After fiddling for a minute with some shitty Flash baseball game posted on FUNimation's website last night, I was presented with the announcement of one of the most unimpressive anime licenses ever, by our shady standards anyway: the 26-episode sports anime Ookiku Furikabutte, which FUNi will be releasing stateside under the title Big Windup!.

"The Big Windup! anime storyline is adapted from the manga "Ookiku Furikabutte" by Asa Higuchi. The manga won the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize for best creative work in 2006 and the Kodansha Manga Award for general manga in 2007. In order to create Ookiku Furikabutte, Higuchi collected data for 10 years on high school baseball!

The anime was directed by Tsutomu Mizushima (xxxHOLiC series, movie, and OVA) and produced by A-1 Pictures, Inc. (a subsidiary of Aniplex). The music composer, Shiroh Hamaguchi, also composed the music for One Piece, Kiddy Grade, and Ah! My Goddess TV series and movie. He also did the music arrangement for Final Fantasy VII Advent Children."

P.S. Sorry for the loliless picture, this is the best I could come up with, despite searching high and low for a loli. The show clearly needs more desu. Maybe I should've gone for a Higurashi baseball pic instead... or one with Tokikake... or Haruhi... or... Mikuru pantsu!