By Mitsuru Adachi. Released in Japan in 2 separate volumes by Shogakukan, serialized in the magazine Shonen Sunday. Released in North America by Viz.

I have trouble starting out this review of Cross Game. It’s hard to know what to write. Like a volume of the manga itself, you just want to drink it all in, or simply wordlessly hand it to someone. Writing it all down seems superfluous somehow.

Things I liked in this volume (which is Vol. 6 & 7 in Japan)? I liked the introduction of Azuma’s brother Junpei, which at first seems like it will be another in the vein of goofball sadsacks such as Senda. But Junpei not only has a more serious connection to Azuma than we’d thought, but also turns out to have hidden depths. We don’t see as much of that here, but the fact that Ichiyo is warming to him fast says a lot – we know she doesn’t normally suffer fools gladly, ergo there is more to him than it would seem. (Crafty Junpei is also likely correct – staying with Ko and his family is probably the best thing that could happen to Azuma at the moment.)

The plotline where the filthy old man watching from the sidelines turns out to secretly be the company president checking up on things is older than I am, but Adachi carries it off with panache, making the board chairman lovable despite the obvious premise that he’s the one that left power in the hands of the interim principal and the coach in the first place. Speaking of their coach, he remains stubborn till the end, but I enjoyed seeing his placidity destroyed by Azuma the night before the big game.

There’s a few ‘filler’ chapters near the end of the volume, which help to provide some relief after the tense ballgame that takes up much of the middle. I was surprised to see the team’s manager, previously shown to be a bit of a Libby, get some needed character depth… only for it to be undercut on the last page in a hilarious final gag. I also greatly enjoyed Aoba’s solution to the guys who are constantly asking her out. The only chapter that didn’t work for me was Senda’s New Year, mostly because, much as I try to get sympathy for him, he’s just such an idiot.

The outcome of the ballgame is not particularly in doubt, so instead you spend a lot of it watching Ko and Aoba. Ko in particular is now totally driven to get to Koshien, though once again it mostly seems to be driven by Wakaba’s death. Azuma, perceptive as he is, is quick to note how hard this is on both Ko *and* Aoba once he discovers that there was another sister who passed away. The saddest part of the volume for me was when Ko, somewhat flippantly, notes “You don’t have to believe me, but she was crazy about me!”, to which Azuma replies, “And you were crazy about her?” Ko’s response is more muted. “Yeah…”

Of course, Ko and Aoba are destined for each other, and the more that we see them interact, the more we get Wakaba’s quick note to Aoba, “Don’t take him from me”, in Volume 1. They react exactly the same way to situations, they’re both stubborn as mules (“Don’t let those two throw to each other”), and once again we see how they like to imagine their interaction as a web of deceit. The high point of the whole volume for me occurs when Aoba runs like hell to get home and score the first run of the game, with Ko in the batter’s box. Ko notes he would have brought her home (this is after she holds up her hand for a high-five and then yanks it away – so immature!), and Aoba responds, “You’ve betrayed me so many times, since way back.” Ko notes “That’s because you’ve never relied on me.” It’s fantastic how well these two know each other (I didn’t even mention Ko’s dead-on impression of her stubbornness earlier), and how denial and lies have become a comforting blanket.

The volume ends by introducing Aoba’s cousin, who seems to be set up to be a romantic rival for Ko. Even remembering that cousins don’t have the same taboo in Japan that they do here, I still don’t give him much of a chance. Not that he’s needed. There’s a much bigger romantic rival that’s killing any chance of a relationship with others that Ko and Aoba may have. And she’s dead.

Really, you should be reading this simply because it is good. Crafted well, great characters, a sports manga that is about the people rather than the sport, and has some great doses of humor (hey, he didn’t even break the fourth wall this time!). Highly recommended.

By Mitsuru Adachi. Released in Japan in 2 separate volumes by Shogakukan, serialized in the magazine Shonen Sunday. Released in North America by Viz.

The first thing I would like to note is that the mangaka who can wring emotion from the art on the page is rare. But the mangaka that can wring emotion from the LOGO is even rarer. Just the sight of the four-leaf clover, one of the leaves now dimmed to a duller green, made me melancholy.

