Slow Step OAV 1

  • Summary version 1 by Hitoshi Doi, 1991.05.20
    The Slow Step OVA volume 1 followed the manga very closely. It was all of volume 1 and some of volume 2.
Minatsu sees a hit and run accident outside of her house. She calls the police, but the car is long gone. Minatsu remembers that he car had a picture of an ugly pig on the hood.

Nakazato Minatsu lived on the 8th floor of an apartment building with her mother, who played volleyball, and her father, who was a professional wrestler. On the way to school, Minatsu was in the elevator of her apartment building. The door opened on the 6th floor and a strange high school boy came into the elevator. He said, "I like you." Minatsu was surprised and didn't know what to say. The boy continued, "Ever since the first time that I saw you, I've been thinking only about you. Every morning, the 15 minutes that I'm with you in the train.."
Since Minatsu doesn't take a train to school, she was even more puzzled. "And the 15 minutes on the way home. That 30 minutes is everything to me. So.." Then the boy says "shit" like he had made some mistake, and started saying his lines over again, just as the elevator reached the first floor.

Minatsu rides her bicycle to school (Asaoka High School). At school, just as Minatsu was putting her bicycle away, Shuu pops out dressed in a suit and hat. When he asked Minatsu how he looked, Minatsu coldly asked, "What are you thinking about?" Then Shuu runs off as some teacher was chasing him.

During class, Akiba Shuu sneaks in late as he had to change back into normal school clothes. He sits down next to Minatsu and asks her about his new clothes. He says that he wore it to school because Minatsu would never go out with him. Then Minatsu says that it was a good thing that she never went out with him if he was going to wear those clothes.

While the girls softball team was getting dressed, Yamazakura walked into the dressing room yelling for Minatsu. Coach Yamazakura was holding a porn magazine open to a page which had a picture of a nude girl. The girl was Minatsu! Yamazakura asked Minatsu why she posed for a nude magazine. Minatsu was surprised and took a closer look at the magazine. Then she rubbed off the small picture of her face that someone had put over the face of the real model. Minatsu asked where Yamazakura got the magazine, and he answered that he found it by the baseball team's locker room. Then Minatsu took the magazine away from Yamazakura, insisting that she throw it away.

On the way home, Minatsu spots the car with the pig on the hood. At closer inspection it turned out to be a bad drawing of a bat. She goes into a coffee shop to call the police. The three guys who were the owners of the car overhear Minatsu. They leave right away.

When Minatsu gets home to her apartment, she goes to ride the elevator. The elevator door opens and the three criminals were in the elevator waiting for Minatsu. They "ask" Minatsu to go up to the roof with them. At the 6th floor, the elevator door opens and the strange boy that Minatsu had seen in the morning starts to walk in. But when he noticed that the elevator was going up, he got off because he wanted to go down. Minatsu waves her handkerchief to try to get attention, but the boy ignores her. The boy takes the stairs down to the first floor.

The three criminals escort Minatsu to the roof. They corner her to the fence that was on the edge. They tell her that they will not harm her if she keeps quiet about the hit and run incident. Then Minatsu drops her handkerchief and it flys off over the edge. The handkerchief lands on the boy as he was walking on the street. The boy remembers that it belongs to the girl in the elevator. He goes up to the roof to give the handkerchief back to Minatsu, who was trying to run away from the criminals. After he gives it back, he says good-bye and starts to leave. But one of the criminals tells the boy to get lost and this makes him mad. The boy quickly beats up the three criminals who tried to attack him. Then the boy leaves.

Shuu comes to boxing practice with his right hand all bandaged up. He says that he injured his hand and cannot fight in the boxing match against Jousei Gakuen. The boxing team's captain angrily sends him off to jog.

Yamazakura was called in to the principal's office. The principal found out that Yamazakura had been number 2 in Japan as a boxer when he was in college. So he asks Yamazakura to be a part-time coach for the boxing team. Yamazakura didn't want to, but the principal made him if he wanted to keep his job as a softball coach.

Later Minatsu spotted Shuu taking his bandage off. Shuu had made up the story about his injured hand because he did not want to fight against Jousei's Kadomatsu Naoto. Minatsu didn't know who that was. Shuu told her that Naoto was the high school champion and also very famous. Just then, the Jousei boxing team came walking toward the boxing building. At the front was Naoto. Shuu did not want to look at him, but Minatsu stared at him because it was the strange boy that lived in her apartment building who had helped her out the other night.

In the match, Naoto easily finished off his opponent.

Later Minatsu sees Naoto speaking his lines to a girl at the train station. After he had finished, the girl answers, "Yes, I would love to." But then Naoto backs down and says that he needs more time to think about it.

When Minatsu runs into Naoto, she scolds him for playing around with girls like that. Then Naoto says that he wasn't playing around. He says that he was serious, but at the last moment he became uncertain. He says that he only has a limited amount of time left.

One day at school, while Ayako and her friend was walking in the school yard, a lunch box came falling down out of the sky. The box hit Ayako's friend on the head. Then Ayako and her friend went up to Minatsu's classroom and asked who the lunch box belonged to. Minatsu spotted her lunch box and said that it was hers. Then Ayako slapped Minatsu, saying that the box fell down and hit her friend. At that moment, Shuu walked in looking for Minatsu's lunch box. Shuu had eaten Minatsu's lunch on the roof and dropped the lunch box. When Ayako tried to hit Shuu, Shuu ducked and dodged her swings. But Minatsu grabbed Shuu and Ayako's hand landed on Shuu's face. Then Ayako and her friend walked out.

Later during softball practice, Minatsu was taking batting practice. Then Minatsu hits the ball over the fence. The ball was heading for a girl who was walking in the school yard. The ball hit the girl's head, but the girl didn't move at all. Minatsu immediately ran to the girl to see if she was all right. Ayako said that since she had mistakenly hit Minatsu earlier, now they were even.

A couple days before pay day, Yamazakura didn't have any money to buy lunch. When he was sitting outside by himself, Sawamura Ayako came by and gave him a lunch box full of food. Later when Ayako said that she will make lunch for him everyday, Yamazakura said that it is not good for a student and teacher to have that kind of relationship. So they agreed to have Ayako make lunch for him once a month, before pay day.

Ayako was walking around the softball practice. Yamazakura notices and asks her to play softball for his team. Ayako doesn't want to. Then Yamazakura said that he will go on a date with her if she can get a hit off of his ace pitcher. But she must play on his team if she strikes out.

Ayako accepts the challenge and steps up to bat. The pitcher pitches, and Ayako hits a couple homeruns. Then Yamazakura says, "Enough with the warm up," and tells Minatsu to change with the pitcher, while he changes with the catcher. He tells Ayako that Minatsu is their ace.

Minatsu comes into pitch. Yamazakura tells Minatsu to throw as hard as she can. She throws a couple warmup pitches, and all of the other girls were surprised at the speed of Minatsu's pitches. Then Ayako steps up to bat for real. She looks at the first two fastballs for strikes. Then as Minatsu was going to throw the third pitch, she recalls that Ayako likes Yamazakura. Minatsu throws a slow pitch right over the plate, but Ayako strikes out because she was expecting a fastball.

One day Minatsu looks out of her window and sees the car with the bat on its hood. Since the criminals were waiting for her, Minatsu puts on a long haired wig and round glasses before going out. On the street, Naoto sees Minatsu with the glasses but doesn't recognize her.


[Adachi Mitsuru works]
[Slow Step]

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