Otanjoubi Omedetou, Saeki Kojiro

Oct is the month where there are a number of Tenipuri characters celebrating their birthdays. To start the ball rolling, we have Saeki Kojiro from Rokkaku on 1 Oct.

The first time when he appeared was during Seigaku's trip to Chiba for some training and they happened to meet Rokkaku on the streets. At that point in time, Saeki struck me as a very warm and nice guy which was similar to Fuji who is his childhood friend. However, on the court, he seems to be a different person as he is calm and very observant where he will seize the opportunity to strike like a hunter searching for his prey. That is also kind of similar to Fuji since he won't be dangerous unless you antagonise him. Likewise, Saeki looks absolutely harmless until you actually face him on the court. In his very first match with Icchan against Fuji & Eiji, that was when he made me feel that way. Maybe it's this similarity which made him work well with Fuji against the other childhood friend golden combination of Inui & Yanagi during the Senbatsu camp who excelled at seeing through their opponents' every move.

In the manga, he made a brief appearance in the Nationals against Higa in Singles 1 where he had to face their strong cheering camp alone since Oji was hit by Higa's ball for explaining the trick behind Higa's strategy. Fortunately, he had the backup of Seigaku even though that did not have any bearing on the final results. Anyway, Seigaku will help Rokkaku exact their revenge on Higa but it's just too bad that I'll probably not get to see Saeki again in the manga. There may be a chance that he may appear in the OVA if it's about the Nationals arc.