The offseason, it tries to kill me
...but I shall not let it!
Last year, the offseason did come pretty darn close to killing me. Oh, it made a valiant attempt at it. But I escaped by discovering the oh-so-glorious Ookiku Furikabutte was indeed available for me to watch on Veoh in January. (For those who want to know, Oofuri's first DVD set, containing the first 13 episodes, is set to be released this upcoming January, and I'll try to come up with an official date as soon as possible!)
Anyway, to continue my theme of surviving the offseason with baseball manga and anime, this year I compiled a list of various baseball series on OneManga.com to read, and I'm posting the links here! We could all use some baseball in December, after all. (I have included a summary of each series, as well, so you can see if it's your cup of tea. Every baseball manga is a little different!)
~ Ookiku Furikabutte by Higuchi Asa: Okay, so this is obviously my favorite manga of all time at the moment. The anime will finally arrive licensed in the United States soon, as I mentioned above, and I am way too excited about that. Anyhow, the plot revolves around Clay Buchholz Mihashi Ren, who arrives at his new high school with absolutely no confidence in his pitching whatsoever because of his volatile relationship with his middle school teammates. Over time, though, his new teammates at Nishiura High School accept him, and his growing bond with his new batterymate, Abe Takaya, helps him to build his self-esteem back up. (Of course, my favorite team isn't the main one, Nishiura, but one of their opponents, Tosei - I call them the "crack school" because they're all crazy. And their battery is married!)
~ Daiya no A (Ace of Diamond) by Terajima Yuji: I just discovered Daiya no A (also Daiya no Esu or Daiei) recently, and I fell in love with it. Our main character is Sawamura Eijun (named for Sawamura Eiji, for whom the Japanese equivalent of the Cy Young Award is named), a southpaw pitcher with excellent movement on his fastball (because it's a shonen manga, Eijun's fastball gets a long, silly name - 'rainbow curve naturally moving pitch,' which I think roughly translates to 'rising fastball' in realistic baseball jargon). Scouted out of his Nagano Prefecture middle school by a scout from a Tokyo baseball power school, Eijun ends up at Seidou High School - but sadly, we don't see much past his experimental trials there when still in middle school, because the scanlators have only finished the first two chapters. (And although I try very hard not to be shallow, I must say this - the catcher Eijun first works with, Miyuki Kazuya, is sex on legs.)
~ Nine by Adachi Mitsuru: Adachi is a highly prolific writer of baseball manga, and several of his works will appear on this list. Nine is one of the earliest ones, and it's much shorter in length than Touch and H2, which are the pieces that Adachi is perhaps best known for. I just finished reading this one yesterday, in fact, and it's a cute little story about a middle school track star, Niimi Katsuya, and his best friend, Kawasawa Susumu, the middle school prefectural judo champion, who join Seishuu High School's baseball team in order to help cheer up the coach's daughter, Nakao Yuri. The story follows these two, as well as ace southpaw Kurahashi Eiji, as they navigate their three years of high school, complete with romance and plenty of baseball, and save the high school team, eventually making it strong enough to shoot for Koshien.
~ Cross Game by Adachi Mitsuru: This one's still running. Cross Game follows Kitamura Koh and his friendship with Tsukishima Wakaba, who shares his birthday. The two are very close, and Wakaba's younger sister, Aoba, is rather jealous of their relationship. Suddenly, when she is in fifth grade, Wakaba dies in a swimming accident, and everything changes. The rest of the story follows Koh and his friends as they continue to play baseball in middle and high school (Koh initially pretended not to have any interest in the game, but he trained in secret for years) and his changing relationship with Aoba, who herself is a fantastic pitcher. Interestingly enough, Koh and Aoba's high school is also called Seishuu High, and a part of me wonders if this is supposed to be the same high school from Nine some years later or not (Niimi's class was the Class of 1980-81). (If you cannot tell by this horrible summary of the series, I have not started reading this yet.)