After setting up his cast and setting in the first 3 volumes of Cross Game, Adachi spends most of these two doing what he does best: writing baseball games. From Chapter 23-35, we get a faceoff between Ko’s ‘portable’ squad and the regular varsity team, featuring ace slugger Azuma. There’s a lot going on here: the varsity coach’s stubborn jerkishness, which banishes comic relief pitcher Senda to the other team early on. Koh facing actual batters in a game for the first time, including people who actually hit off of him. And Aoba, in the stands, offering running commentary and managing to cheer Ko on while at the same time maintaining her usual skeptical disbelief.

Ko, needless to say, is good. Very good. But he’s not the best starter in Japan yet, or even the best starter in the group. He still has trouble wearing himself out easily, and only gets over that hump when he sacrifices his control to concentrate entirely on speed. And he can sometimes get too full of himself, which leads to the final run that decides the game. Still, as was noted, it was the sort of debut that makes the rest of the team want to play harder just to live up to their teammate.

There is comedy here, of course. Most of it is in the sort of wry grin type – I loved Aoba’s reaction to “No fair!”, as she cradles her bruised hand. Likewise a few times during the game, Adachi cuts back to the Tsukishima’s cafe, where the other two sisters provide fun humor and untranslatable puns. (Credit to Viz for just going with them as best they could.) And yes, Adachi breaks the fourth wall a couple more times, though at least he isn’t advertising his old manga anymore.

But there’s also some incredible emotion here, all the more amazing by what ISN’T revealed. Adachi and Rumiko Takahashi call each other ‘best friends and rivals’, and it fits very well, as they each fill in the other’s weaknesses with their strengths. In particular, Adachi is a master at letting the reader fill in the blank rather than spelling everything out. Chapter 36 features Ko waiting hand and foot over the shallow manager of the varsity squad, carrying her things and putting up with her degrading comments – as well as intense anger from Aoba, who noted earlier that “that’s the kind of guy he is”, then got even more annoyed when she saw it, as that ISN’T the kind of guy he is. (Lies between Ko and Aoba dominate the entire series.) Takahashi would milk this misunderstanding for all it’s worth. Adachi defuses it three pages later, as Aoba’s two friends happened to see the real reason he was doing this. They’re confused, but Aoba immediately knows what’s going on.

Wakaba is still a major presence in this work, of course. Besides the previous chapter, which ends with Ko putting the Cat Teapot he got by degrading himself into her present box (only 4 years to go till the engagement ring), but things get even scarier when Ko and Senda have to go find Aoba, who has gotten the wrong directions and ended up lost in the woods. Ko, trying to find her, finds instead her shoe. By a roaring river. In the middle of summer. Any self-respecting shonen hero would be having a nervous breakdown by now, given Ko’s past memories of Wakaba. Instead, after two panels of panic, we fade back to see… this is actually a video of his panic being shown to Aoba, who is fine.

So Adachi does not have the strength of showing raw emotions the way that Takahashi does. On the other hand, he can use his own staid, unhurried style to let the reader create their own tension, and then get the same release. It works well during the baseball game, and it works doubly well in the summer chapters here. Ko is an undemonstrative hero, but that’s why we get the occasional dialogue like “It’s good to be busy during the summer… keeps you from thinking too much.” It shows us that both Ko and Aoba are still having immense trouble letting go of the past.

At the end of this omnibus, things are much the same place they were last time. The portables have come together as a team, and Ko has shown that he can pitch well in a real game, but they aren’t going to varsity anytime soon unless they either convince or ditch the sadistic coach. I can’t wait to see how this plays out in Vols. 6 & 7, aka Vol. 3 here, in April.

By Mitsuru Adachi. Released in Japan in 3 separate volumes by Shogakukan, serialized in the magazine Shonen Sunday. Released in North America by Viz.

It feels like this has been a very long wait. Not just since Viz announced they’d licensed the manga, but long before that. Despite the presence of Short Program here several years ago, there was always a lack of Adachi here in North America. I imagine many manga fans, reading the back pages biography talking about him being one of the two artists most associated with Shonen Sunday (the other being his contemporary, rival and friend Rumiko Takahashi) are blinking and going, “Really?”

