TOKYO, JAPAN - MARCH 19: General view of the Tokyo Dome during the pre-game ceremony prior to the MLB Tokyo Opening Series between Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs at Tokyo Dome on March 19, 2025 in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo by Gene Wang/Getty Images) | Getty Images

If it is not obvious, the Dodgers and the United States are merely borrowing Shohei Ohtani, as most recently evidenced by Ohtani’s recent batting practice session at the Tokyo Dome in preparation for the upcoming World Baseball Classic.

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With that in mind, in November 2025, MLB announced a documentary film about the 2025 Tokyo Series, titled Homecoming: The Tokyo Series. The documentary is billed as an examination of baseball in Japan with intersecting stories involving the five Japanese players who participated in the 2025 opening series: Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Roki Sasaki, Shota Imanaga, and Seiya Suzuki.

Per MLB.com:

Baseball might be America’s pastime, but it is also an omnipresent part of everyday life in Japan.

Never was that more clear than during Major League Baseball’s Tokyo Series between the Cubs and Dodgers that opened the 2025 regular season this past March. That two-game series — headlined by Japanese superstars Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Roki Sasaki, Shota Imanaga and Seiya Suzuki — and the impact of baseball all around the country is the focus of a new documentary that will be coming to movie theaters soon.

“Homecoming: The Tokyo Series” celebrates the intersection of culture and global sport, illuminating how baseball unites beyond borders. Produced by Supper Club and in coordination with MLB Studios and BD4, Banijay Americas’ premium documentary label, the documentary will be shown in theaters on Feb. 23 and 24, distributed by Fathom Entertainment.

The documentary had a two-day limited theatrical run in theaters in late February 2026. For those who missed the documentary in theaters, CNN announced that the network would exclusively bring the documentary to its new streaming offering on March 27.

As we have covered, the 2025 Tokyo Series was both a massive cultural event in Japan and a runaway financial hit, leaving the sport wondering when Tokyo Series 2: Electric Boogaloo will happen with the Cubs and Dodgers.

There has been only one review of the film by Shikhar Verma of High on Films, who rated the film 3.5 out of 5. True Blue LA was provided with a screener of Homecoming: The Tokyo Series, and I watched the 90-minute documentary twice for this review.

Review of Homecoming: The Tokyo Series

The film barely scratches the surface of what it was like to experience the 2025 Tokyo Series. If I had to describe the film in a single sentence, it would be “atmospheric but light in substance.”

This criticism is not to say that the documentary is bad or not worth watching. The documentary suffers greatly from not deciding on a focal point, of which there are many. If you want a coherent story or narrative from this documentary, you will be disappointed. Here is how the film was described in its theatrical release:

Homecoming: The Tokyo Series explores Japan’s deep bond with baseball, culminating in the 2025 MLB Opening Day games in Tokyo as hometown heroes Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Roki Sasaki, Shota Imanaga, and Seiya Suzuki return to where their baseball dreams began. Through the lives of those shaped by the game, the film reveals how baseball bridges generations, connects nations, and reflects the balance between tradition and modern life. More than a chronicle of a sporting event, it is a portrait of a nation’s enduring love for baseball and the pride of watching its stars come home.

I would have loved to have watched that film, because the film I watched does not match this synopsis.

What happens when you do not pick a lane

The best way to describe Homecoming: The Tokyo Series is a mish-mash of two films with little overlap. If Director Sterman could pick a lane, I think the documentary would be infinitely more coherent.

On the one hand, you have a series of slice-of-life vignettes between a mother and adult son, Yasuko and Toru Tanahara, running a youth baseball team in Osaka, a player on the team and his father in Osaka, respectively Kanato and Shogo, superfan and salon owner, Hironobou Kanno, in Oshu (Ohtani’s hometown), owner of a glove restoration business, Re-Birth, Tomohiro Yonezawaya, in Ota (a ward inside Tokyo), master craftsman of bats for Mizuno, Tamio Nawa, in Yoro, discussing their individual stories and love affairs with baseball in Japan.

None of these threads end up at the Tokyo Dome to watch the Tokyo Series, or even overlap, which is a shame given the passion involved and appropriateness of the conclusion, considering the gravity of the homecoming happening in the literal background. The closest we get to an overlap of our cast and Tokyo Series is when Mr. Kanno is shown watching Game 2 of the Tokyo Series at home. Given how little the Tokyo Series is discussed or covered in this portion of the movie, you can excise it entirely and still have a lovely, atmospheric documentary on Japanese baseball, both in its place in Japanese culture and history.

To play Devil’s Advocate for a moment, tickets to the Tokyo Series were notoriously hard to get, even with all the efforts made to make the tickets available for Japanese locals. The face value for my Game 1 ticket was 32000 yen (about $212.84). Even with an anti-scalping law on the books, I paid exponentially more; therefore, gathering tickets for as many subjects as the film had was likely not feasible.

In the film’s other part, you have American expatriates like Jason Coskrey of The Japan Times, Jim Allen, a longtime freelance columnist, and Meghan Montemurro, Cubs domestic beat writer for the Chicago Tribune, discussing the nuances and characteristics of Japanese baseball with the backdrop of the Tokyo Series. In what had to be a logistics-driven decision, this portion of the film is largely Cubs-centric, with Montemurro going to the Cubs’ team dinner before the series and an off-site visit to a Japanese elementary school with former Cubs Derrek Lee and Kosuke Fukudome on March 19.

However, the inarguable main story of the Tokyo Series is Ohtani’s return to Japan, but the documentary is either unwilling or unable to give the topic the attention it deserves. Ohtani in Japan is a cross between The Beatles, Michael Jordan, and Babe Ruth: a blend of cultural zeitgeist and omnipresent history. One cannot overstate the imprint Ohtani has made and continues to make in Japan. One can see this impact in the sheer volume of advertisements in which O...

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