Why H2 is Adachi Mitsuru’s best manga

There’s a chance I’ll spoil some details about some Adachi Mitsuru manga or another, so maybe don’t read this if you haven’t seen them yet and want to go in unspoiled.

Adachi Mitsuru has had a long and storied career as a manga artist, penning a multitude of works in shounen, shoujo and seinen magazines and managing to find some success with all three demographics. Although not all of his manga are good (a dud is almost inevitable considering his weird sense of humor and the sheer amount of stuff he’s put out), the majority of his body of work is composed of very well-written manga. It can be difficult to choose a favorite, let alone decide which of them is his best work.

Or, well, not really. H2 is clearly his best work, and I will fistfight anyone who says otherwise.

Now, I’m not usually the kind of person to assert one work as objectively better than another. I’m more the kind to make it clear that I’m just expression my opinion, to say that I like one thing more than another. However, I feel very strongly about this particular matter. So much so that I’ve re-read all of Adachi’s most significant manga so that I can present some arguments to back my feelings up.

Here are five reasons why I believe H2 is Adachi Mitsuru’s strongest manga.

1. It shows confidence in its writing

If there’s one thing Adachi is known for in the west, it’s for his big dramatic hooks in Touch and Cross Game. And that’s very understandable. It makes for a hell of an introduction to start your manga out by letting your reader get attached to a character and then killing them off. But while I don’t want to call such a hook a crutch… Well, it kind of is.

Manga artists live with the constant threat of cancellation hanging over their heads. While the magazines Adachi has written for may not be as competitive as Jump, the threat of cancellation is nonetheless a factor in deciding how to write a manga. This is where big dramatic hooks come in, as they are an easy way to get readers invested in a manga. Adachi just needs readers to stick around long enough until he can win them over with his unique writing style.

To get back to the topic, Adachi’s confidence in writing H2 manifests, first and foremost, in his decision to not use a dramatic hook to pull the readers in. Instead he goes with a simple setup (a talented baseball player has to stop playing baseball in high school because of a supposed injury, but is pulled back into it because of his love for the game) with a lot of promise, and lets it play out naturally with the assumption that just his name will get people to stick around long enough for that promise to pay off.

It also manifests in even ballsier ways later down the story, particularly when he lets Senkawa get all the way to Koshien (which is what the entire story has built up to) only to let them lose before they get to the climactic match with Meiwa Daiichi. At around the 200 chapter mark, no less. It takes balls to pull such a stunt, as you can just as easily turn your audience off your manga and get cancelled before you can ever write the payoff to what you’ve been building towards. But Adachi did it, the absolute madman, and it resulted in the best ending out of any of his manga.

2. It has the most exciting games

It feels weird to praise H2 for having the most exciting games, as I always shill H2 to people who aren’t interested in baseball manga by saying that you don’t need to like baseball to like H2. But, well, it still is a sports manga after all. Adachi often works sports into his romance manga because he likes to tie emotional stakes to the sport, and at the same time the sport aspect can provide a steady sense of progression while he continues to develop the romance in his slow, but steady pace. Given that, it’s only fair to praise H2 for handling the sport aspect best out of all of his manga.

Now, this is most definitely bias speaking, but I would argue that team sports like baseball are inherently more interesting than the other sports that Adachi has written about (like boxing, swimming and track), simply because of how much focus it can put on a number of characters all at once. There’s a whole lot of moving parts in baseball, which means that there’s so much more that can go wrong and so many opportunities for characters to shine.

And compared to Adachi’s other baseball manga, H2 stands supreme. Touch’s games were relatively simple. It was all a matter of whether Tatsuya could throw strikes or not, and if he did, he got strikeouts. Cross Game, on the other hand, wasn’t as exciting because the team (Seishu) felt too powerful. Ko was out pitching upwards of 150 km/h and steadily climbing towards 160, and yet Seishu also had the best hitter introduced in the manga, as well as two other power hitters. It’s not as fun when a team seems strong in every way that matters.

In contrast, the team in H2 (Senkawa) is very much a pitcher’s team. Although the speed is never specified, Hiro could pitch fast enough to get a lot of strikeouts. However, most games actually come down to a hit and field strategy. This meant the spotlight was shared with the catcher, Noda, and whoever fielded the ball at the time(usually Yanagi, Sagawa, Kine, Ohtake or Shima). They were no slouches at the plate (Hiro was a good hitter who as a rule shined in the last inning, Yanagi was adept at fouling off pitches and moving the runner up, Sagawa was good at making contact and was the second fastest runner in the team, Noda was a power hitter who usually batted runners in with fly balls, Ohtake was a power hitter who either missed the ball or hit home runs, Shima is the fastest runner who could beat out even throws from fielded bunts and Kine is decent at making contact and is decently fast), but they also didn’t have anyone who could reliably score home runs for them so they usually resorted to playing small ball as an offensive strategy. They were a balanced, ragtag team with a whole lot of character, and that made for the most exciting games. This kinda leads into my next point.

3. It has the most fleshed-out side cast

I’m sure some people will dismiss this point as being a result of H2 having the most chapters out of any Adachi manga, but that would be plain wrong. H2 200 chapters in has a bigger cast and a better distribution of screentime than Touch 200 chapters in. This is the same with H2’s first 170 chapters versus Cross Game’s 170 chapters.

