yukihiro Shibuya
- Color Design: Miyuki Satō
- Photography Director: Ei Rōhei
- Editing: Shigeru Nishiyama
- Sound Director: Hiromi Kikuda
- Mixer: Riyō Yamada (Sound Team)
- Sound Effects: Tomozaku Mitsui (Sound Box)
- Music: Shirō Hamaguchi, Akifumi Tada
- Production: A-1 Pictures


Opening theme
"Dramatic" ( Doramachikku)
Performance: Base Ball Bear

2nd opening theme
"Seishun Line"
Performance: Ikimono-gakari

Ending theme
"Medaka no Mita Niji"
Performance: Kozue Takada

2nd ending theme
"Arigatō"
Performance: SunSet Swish

Source: Wikipedia