Mix (manga)

Mix is an ongoing Japanese baseball shōnen manga series written and illustrated by Mitsuru Adachi. It is a semi-sequel to Touch. Its chapters have been serialized since May 12, 2012 in Monthly Shōnen Sunday magazine, published by Shogakukan.^[1][2] As of June 2016, the chapters have been compiled into nine tankōbon volumes.^[3]

Plot

Thirty years after Tatsuya and Kazuya Uesugi brought Meisei High School to their only appearance and championship at the National High School Baseball Championship, a pair of highly talented stepbrothers, Touma and Souichirou Tachibana, bring the possibility of a return to the Koshien, as they learn of the Meisei High sports heritage of their fathers.

Characters

Tachibana Family

Touma Tachibana

When Touma was 6 years old his widowed father, Eisuke Tachibana, married the widow Mayumi Sawai, who also brought her two children, Souichiro and Otomi, into the family. Touma has a friendly and outgoing personality, which helped his new siblings, especially Otomi, get out of the gloomy and introverted state they had been in since their father had died. Coincidentally, Touma and Souichiro share the same birthday, Touma only being born ten minutes later than his step-brother. Throughout childhood Touma competed with his new brother to see who would be the destined pitcher of the pair and who would relent and be the catcher for the other. Due his phenomenal pitching speed and maybe because of a successful round of rock-paper-scissors, Touma became the pitcher. In middle school he was held back from being the ace pitcher while the coach gave preferential treatment to a less talented pitcher. Once that situation was resolved, he became the ace in his final year of middle school and later named ace in his first year of High School.

Souichirou Tachibana

Souichirou is an athletic and intelligent boy, especially gifted with strategic thinking, perfect for his position as catcher on the baseball team. Souichiro, an overly protective big brother, will insist that Touma drop whatever he is doing in order to go to Otomi if he realizes she might be alone at home or in public. He is seemingly competitive with Touma but it is also possible that he gave up the position of pitcher to him a bit too easily. Both his stepfather, Eisuke, and his coach, Gourou, (both of whom know better than anyone that his father was an outstanding pitcher himself) express their confusion over why he gave it up. He is also a bit of a young ladies-man, dating many different girls throughout middle school and still being popular in high school. He stops dating so many girls after falling in love with Haruna at first sight, but she doesn't seem to return his affection. He regularly visits the ramen restaurant where she works part-time just to spend time with her.

Otomi Tachibana

Otomi is a pretty and popular girl who is a talented flutist in the school's brass band. She is only a year younger than her brother and step-brother. She grew up shy, reserved, and especially frightened of strangers after her father died but Touma's companionship and outgoing and confident personality helped her overcome that weakness. She now seems to rely on Touma as much, if not more, than her blood-related brother and will pay extra attention to him, such as making him "special" versions of food. When she first met Haruna, Otomi asked her which of her brothers is her type, but is rendered speechless when Haruna responds "Hmmm, Are you worried?".

Eisuke Tachibana

Eisuke is Touma's Father, his marriage to Mayumi is his second. His first wife died when Touma was only three years old. He is rough looking, a bit of a goofball and a complainer, but he is also a hard worker, cheerful, and loyal to friends and family. He was a secondary pitcher at Meisei at the same time as Ooyama and Sawai, never able to wear the ace number as a player. Although Sawai did gift him his jersey after he was injured.

Mayumi Tachibana

Mayumi is the mother of Souichiro and Otomi, her marriage to Eisuke is her second. She was originally married to Keiichi Sawai and never knew of his connection to Eisuke until the second marriage began. She is a beautiful and charming woman but can get upset when her husband and Gourou drink in the middle of the day and disrupt the family's dinner. She has a habit of telling everyone she meets about her family's unique make-up.

Punch

As in Touch and H2, the family dog is an energetic but fat Samoyed named Punch. Katsu! also had a family dog named Punch but it was, appropriately, a Boxer.

Keiichi Sawai

Keiichi Sawai is Souichiro and Otomi's deceased father. In his first year of High School at Meisei he was chosen as the team's ace pitcher over Eisuke in his third year. During the final game of the year his hand was permanently damaged and he never pitched again. Although he couldn't play, he cheerfully stayed with the team for the next two years as a manager. When he married Mayumi he never told her about his playing days. He died late enough that Souichiro has some memory of him smiling when he gave him a baseball glove, but Otomi says she doesn't really remember him at all.

The First Mrs. Tachibana

A name has yet to be revealed for Touma's deceased mother. She died when Touma was three years old. According to Eisuke, she was the ace pitcher of her softball team, a national tournament runner-up.

Meisei Students and Staff

Gourou Ooyama

Gourou is the new coach of the Meisei High School baseball team. He says he turned down other jobs to take the Meisei position but that may have been a bluff to make him look better. He is generally seen as a lazy guy and not all that responsible, but he has a good mind for baseball. He is separated from his wife, an upcoming author, but not divorced. His daughter moved with him when he started his new job. He was the captain of the Meisei team when he was younger and is still close friend's with Eisuke, his former teammate.

