Kazutaka Shindo

Kazutaka Shindō (進藤 一考, Shindō Kazutaka) is the captain and pitcher of the Kunugigaoka Junior High School Baseball Club.

Appearance
Shindō is a large male with an athletic build. He has short spiky black hair, sharp eyes, and tanned skin.

Personality
Like most of the main school students, he has great pride thanks to his success in school. However, compared to the more egotistic main school students, he can show genuine respect toward others who have proven to be powerful baseball players despite their class status such as Tomohito Sugino. As a further example that he is not as discriminatory and immoral as the main campus students, he was unwilling to injure Karma and Isogai despite the principal's hypnotic efforts to install in him the need to trample on others to get ahead. He is also mildly eccentric, evident when he makes announcements regarding the Big Five over the phone when telling Sugino with them.

Plot
Kazutaka makes his debut appearance practicing with his teammates. When former club member Tomohito Sugino passes by, he catches Sugino's and his teammates' attention to warmly greet him. The conversation turns awkward when Sugino's status of being an E Class student is brought up and Kazutaka states his belief that those who can multi-task will be the chosen to move forward. He invites Sugino to prove him wrong in the school's upcoming ball game tournament.

During the exhibition match, his baseball team got picked to play against the Class E team. Not realising that Class E and their teacher Korosensei relied on his play style to win, Kazutaka and the rest of the team are caught off guard in the first innings when three Class E batters kept bunting his pitches. The result is that Class E soon scores three runs compared to the club's zero. With Kazutaka's coach unable to respond to this, Chairman Asano steps in to motivate Kazutaka and his team, essentially turning the tables of the match to their favor.

Prioritizing in motivating Kazutaka, the chairman told Kazutaka to repeat what he had said, that he is strong, that he is the best, and that he needs to trample others to get ahead of the pack. After he repeated it, Kazutaka becomes extremely powerful by the second half of the final innings. But when Karma and Isogai take up defensive positions at point blank range to Kazutaka's swing, his unwillingness to hit them causes him to forget the Chairman's words and his team to end up losing to Class E.

Afterwards, Sugino walks up to him. When Sugino states that he did not consider the match to be a victory for him in terms of proving his power as a baseball player (only winning by coming up with the numerous strategies used against Kazutaka), Kazutaka questions why he wanted to win that badly. Sugino simply answers that he wanted to brag about his Class E friends to his old friends. Kazutaka smiles and vows that the next time they play will be at high school and accepts Sugino's hand.

Prior to the start of the first end-of-semester exams, Kazutaka calls Sugino to inform the rest of Class 3E of who and what they are up against. In an overly dramatic fashion, he briefs the whole class about the Big Five, led by the charismatic and top student Gakushu Asano, and advises the class of the need to beat them should they wish to leave Class E. Sugino appreciates the info and responds that while they do not have any intentions of leaving Class E, they have another motive to do well in the upcoming exams.

Later on School Festival Time, Shindo reappears and he participate as a narrator to advertise the school festival.

Abilities
Baseball: Kazutaka is a talented baseball player and the star of his middle school baseball team. His specialty is pitching; he throws fastballs and curveballs exclusively, fastballs 90% of the time. The top speed of his fastball is measured at 140.5 kph.

Etymology

 * The name Kazutaka means "one" (一) (kazu) and "thought" (考) (taka).
 * Kazutaka's surname Shindō means "advance, make progress" (進) (shin) and "wisteria" (藤) (tō/dō).