If there’s one obvious thing that keeps Kano from becoming great, it’s the fact that it takes a little over three hours just to get through. It certainly can be trimmed down by a lot, but going through the three hours isn’t too bad of a time, seeing as it celebrates the real life Taiwanese baseball team through a feel-good, if a bit familiar, underdog story of a small island team winning against some of Japan’s best high school rosters. The film shines when it focuses on baseball– It feels like you’re actually in the stands of the arena, with the matches moving the plot forward and realistically hammering home the love of the sport. That being said, the backstory of the characters plays out in a melodramatic fashion, and while it does depict some of the racism the team faced, the film seems to be reluctant on commenting on the immediate parallels to Japan’s colonization of Taiwan. For better or worse, Kano prioritizes the sport to the detriment of every other plotline.
"Masatoshi Nagase gives a masterful performance as a baseball coach in this lengthy but big-hearted 1930s sports saga."
— Maggie Lee
A Taiwanese high school baseball team travels to Japan in 1931 to compete in a national tournament.
Taiwan, Japanese Formosa, 1931. The Kagi Agricultural and Forestry School forms a baseball team out of a motley crew of Han Chinese, indigenous Taiwanese, and Japanese players. Playing beyond all expectations, they end up qualifying for and reaching the finals of Koshien, Japan’s longstanding high school baseball tournament.
It’s so long. Granted, when talking about a whole team, it can be a bit tough to balance multiple characters’ journeys all at once, but I feel like this would have been better as a series rather than as a film.
There are too many plotlines in this film!