~ H2 by Adachi Mitsuru: The third Adachi series I have on this list (there's one more coming up later!). H2 is about three friends who played together in middle school, Kunimi Hiro, Noda Atsushi and Tachibana Hideo. When a doctor misdiagnoses Kunimi and Noda and tells them they cannot play baseball anymore, they decide to attend Senkawa High School in order to escape the game. Tachibana, on the other hand, goes on to play at the prestigious baseball school Meiwa Daiichi, and manages to become a starter in his freshman season. Kunimi and Noda discover that they have indeed visited with a quack doctor, and they work to transform Senkawa's little baseball club into a full-fledged team, eventually challenging Meiwa Daiichi to move on to play in the Koshien tournament. (I should note that Kunimi and Noda are Senkawa's battery; Kunimi pitches and Noda catches. Tachibana plays third base, as star players are wont to do.)
~ Mr. Fullswing by Suzuki Shinya: This is complete and utter crack. Our main character is Saruno Amakuni, who joins the prestigious Junichi High School baseball team in order to impress and get closer to the team's manager, Torii Nagi. Saruno has absolutely no baseball skills whatsoever and barely understands how to play the game, but he's a natural hitter. Sort of. It seems that even here he is inept, only being able to get his bat on fastballs - breaking balls and off-speed pitches give him trouble, as he's a beginner. Over time, though, he and the other first-years grow in skill and are able to keep up with the upperclassmen as Junichi shoots for Koshien. (My favorite character is first-year second baseman Tomaru Pino - he's got the mentality of a five-year-old and is obsessed with his GBA, but he's extremely fast. He's just way too adorable.)
~ Rookies by Morita Masanori: This is far more serious than Misufuru. Futagotomagawa High School receives a new Japanese teacher, Kawato, who sets out to reform the suspended baseball club, whose members have been banned from school competitions for a year due to a brawl they started during a game. Although at first the players appear uninterested, they eventually become inspired and are motivated to shoot for Koshien once more. (I have not really read this one yet, either. Waaaah. But I started it about two minutes ago to confirm the name of the high school!)
~ Stripe Blue by Moritaka Yuji and Matsushima Yukitaro: As much a romance manga as it is a baseball manga, Stripe Blue's plot concerns a love triangle between Ozawa Abo, an ambidextrous pitcher, and two girls, the spirited Eguchi Hana, a pitcher herself (who gets even more attention as a ballplayer than Ozawa), and wallflower Asai Noriko. In addition to deciding which of these two girls he prefers, he also has to decide which hand to throw with - as a left-hander, his control is impeccable, but when throwing right-handed his Maddux-like control goes entirely out the window and he becomes a fireballer. (I have not started reading this, so I really can't add any more to this at the moment. Sorry!)
~ Touch by Adachi Mitsuru: And finally, we arrive at the most famous Adachi manga of all time - Touch follows a pair of pitcher twins, the Uesugi brothers (Tatsuya and Kazuya), and their friend and next-door neighbor, Asakura Minami. Tatsuya possesses natural talent, but is lazy, whilst Kazuya has to work for everything, but has the work ethic to succeed. Tatsuya declines to directly compete with his brother, even letting Kazuya and Minami get together as they get older although he loves Minami too. Interestingly, Minami secretly prefers Tatsuya. Tragically, in high school, Kazuya runs into the street to save a young boy from being hit by a truck and dies. The rest of the story follows Tatsuya as he picks up where his brother left off, helping out the baseball team as best as he can and becoming the team's ace in Kazuya's place. Touch really isn't for the faint of heart, but if you're looking for a great, engrossing story that centers around baseball and the memories of a former player bringing everyone together again, this is the one. (Random, more lighthearted tidbit - Kazuya is the namesake for Miyuki Kazuya of Daiya no A.)
That's everything I have access to at the moment - the people scanlating Daiya no A are scanlating Major, as well, but they did not start with the very beginning, and if I'm going to take on that epic, which follows the career of Shigeno Goro from kindergarten to the Majors (both in Japan and America - he even participates in the Baseball World Cup, which is essentially the World Baseball Classic disguised a little bit), I want to start from the very beginning. This should keep me busy for months, anyway.