Yes, really. And now with Cross Game out you may have a chance to see why. The first volume (that is, the first third of this volume) sets things up nicely. A bratty but likeable young protagonist, whose main fault seems to be his inability to apply himself. His cute girl next door not-quite-girlfriend, who clearly already has his life planned out ahead of him, whether he likes it or not. And her younger sister, who’s a grumpy but athletic tomboy who resents our hero for taking up all of her sister’s time. A cute coming-of-age story with a potential love triangle, it’s clear that Wakaba has Ko wrapped around her little finger, and it’d take a lot to change that.

Then we get ‘a lot’ at the end of Volume 1. Without spoiling, I will note that I was worried the impact would be lost coming in the middle of Viz’s thick omnibus, but my worry appeared unfounded. Ko’s reaction is picture perfect, and the whole thing shows Adachi’s craft in drawing huge wellsprings of emotions from small, realistic details.

Cue Part 2 of the manga (the chapters even reset), and a jump ahead 4 years later, to where Ko is about to enter high school. He’s still pretty unmotivated – at least in public – and Aoba is still a grumpy tomboy, but the rest of the world has grown up a bit, and baseball is on the horizon. (Note: this being a Viz shonen manga, there will be no footnotes or explanations, so if you don’t know what the Koushien is, go here.) Ko joins the team, but is relegated to the second squad, mostly as he hides his talent.

I can’t help but note that Aoba notes she has no faith in Ko to take charge of his own destiny, and in many ways she has the right idea. Ko can be so laid-back he risks being uninvolving, but that’s also what makes him so intriguing. (Someone I know describes Ko and Aoba as ‘Ranma and Akane on lithium’, which is not quite accurate, but…) There’s only one time we see him get upset in the entire manga, and it’s rather startling; he grabs Aoba’s collar after she says something unthinking to her younger sister Momiji, and looks like he might even hit her, but instead backs off. It helps show that Ko DOES get upset, he’s just not naturally demonstrative.

In fact, Ko and Aoba almost gender reverse the usual manga types, with Aoba being the one trying to figure out what Ko is thinking, and his own emotions and needs being hard to read and fairly well buried. Their relationship is fascinating, not being like brother and sister (Ko gets that from Momiji, who seems to have become the sister he bonds with the most), but something almost deeper than that; it’s noted how similar Ko and Aoba are.

One other thing I wanted to note is the old-school 4th-wall breaking that occurs throughout the manga. It calms down a bit as the manga continues, but will never go away entirely. Ko hawks the re-release of Touch, Adachi’s early 80s baseball classic; his friends read H3 and H4, parodies of another baseball manga H2 which Adachi did in the mid 1990s; mentions Short Program, which is the only one of these to be released in North America, if long out of print; and also discusses Katsu, the boxing manga Adachi had written right before this. Adachi himself cameos to lampshade some things or make a bad gag; and characters speak to the reader and talk about their character introductions. This is a habit of Adachi’s (Takahashi used to do it as well; check out any volume of Urusei Yatsura), one I think they both got from Osamu Tezuka, who used to do things like this as well. It can take getting used to, but I found it cute.

Cross Game is not the type of shonen manga we’ve seen here before. Most of the sports manga that has come out here has been from Shueisha’s Jump line, and features a lot of manly tears, screaming, and overreactions. Sunday’s sports manga tends to be subtler (and just as long; H2 ran for over 30 volumes, and another Sunday baseball manga, Major by Takuya Mitsuda, ran for over 70), but no less involving. Viz noted that Cross Game started slow (and yes, also that it likely wasn’t a NYT bestseller – I’d love to be proved wrong on that) and decided to release this 17-volume series as 8 omnibuses instead. It helps here, as you get further drawn into the story, which picks up speed once the manga jumps ahead 4 years. Even if you aren’t a baseball fan, I’d still recommending getting Cross Game, showing Adachi at the height of his creative powers, and dealing with ‘growing up’ issues in a way that appeals to young boys just as much as Super Saiyans or ninjas. Highly recommended.