[OTAKU] Mitsuru Adachi's latest baseball manga "Mix" comes to TV in Anime form.

[Zen]

Mix, The latest baseball manga by Mitsuru Adachi, which is a sequel of sorts to Touch, one of the classics of the genre, has gotten a TV anime this season. At this point (12 episodes in) I can say that it is being pretty faithful to the manga.

Based 30 years after the events of Touch at the same high school, where no team from the school has advanced to the Koshien, or the National High School Baseball Championship Tournament, in those 30 years. The protagonists of the story are Touma and Souichiro Tachibana, along with their younger sister Otome. Touma and Souichiro are a pitcher and catcher who share a birthday, but are not twins. Touma's married Souichiro and Otome's mother after both of their spouses died young when the boys were six years old and Otome was five. It is mere coincidence that Tou and Sou were born on the same day. They find out that there are other coincidences involving their families that they were not aware of along the way, including some history with the family of the new coach of the high school team once they get there.

The tone of the manga and anime leans heavy on comedy, but it has some serious moments as well. However, it never lets the serious linger too long without cracking a joke. The manga makes frequent homages to Touch (as well as some other Adachi works like H2 and Cross Game). It has the feel of a "swan song"... something that is a grand-master's farewell piece.

The anime is being simulcast by and, more impressively, simuldubbed by . At the start of the season the dubbed episodes were coming out the SAME DAY that they aired in Japan, but over the past few weeks they've fallen behind. They are now two weeks behind the Japanese broadcast with the dubs. Both sites can be watched with or without a subscription. Subscribers get the current week's shows, higher video quality, and commercial free streams. Free viewers have to wait a week to stream episodes in lower resolution while sitting through commercials.

I believe this is only the second of Adachi's words that was adapted to anime that was licensed by an American company, Cross Game being the first.