Last year, the offseason did come pretty darn close to killing me. Oh, it made a valiant attempt at it. But I escaped by discovering the oh-so-glorious Ookiku Furikabutte was indeed available for me to watch on Veoh in January. (For those who want to know, Oofuri's first DVD set, containing the first 13 episodes, is set to be released this upcoming January, and I'll try to come up with an official date as soon as possible!)
Anyway, to continue my theme of surviving the offseason with baseball manga and anime, this year I compiled a list of various baseball series on OneManga.com to read, and I'm posting the links here! We could all use some baseball in December, after all. (I have included a summary of each series, as well, so you can see if it's your cup of tea. Every baseball manga is a little different!)
~ Ookiku Furikabutte by Higuchi Asa: Okay, so this is obviously my favorite manga of all time at the moment. The anime will finally arrive licensed in the United States soon, as I mentioned above, and I am way too excited about that. Anyhow, the plot revolves around Clay Buchholz Mihashi Ren, who arrives at his new high school with absolutely no confidence in his pitching whatsoever because of his volatile relationship with his middle school teammates. Over time, though, his new teammates at Nishiura High School accept him, and his growing bond with his new batterymate, Abe Takaya, helps him to build his self-esteem back up. (Of course, my favorite team isn't the main one, Nishiura, but one of their opponents, Tosei - I call them the "crack school" because they're all crazy. And their battery is married!)
~ Daiya no A (Ace of Diamond) by Terajima Yuji: I just discovered Daiya no A (also Daiya no Esu or Daiei) recently, and I fell in love with it. Our main character is Sawamura Eijun (named for Sawamura Eiji, for whom the Japanese equivalent of the Cy Young Award is named), a southpaw pitcher with excellent movement on his fastball (because it's a shonen manga, Eijun's fastball gets a long, silly name - 'rainbow curve naturally moving pitch,' which I think roughly translates to 'rising fastball' in realistic baseball jargon). Scouted out of his Nagano Prefecture middle school by a scout from a Tokyo baseball power school, Eijun ends up at Seidou High School - but sadly, we don't see much past his experimental trials there when still in middle school, because the scanlators have only finished the first two chapters. (And although I try very hard not to be shallow, I must say this - the catcher Eijun first works with, Miyuki Kazuya, is sex on legs.)
~ Nine by Adachi Mitsuru: Adachi is a highly prolific writer of baseball manga, and several of his works will appear on this list. Nine is one of the earliest ones, and it's much shorter in length than Touch and H2, which are the pieces that Adachi is perhaps best known for. I just finished reading this one yesterday, in fact, and it's a cute little story about a middle school track star, Niimi Katsuya, and his best friend, Kawasawa Susumu, the middle school prefectural judo champion, who join Seishuu High School's baseball team in order to help cheer up the coach's daughter, Nakao Yuri. The story follows these two, as well as ace southpaw Kurahashi Eiji, as they navigate their three years of high school, complete with romance and plenty of baseball, and save the high school team, eventually making it strong enough to shoot for Koshien.
~ Cross Game by Adachi Mitsuru: This one's still running. Cross Game follows Kitamura Koh and his friendship with Tsukishima Wakaba, who shares his birthday. The two are very close, and Wakaba's younger sister, Aoba, is rather jealous of their relationship. Suddenly, when she is in fifth grade, Wakaba dies in a swimming accident, and everything changes. The rest of the story follows Koh and his friends as they continue to play baseball in middle and high school (Koh initially pretended not to have any interest in the game, but he trained in secret for years) and his changing relationship with Aoba, who herself is a fantastic pitcher. Interestingly enough, Koh and Aoba's high school is also called Seishuu High, and a part of me wonders if this is supposed to be the same high school from Nine some years later or not (Niimi's class was the Class of 1980-81). (If you cannot tell by this horrible summary of the series, I have not started reading this yet.)