This isn’t a matter of length, H2 was just built from the ground up with a bigger emphasis on its side cast. I’ve covered it in the past point, but this manifests in the games where the other members of the team get a lot of chances to shine. However, it extends even beyond the field. Outside of games, the side characters have their own little quirks, rivalries and arcs. Even the coach and some members of rival team Meiwa Daiichi can be pretty endearing, as we get constant peeks at what goes on in their team to build up Hideo and Hikari.

Here are some great examples of the little arcs that the side characters have:

• Shima and Ohtake initially joins Senkawa so they can sabotage the team on Hirota’s command, but eventually grow to love baseball. Shima has a friendly rivalry with Sagawa about who can run faster.
• Senkawa’s coach Koga has a rivalry with Eikyo’s first coach Shiroyama, because when he was a student Shiroyama kept him on the bench out of spite and he wanted to prove how wrong Shiroyama’s methods are.
• Kine obnoxiously seeks to win Haruka over, but over time gets closer to Meiwa Daiichi’s Miho, who similarly seeks to steal Hideo from Hikari, until they get together and he mellows out.

Adachi has always been great at coming up with interesting character dynamics, and he gets a chance to show that strength off with H2’s massive cast in a way that his other manga’s smaller casts just doesn’t allow.

4. It has the best rival

Hideo is hands down the best rival in an Adachi manga. Just think of all the most notable Adachi manga and how they treated the rivals:

• In Rough, Nakanishi is the barrier in main character Keisuke’s sports career. He also is in love with Ami, but she doesn’t have feelings for him and stays close to him out of a sense of duty when Nakanishi gets into an accident later in the manga and loses his shit.
• In Touch, the closest thing to a real rival Tatsuya has is Kazuya, and he dies around the 50 chapter mark. Nitta is later introduced to stand in the way of Tatsuya and Koshien, and also to get Tatsuya to reconsider his relationship with Minami, but he’s ultimately irrelevant when it comes down to it.
• In Katsu!, Kimoto is initially Katsu’s rival but he’s later demoted to a somewhat irrelevant character to make way for Misaki. Neither are a serious threat for Katsu’s (the female one, the main character and love interest have the same first name) affection.
• In Cross Game, Azuma is initially the closest thing to being Ko’s rival, at least on the field. However, he later becomes Ko’s teammate. Mizuki is later introduced to shake up the romantic dynamic, but Aoba has no interest in him and he doesn’t play baseball so he doesn’t serve as a threat on the field to Ko. Later on Mishima and Oikawa, both from Ryuou, are introduced as threats on the field but are entirely disconnected from the romance.

All these are rivals are vastly inferior to Hideo, who is both a monstrous threat on the field as the best batter among the H2 cast, as well as being in a dominant position romantically, as he is already Hikari’s boyfriend at the start of the manga(more on that later). He is just as invested in the idea of a fated showdown between him and Hiro on the grandest stage, Koshien, as the audience is. He is also Hiro’s best friend. We see him goof off and be silly just as much as we see him as a badass standing in the way of Hiro. And maybe it’s just me, but I’ve always thought that rivals who are also best friends with the main character are the best.

5. It has the most interesting romantic conflict

Adachi is no stranger to writing interesting romantic conflicts. Even though people accuse him of copy-pasting arcs and character development, the romantic conflict in his manga are all pretty different.

In Rough, it’s initially about Ami overcoming a hatred passed down in the family to fall in love with Keisuke, and later on about resisting her sense of duty to Nakanishi to find her own happiness. In Touch, it’s initially about overcoming Tatsuya’s altruistic nature to take what he desires despite Kazuya also wanting the same thing, and later on about overcoming his sense of guilt to be happy with Minami. In Katsu!, it’s about whether or not (female)Katsu will still love (male)Katsu if ever he stopped boxing, and it’s resolved like halfway through the manga. The closest contender for most interesting conflict would be Cross Game, which is about two very similar people who are similarly very dishonest about their own feelings. Aoba can be classified as a tsundere, while Ko is just a guy who is very dismissive of his own feelings and plays them off as lies.

But H2 is still the clear winner, for my money. H2 is about Hiro dealing with selfish feelings that he himself doesn’t want to acknowledge, for a childhood friend who has been together with his best friend for years. It’s a continuous buildup of repressed feelings and uncontrollable urges, until Hideo gives Hiro a chance to fight for his love in a way he didn’t get to before, on the grandest stage. The result is bittersweet, as it is appropriate. Hiro wins the match but loses Hikari, and finally gets to move on as a result of finally facing his own selfish feelings. Hideo loses the match, but realizes that he could never have stood by and let Hikari leave him regardless of the match’s result. Hikari lays to rest her tangled feelings for Hiro and acknowledges that she never had the right to choose between the two of them. And Haruka finally gets a chance to be the only girl in Hiro’s heart, now that he’s moved on from Hikari.

How’s that for an ending?

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Despite essentially tearing down Adachi’s other works to show how inferior they are to H2, I should make it clear that I still adore each and every Adachi manga, warts and all. I love the way Adachi sets scenes up with shots of the scenery. I love how concise his dialogue can be, how his characters talk around their feelings instead of going on and on about them. I love his subtle character interactions and his understated but hard-hitting drama. Re-reading his most notable manga for the sake of writing this post has only reaffirmed my longing for more Adachi manga. As much as he’s already written, there’s not nearly enough Adachi manga in the world. He is also criminally underrated and underappreciated in the west, which is a crying shame.

I’m excited to see where Mix goes. I’ll be looking forward to seeing it end, since then I’ll finally be able to compare it to his other manga and see how it fares. Maybe it’ll dethrone H2 as the best Adachi manga?

Hah, just kidding. There’s no way it’s dethroning H2.