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from Cross Game chapter 14.
Mitsuru Adachi’s Cross Game isn’t my normal fair, but during my baseball comics series I really enjoyed his H2. When I saw Viz was serializing this other baseball manga at their Shonen Sunday site (print volumes soon), I started following it.
It’s pages like the above that really get me. Adachi uses a lot of these pages that are more about scenery, weather, and seasons than any particular narrative plot or scene setting. They are very much like the “pillow shots” used by Ozu in his films. There is an excess to them that is refreshing, not excess as in visual excess or thematic excess, but an excess of narrative concision. Adachi doesn’t need to include these pages (or sometimes just a few panels), but they add to the atmosphere in an intriguing way.
There is something rather endearing with Adachi — while his plots usually revolve around the same (few) structures and archetypes, I’ve always liked the way he dealt with titillation: other shonen manga might go all the way with it, but he keeps it at bay, in a rather realistic way. And indeed, there are those wordless pages that are something of a trademark, and definitely masterful in my eyes.
Agreed on all accounts.
I’m surprised how much of his work has been translated into French. You wouldn’t think baseball manga would be popular.
And yet here in US, Cross Game will be the first of his series to get an official translation.
This abundance has mainly to do with the way French publishers have been dealing with their manga editorial strategy: find a moderately successful author, then release almost everything he’s done over a relatively short period of time. At some point, I think that you could be faced with no less than four Adachi releases during a single month (Short Program, H2, Cross Game and Katsu!, if memory serves).
Another good example of this trend is Kamimura Kazuo, with 9 volumes (three trilogies) published over a 12-month span. While other major authors are completely overlooked (Tsuge coming to mind), most of Kamimura’s production has been translated. In the end, few publishers are actually taking risks trying to discover new voices and expand our horizons.
I’m still fascinated that baseball manga is popular enough for that. I was reading H2 in scanlation, but then they scanlator stopped working on it only a couple volumes from the end (31!). I guess I’ll have to wait for Glenat to catch up so I can find out how it ends.
Especially when considering how much baseball is a non-event in France… I have read my fair share of Adachi (Touch, Rough, Miyuki, H2, Cross-Game, Katsu!, Short Program) but my preference goes to Hara Hidenori, especially for his baseball series (from the parodic Just Meet, to the more serious Ao Zora or Yattarô Jan). None has been translated though, I’m afraid.
Ookiku Furikabutte is supposed to be good, but what I’ve read mostly puzzled me because of the art — finding it hard to tell the characters apart. I’ll have to give it another go.