Mix

For someone whose all-time favourite anime is Touch, there's a strange feeling to be had watching a quasi-sequel an entire thirty plus years after Touch originally aired. A mixture of nostalgia and of heavy emotions, of how things were and how they are, of how we have changed but not changed much at all. But throughout it all, the one emotion that lingered strongest was: "I wish I was watching Touch instead." It's a story that has been done thrice before, with Mix now being Adachi Mitsuru's fourth at-bat with coming-of-age baseball dramas. The biggest difference here is that Mix isn't so much a personal story in the way that Touch and Cross Game were, but is an entirely sports-focused series in a similar vein to H2, albeit with heavy themes of family and nostalgia. Touch in particular was focused on themes of trauma, guilt, angst, loss, and love, of trying to prove yourself and trying to be someone who you are not. There are none of these things in Mix— not even a touch of romance— which makes the entire experience pretty mild unless an already prodigy-level pitcher aiming for first place at the Koushien is all you ever needed. The matches are engaging in typical Adachi Mitsuru fashion, as they can be over in a split-second from the tiniest of mistakes, making it impossible to reliably predict who will win and who will lose. No team is invincible, and no player is infallible. The epic music crescendos with Touma's masterful pitches, each landing with a loud thud as the innings rack up and the stakes increase. One mistake, one poor pitch and Meisei could be immediately sent home with nothing but regret and a years-long wait until next summer's tournament. While the first half of Mix is largely slice-of-life and an introduction to the characters, the second half is extremely tense and devoted to Meisei's run at the summer tournament. As a sports anime, Mix is great. But with only twenty-four episodes devoted to a still-ongoing manga, with enough chapters to already cover several seasons worth of similarly paced content, to have things end as prematurely as they do makes the anime feel like lost potential. "Really... that's it? No sequel announcement? This is how we're ending?", I thought, as my video player reached the end of the final episode's credits. Adachi Mitsuru's anime adaptations— namely Touch and Cross Game— are notable in how they actually portrayed the entire story despite the length of their manga source material. Touch told a full story, from beginning to end. So did Cross Game. But Mix, unless things are to change, has only told about 10% of the entire story, hoping anime viewers will be OK with an ending that doesn't conclude anything or make the viewer feel at all happy with where things are leaving off. It's like a manga that was gutted and canceled with two week's notice— it simply isn't an ending. But I guess that is the fate of anime produced in 2019. The days of fifty, a hundred episodes airing weekly is behind us, with three different seasons produced over an entire decade being the best one could hope for. Most of the time anime adaptations will simply end after the thirteen episodes and remain incomplete stories. It's a shame Mix was produced in 2019 instead of a decade ago when longer stories still had a fighting chance. Because, you know, Touch never even showed its true colors until twenty-five episodes had passed. Maybe there is more here as the story progresses, and maybe, just maybe, had it been a full adaptation, it could have had the potential to match or even surpass Touch. I enjoyed Mix. I enjoyed returning to a peaceful setting painted by Adachi Mitsuru, and hearing all the silly fourth-wall-breaking gags the characters prod the viewer with. The summer tournament in the latter half was climactic and exciting. But every time the show would reference Touch, with Touma pitching next to Tatsuya - his splitting image - I would feel a desire to simply return to Touch instead, much, I suppose, as Touma's coach is haunted by nostalgia, unable to let go of his memories at Meisei thirty years past. So I write this review, six years after I wrote my Touch review, with manga volumes of Touch and Cross Game still standing next to my computer desk. Obviously I haven't let go just yet, but that doesn't mean I didn't give Mix a fair shot, either. I just don't think it did it best.