Anime adaptation of Mitsuru Adachi’s baseball manga.
Wait.
Anime adaptation of one of Mitsuru Adachi’s baseball manga.
Adachi is arguably the most ignored manga creator in Anglophone countries. The fact that the bulk of the anime adaptations of his work came prior to 1995, and thus his slice of life/sports drama work didn’t fit into the market at time of release and now has the undue stigma of “being old” now the market might allow such work to thrive.
There is also the fact that Adachi has a unique visual style that won’t sit well on the pallette of an audience expecting a certain stereotypical “manga” look. There’s been a limited run of Short Program his short story series from Viz and his Slow Step OAV did get a UK release through Western Connection, but no sign of his major series Touch.
The story of twin brothers Tatsuya and Kazuya, and their neighbour Minami, it follows their sports career in Baseball and Gymnastics following a tragedy in their lives.
The series was shown in Spain, France and of course Italy, but never shown in english. But the good news is that those people who are Adachi fans are FANS, and the entire goddamn thing is fansubbed.
I have the first 5 episodes somewhere, I should watch them and tell you what it’s really like.