Softboy (2010)

Softboy is a Japanese movie written by Tamio Hayashi and directed by Keisuke Toyoshima. It was released by Toei on Jun 19, 2010.

The film stars Kento Nagayama as a student named Onitsuka who’s been spending the last summer of his high school life considering his future goals—chief among them being to one day become a master chef of French cuisine.

One day he’s approached by his friend Noguchi (Kento Kaku) with a harebrained scheme; if they start the first and only youth softball team in Saga Prefecture, they’d have to be invited to the national tournament by default—making them local sports heroes.

Together they assemble a group of 9 players to field a team and begin practicing, but considering the friends they recruit can’t even handle playing a simple game of catch, they’re destined to run into quite a few stumbling blocks along the way.