Luckily in 1998 they produced a TV movie called Miss Lovely Yesterday, taking place 5 years after the end of the manga. Tatsuya is in college, studying hard but he has left baseball. Meanwhile Minami is still in gymnastics. This time out the love triangle was a bit more cliche’, slightly different than what Adachi did in the manga.

Minami sees Kaori kissing Tatsuya on his cheek, as well as them going to watch a movie together. Kaori even lies to her about Tatsuya, but Minami believes her without doubts (she didn’t fall for this kind of thing in the manga, she knew Tatsuya too well). Then she confronts Tatsuya, but she doesn’t really tell him what Kaori said. So she storms out and by chance meets Nitta, who consoles her. All this is obviously seen by Tatsuya. Just too predictable.

I also knew how it would end. They don’t really explain to each other all the misunderstandings, they just realize by themselves they still love each other, and everything goes back to normal. The role of Kaori was very annoying. On one hand we’re supposed to feel for her, since she’s in a similar situation as Tatsuya (having lost her own twin sister), but she also acts like a bitch to Minami, so there’s no way I am sympathetic towards her. Nitta is just too gentle, and doesn’t even fight for Minami. When he realizes she still loves Tatsuya, he has no reaction. It seems as though he doesn’t care about her.

I can understand about Minami wanting to quit gymnastics, because she never really wanted to do it in the first place. I also appreciate Tatsuya’s struggle to play baseball after having achieved Koushien. Going to US to play his own baseball, instead of his brother’s makes sense.

Even other secondary characters get their own conclusions, like Nishimura’s career, or Harada coming back from his long travels, after winning the lottery.

Overall I was glad to watch this, but it really felt too predictable.

A few years later another TV movie was produced, called Cross Road. This one sees Tatsuya starting his career in US, while Minami is starting her own career in photography. After the ridiculously exaggerated love triangle in the previous movie, the love triangle is downplayed in this story. There’s still a love interest for Tatsuya, though she just has a teenage crush on him (she’s only 16!!), while he’s oblivious to her feelings, only caring about Minami.

This time out baseball is back at the center of the story, and though we never get too tense during game play (not like in the manga), there is an interesting final game.

Unfortunately that’s about the only good thing I can say about this movie. I didn’t much care about the new characters, and the fact that Americans spoke Japanese irritated me a little bit. Minami’s struggle to find herself is an ok concept, but I didn’t feel any passion from her towards photography. It just didn’t work for me.

The long distance relationship wasn’t explored at all, I think it could have been interesting. Even when Tatsuya accidentally ruins another player’s career, it just wasn’t handled well. He struggles for 3 minutes in the movie, then all is forgotten once he calls Minami. He doens’t even tell her about it at all!!

This last movie really didn’t do it for me, at least I could enjoy catching up with familiar characters in the previous one. Here I just don’t care much about anything. I think we’ve seen enough about Tatsuya and Minami’s relationship, at this point they should just get married and have kids. I would be more interested in watching that, them finally getting married.

Unfortunately they changed all the names to Italian names, and the title became “Prendi il mondo a vai” (literally “Take the world and go”). But the story was the same, so I was really taken by the tale of the twins, even though I never actually watched the ending.

Luckily the manga was later published with the original names, however I left the country before they completed the series. So up until now I really hadn’t read the ending. But now, thanks to scanlations I have finally read the whole story and I loved it.

The love triangle present in all Adachi stories is slightly different, more interesting in my opinion. The contenders for Minami are twins, Katsuya the hard working talented in baseball, and Tatsuya the lazy one. It’s easy to sympathize for Tatsuya for me, he might be lazy, but he’s no less talented than his brother. Also one of the reasons he’s lazy in sports (and love) is because he doesn’t want to compete with Katsuya, so as a good elder brother he’s letting Katsuya have it all.

The first 5 volumes are the basis for the relationships between these 3 childhood friends. There are many funny scenes, but there are also a few dramatic scenes in which their real feelings come out. Usually everything is subtly hinted at, and this is one of Adachi’s strengths. With just a few expressions, a few words or body language, Adachi can say a lot about the characters feelings.

But it’s at the end of volume 6 and the beginning of volume 7 that things take an unexpected turn. The dynamic changes and things are even more interesting. I’ll talk about this later. The second half of the series introduces new characters and new situations, but it also focuses much more on baseball. I was actually very taken by the baseball scenes, even though I am not a big baseball fan. But even those scenes are tied to the emotional core of the series.

It’s a pity that this series is not officially available in English, but the scanlations are good enough for me. And now I will spoil it and talk about it in more detail.

SPOILER WARNING!!

The death of Katsuya really upped the quality of this series for me. It’s an unexpected tragedy, but it moves the relationships forward in a very interesting way. Just before his death, the twins basically declared their intentions about Minami, and it looked like they were both going to fight for her. Instead Katsuya is yanked out of the relationship, and Tatsuya is left alone with Minami.

What follows is a very slow change for Tatsuya. At first he seems determined to become like his brother, working hard everyday. Instead it’s obvious that he’s not like his brother, but he’s still determined to live up to Katsuya’s memory. Little by little we see him take his brother’s place both in the baseball team and in Minami’s eyes. He really has grown a lot, but he’s still himself.

