Ganbare!! Tabuchi-kun!! Gekitou Pennant Race

がんばれたぶちくん げきとうぺなんとれーす

Aired: 1980

A theatrical anime produced by Tokyo Movie Shinsha and distributed through Toho, this baseball comedy is the second installment in a three-film cycle adapted from Hisaichi Ishii's smash-hit four-panel newspaper manga 'Ganbare!! Tabuchi-kun!!' Following a 1979 first film and preceding a December 1980 third entry, this picture follows the lovable, slothful-but-talented slugger Tabuchi - a thinly veiled lampoon of real-life Seibu Lions catcher Koichi Tabuchi - as he straddles laziness and game-day heroics, hits home runs against rival clubs, and bumbles through family life. Pro-baseball stars of the era appear in lightly caricatured form, lead voice actor Toshiyuki Nishida turns in a much-loved comic performance, and Kaname Nemoto's rock-pop theme song 'Ganbareba Ai' (credited to the unit Crazy Party, later revealed to be Stardust Revue) became a contemporary radio hit.