~ H2 by Adachi Mitsuru: The third Adachi series I have on this list (there's one more coming up later!). H2 is about three friends who played together in middle school, Kunimi Hiro, Noda Atsushi and Tachibana Hideo. When a doctor misdiagnoses Kunimi and Noda and tells them they cannot play baseball anymore, they decide to attend Senkawa High School in order to escape the game. Tachibana, on the other hand, goes on to play at the prestigious baseball school Meiwa Daiichi, and manages to become a starter in his freshman season. Kunimi and Noda discover that they have indeed visited with a quack doctor, and they work to transform Senkawa's little baseball club into a full-fledged team, eventually challenging Meiwa Daiichi to move on to play in the Koshien tournament. (I should note that Kunimi and Noda are Senkawa's battery; Kunimi pitches and Noda catches. Tachibana plays third base, as star players are wont to do.)
~ Mr. Fullswing by Suzuki Shinya: This is complete and utter crack. Our main character is Saruno Amakuni, who joins the prestigious Junichi High School baseball team in order to impress and get closer to the team's manager, Torii Nagi. Saruno has absolutely no baseball skills whatsoever and barely understands how to play the game, but he's a natural hitter. Sort of. It seems that even here he is inept, only being able to get his bat on fastballs - breaking balls and off-speed pitches give him trouble, as he's a beginner. Over time, though, he and the other first-years grow in skill and are able to keep up with the upperclassmen as Junichi shoots for Koshien. (My favorite character is first-year second baseman Tomaru Pino - he's got the mentality of a five-year-old and is obsessed with his GBA, but he's extremely fast. He's just way too adorable.)
~ Rookies by Morita Masanori: This is far more serious than Misufuru. Futagotomagawa High School receives a new Japanese teacher, Kawato, who sets out to reform the suspended baseball club, whose members have been banned from school competitions for a year due to a brawl they started during a game. Although at first the players appear uninterested, they eventually become inspired and are motivated to shoot for Koshien once more. (I have not really read this one yet, either. Waaaah. But I started it about two minutes ago to confirm the name of the high school!)
~ Stripe Blue by Moritaka Yuji and Matsushima Yukitaro: As much a romance manga as it is a baseball manga, Stripe Blue's plot concerns a love triangle between Ozawa Abo, an ambidextrous pitcher, and two girls, the spirited Eguchi Hana, a pitcher herself (who gets even more attention as a ballplayer than Ozawa), and wallflower Asai Noriko. In addition to deciding which of these two girls he prefers, he also has to decide which hand to throw with - as a left-hander, his control is impeccable, but when throwing right-handed his Maddux-like control goes entirely out the window and he becomes a fireballer. (I have not started reading this, so I really can't add any more to this at the moment. Sorry!)
~ Touch by Adachi Mitsuru: And finally, we arrive at the most famous Adachi manga of all time - Touch follows a pair of pitcher twins, the Uesugi brothers (Tatsuya and Kazuya), and their friend and next-door neighbor, Asakura Minami. Tatsuya possesses natural talent, but is lazy, whilst Kazuya has to work for everything, but has the work ethic to succeed. Tatsuya declines to directly compete with his brother, even letting Kazuya and Minami get together as they get older although he loves Minami too. Interestingly, Minami secretly prefers Tatsuya. Tragically, in high school, Kazuya runs into the street to save a young boy from being hit by a truck and dies. The rest of the story follows Tatsuya as he picks up where his brother left off, helping out the baseball team as best as he can and becoming the team's ace in Kazuya's place. Touch really isn't for the faint of heart, but if you're looking for a great, engrossing story that centers around baseball and the memories of a former player bringing everyone together again, this is the one. (Random, more lighthearted tidbit - Kazuya is the namesake for Miyuki Kazuya of Daiya no A.)
That's everything I have access to at the moment - the people scanlating Daiya no A are scanlating Major, as well, but they did not start with the very beginning, and if I'm going to take on that epic, which follows the career of Shigeno Goro from kindergarten to the Majors (both in Japan and America - he even participates in the Baseball World Cup, which is essentially the World Baseball Classic disguised a little bit), I want to start from the very beginning. This should keep me busy for months, anyway.