There are many other side stories that cross with Minami/Tatsuya. There no less than 2 contenders for Minami, and one for Tatsuya. However I never felt there was any doubt that Tatsuya and Minami were sticking together. Even when Minami could have thought Tatsuya was with another girl, she knew the truth without doubts.

The biggest B story was probably the new coach, whose story was very similar to the Uesugi’s, expect he was the younger brother, so he hates Tatsuya. But in the end he takes the team to Koushien, and redeems himself both physically and emotionally.

The ending was typical Adachi. He doesn’t show their ultimate victory, both Minami’s and Tatsuya’s, but we do find out they won. Also Tatsuya declares his love for Minami, and we assume they’ll be together, but we’re not shown.

This is definitely one of my favorite manga, we’ll see if it’s my favorite Adachi series, though it’ll take me a while to read all the rest of his series. There are still some Touch TV movies that take place after the end of the manga, so I’ll watch those next.

The main dilemma that the protagonist Masato has to go through is choosing between his classmate Miyuki or his adopted sister Miyuki. This is actually a very interesting dilemma, he loves his sister and wants to protect her as a brother, but he also knows they’re not blood related and he’s obviously attracted to her, as well as jealous of her “boyfriends”.

It’s mostly the same dilemma in his more recent story Jinbe, but Miyuki is a long protracted story and it actually has a clear resolution. There are many self-contained episodes with many different characters, all of them enjoyable, funny and light. They also mark the passing of the time which is something I appreciate. The characters go through their school years, advancing (not all of them) and facing different challenges every year.

They also go to their summer vacations remembering about previous times, just as I remembered reading about them. It really made me feel like part of them. Of course this being a foreign country, I didn’t understand their culture and system, but I still enjoyed spending time with them.

The end was very exciting to read, we actually get a pretty good resolution with the introduction of their old childhood friend. It was hinted that he basically made a fool of himself in front of the whole world just to help the siblings with their choice. I don’t believe anyone would ever do that, but this is a feel good comic, so it’s expected.

When I started this series I didn’t know anything about it, but now it’s quickly becoming one of my favorite Adachi series.

Unlike other works, this actually is not just about one sport. The main focus is still a love triangle (actually at the end there are two triangles), but sports is always an important vehicle through which the relationships develop.

In the first part, we see Kasumi going to live with her aunt and starting high school. Once there, she learns that she has 3 other housemates, all boys! There’s Shin, the athletic/handsome guy who’s also a pervert. Ariyama, the “kind giant”. Makoto, the geek. And Takasugi, the kind boy who’s always fighting with Kasumi, but you already know they’re gonna develop a relationship.

The triangle comes with Katsuhiko, Kasumi’s the boyfriend who is overseas. At one point he comes back to visit Kasumi, and I really liked the way he reacted to her relationship with Takasugi. He didn’t freak out, instead he saw that Kasumi had feelings for him, so he basically gave her space to decide for herself. All this without confronting her at all, since she was denying her feelings to herself.

As far as sports, most characters participate in the baseball club and try to enter the nationals. It was really fun to see them all in action, even though it didn’t last long. After that, a few other sports were featured briefly, like boxing, tennis, soccer, even sumo.

As usual, Adachi doesn’t really give us a clear resolution of the triangles, but we have a pretty good idea how they’re going to end.

This was a lighter story, there wasn’t as much drama as I would have liked, but it was still enjoyable. Can’t wait to read the rest.

This is a short story told in one volume, complete with a few color pages. Those pages were put to great effect in the aquarium scenes, really showing off the blue and beautiful drawings.

The story itself is a bit controversial, even though it is done very subtley. It’s about the story of a man and his step daughter, after the wife’s death. At first I thought it was about the father protecting his daughter from her real father and a new boyfriend.

In fact throughtout the story he behaves much like a protective father. However I felt there was something else to this story, even though I didn’t what exactly. That’s where the subtlety of the storytelling really shines.

It’s only at the very end that my suspicions were confirmed, and I was at the same time shocked and pleased.

The art is very polished, always clear and pleasant. By now there are no more surprises about the way he draws his characters.

Again, I was pleasantly surprised by this story, but I kind of think that he wasn’t brave enough to write a longer story about this subject, and see where the story went. Or maybe he just didn’t know what to write next in the story.

We have the classic love triangle, whose stars are involved with the baseball club. Actually there are 2 triangles, crossing over each other. And I was very surprised that they are definitively solved even before the end of the series.

Usually Adachi stories have an ambiguous ending, but that is not the case here. Some of the relationship scenes are actually very mature and decisive, which surprised me positively.

The baseball story is in the background, always working for the relationships in the story. The ending to the sports part is very abrupt, but I thought it was satisfying. It is certainly not at the center of this manga.

The rest and probably the majority of this series is all about comedy and high school fun. Adachi manages to convey the fun times high school students have, before the big stressful college exams. His comedy bits are at times enjoyable, at times funny.

Adachi is a favorite mangaka of mine, and I was surprised how good his first effort was. I can’t wait to read the rest of his work.