[Drama Review] Roosevelt Game

I should have been done with this drama a long time ago, but my interest had slowly waned.

The story is about two things, one is the struggle to keep the Aoshima Company alive and the other, a story about a failing baseball club rising to victory. It's a lot about competition against Itsuwa since Itsuwa has set their eyes on swallowing the company whole and Itsuwa's baseball team intends on clobbering Aoshima's baseball team. There's a lot of technical stuff going on with the Aoshima conflict like stealing confidential materials and a struggle of power. While that should have been the most exciting part of the drama, it ended up being boring sometimes. The interesting part was the drama in the baseball club. As a failing club is on the verge of being terminated, the team members are each struggling to not get fired. It is a battle between choosing your dream and choosing a way to survive.

As another reviewer has mentioned before, there are many similarities between Roosevelt Game and Hanzawa Naoki. From the story to the way the drama was filmed to even to the selection of actors and the way they presented the drama was the same. Since I had watched Hanzawa Naoki first, I strongly prefer Hanzawa Naoki. But even reviewing Roosevelt Game as a stand alone piece, it's just not as tense and free flowing as it should be. A lot of acting seems forced. Had it not been the Cantonese dub I chose to listen to, it helped lessened the overacting. A lot of the overacting and cliched dialogue ruined the flow of the story.

While I find a lot things upsetting, there were some good parts to the drama. I think every time Aoshima faces a problem, their president always has a good comeback. The president as a character appears to be someone who can easily discard his own people when it is necessary. It is apparent when he was the first person who decided to terminate Aoshima's baseball club because the company was suffering huge economic losses. When he watches one of the baseball games, he starts to understand that the baseball club wasn't simply a past time and he sees it as an inspiration as to how to handle his company.

A lot of stuff in the story dragged on. Characters didn't exactly develop too much and don't stand out that much. If you choose to watch Roosevelt Game, watch it for the baseball and not for the office politics.