Haruna Ooyama

Haruna is Gourou's pretty daughter. Upon entering Meisei she joined and quickly became a star of the rhythmic gymnastics team but she is also a talented baseball scout and is obviously interested in helping the team. When Haruna and Touma were both three and Touma's mother died, they met at the funeral and spent the day together, at one point she punched him for being hyper and disrespectful and made him cry. He has no memory of this but she fondly remembers their short time spent together and has always wondered how he turned out.

Shirou Nangou

Nangou, or "Nan-Chan", as Haruna calls him, is a quiet but hulking power hitter and third baseman who moved to Tokyo and entered Meisei presumably to continue playing for Gourou, turning down invitations from more prestigious baseball schools to do so, but it is more likely he did it in order to stay close to Haruna. She just considers him a childhood friend though. He looks intimidating but is easily frightened by insects. Although competing with Souichiro for Haruna's affection, he will quietly tag along with him if they meet and can't see Haruna.

Ryo Akai

Akai is a class representative and star soccer player. Otomi is the assistant representative in their class. Arisa Mita likes him but he starts to have feelings for Otomi, who thinks of him merely as a friend. His older brother is the star 1st year slugger at Kenjou High but he says the two of them don't get along very well.

Arisa Mita

Mita considers Otomi her rival in beauty and popularity and is jealous of her good relationship with her crush, Ryo Akai. She tries to outdo her whenever she can.

Ichiban Natsuno

Natsuno is a boastful classmate of Otomi but is only a marginally talented baseball player. He believes he is destined to be the baseball team's ace pitcher because his name means "Summer's Number One," and indeed he is the Middle School's ace once Touma leaves for High School. He is one of many boys who like Otomi.

Kousaku Koma

Koma is a right fielder and power hitter with a high strike out rate. He is a talkative friend of Touma and one of many with a crush on Otomi. He usually has the worst academic scores in class.

Tadashi Imakawa

Imakawa is a first baseman, was the former captain of the Meisei Middle School team, and is an old friend of Nikaidou, although their friendship was strained while Nikaidou secretly kept his heart condition from him.

Daisuke Nikaidou

Nikaidou was once the designated ace of Meisei's Middle School baseball team and the son of a rich alumnus who gifts the team equipment and perks. He has some talent but Touma, Souichirou, and the rest of the team resent him for his privileged position despite what they see as a lack of effort, stamina, and being clearly worse than Touma. It is revealed that his severe pitch limit and short practice sessions were actually precautions put on him because of a serious heart condition. He was made ace by the coach not due to any bribes but solely as an unsolicited favor to Daisuke's father, a close friend of his. He is forced to leave baseball after a risky life-saving surgery. Believing that he would die from his surgery, he kept it a secret from everyone, thinking those that criticized him would feel extreme guilt once they learned of his death. However, he too comes to appreciate Touma's talent and closely follows the future teams' progress.

Coach Kuroyanagi

Kuroyanagi was once the Meisei Middle School baseball coach. Due largely to Souichiro's game calling, he was able to lead his school's team out of the first tournament block for the first time in 20 years but refused to sit Nikaidou and let Touma pitch in the next block, even though he had obviously lost his ability to pitch effectively. He secretly had a benevolent reason to let him pitch but it led the team to a bad loss after Nikaidou came in late to a tie game and gave up 5 runs to finish it up. Although not forced to, he voluntarily resigned his job for unfairly giving preferential treatment.

Others

Takumi Nishimura

Takumi is the prideful pitcher of the Seinan Junior and High School baseball teams. Like his father before him, he is a very talented pitcher with a particularly good curve ball. He has an obsessive crush on Otomi and goes out of his way to get her attention and ask her out but will also secretly have her picture taken and made into poster sized prints for his room.

Coach Isami Nishimura

Takumi's father, Isami is the coach of Seinan High School, the team he played for when he was a pitching rival of Tatsuya and Kazuya Uesugi, thirty years prior. He is still a bit pompous but has become a slightly humbler man. While he is proud that his son resembles him in looks and pitching talent he is a little annoyed with his similar boastfulness and the same sort of hopeless dogged pursuit of an uninterested girl that he displayed when he was his age.

Hiroki Mita

Mita is an accomplished left-handed pitcher from Toushou High. He pitched his team into the quarterfinals of the National Tournament during his second year. In his third year his little sister, Arisa, asked him to bring his team to play a practice game with Meisei in order to humiliate Otomi and her brothers. Although he did win with a complete perfect game, Touma's stunning High School debut somewhat lessened the accomplishment.

Tomohito Akai

Ryo Akai's older brother and standout member of the team of scouted players at Kenjou High School. An all-around excellent hitter with tremendous power.

Reception

By November 11, 2012, volume 1 had sold 284,084 copies.^[4] By April 6, 2013, volume 2 had sold 345,120 copies.^[5] Volume 2 was the 48th best-selling manga volume from November 19, 2012 to May 19, 2013, with 390,176 copies^[6] and the 82nd best-selling manga volume from November 19, 2012 to November 17, 2013 with 464,362 copies.^[7] By April 6, 2013, volume 3 had sold 319,599 copies.^[8] By January 12, 2014, volume 4 had sold 182,060 copies.^[9]

References

External links

• Mix (manga) (manga) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia