Mix

Mix, stylized as MIX, is a Japanese baseball-themed manga series written and illustrated by Mitsuru Adachi. It is a direct sequel to Adachi’s earlier baseball classic Touch, although it introduces a new generation of characters and follows their own relationships, ambitions, and sporting challenges. The story is set roughly thirty years after Tatsuya and Kazuya Uesugi led Meisei High School to its only appearance and championship at the National High School Baseball Championship. That earlier achievement remains a powerful part of the school’s sporting identity, but the later generation must contend with the gap between Meisei’s celebrated past and its less distinguished present. The central characters are stepbrothers Touma and Souichirou Tachibana, who attend Meisei and develop a highly complementary baseball partnership. Both are talented athletes, but their roles emerge through a mixture of competition, circumstance, and mutual understanding: Touma becomes the pitcher while Souichirou serves as catcher. Their relationship is competitive on the surface but grounded in family loyalty and an intuitive understanding of one another’s abilities. Their younger sister Otomi, a talented flutist and an important emotional presence in the family, adds a parallel coming-of-age thread involving identity, affection, and the bonds created by a blended household. Baseball is the series’ primary framework, but Mix also emphasizes family history, school culture, romance, friendship, coaching, privilege, and the consequences of decisions made by adults. The Tachibana family itself links two households: Touma’s widowed father marries the widow of Souichirou and Otomi’s father, bringing the three children together. The characters’ sporting lives are consequently inseparable from memories of deceased parents, inherited expectations, old rivalries, and the legacy of former Meisei players. Supporting figures include Meisei coaches and students, rival players, managers, and former athletes connected to the school’s earlier teams. The manga began serialization in Shogakukan’s Monthly Shōnen Sunday in May 2012 and remains an ongoing work. By November 2025, its chapters had been collected in 25 tankōbon volumes. The property expanded beyond print through an anime television adaptation produced by OLM. The first television season consisted of 24 episodes and aired from April to September 2019. A second season aired from April to September 2023. Through these adaptations, Mix has reached audiences beyond the original Japanese manga readership while retaining Adachi’s characteristic combination of understated humor, interpersonal drama, and baseball narrative.

Mix was created by Mitsuru Adachi as a continuation of the world established in Touch, one of his best-known baseball works. Rather than retelling the earlier series, Mix moves the timeline forward by approximately three decades. Meisei High School, once associated with a historic national championship, is now a school whose baseball heritage survives mainly through memory and the stories of older generations. This temporal distance allows the series to revisit familiar institutions and rivalries while making the new cast independent of the original protagonists. Serialization began in May 2012 in Shogakukan’s Monthly Shōnen Sunday. The manga’s foundation is the Tachibana family, formed when Eisuke Tachibana, a widower, marries Mayumi Sawai, also a widow. Eisuke’s son Touma and Mayumi’s children Souichirou and Otomi grow up together as a blended family. Their shared home creates the emotional basis for the series, while their different relationships to biological and step-family ties provide much of its interpersonal tension. Touma and Souichirou, who share a birthday only minutes apart, develop a lifelong athletic rivalry. Their eventual division of pitching and catching responsibilities becomes one of the defining sporting partnerships of the story. The family’s history is also connected to Meisei’s earlier baseball era. Eisuke played at Meisei but was not its ace, while Souichirou and Otomi’s late biological father, Keiichi Sawai, had once been selected as the school’s ace pitcher before a serious hand injury ended his playing career. These histories shape the expectations placed on the younger characters. The series repeatedly contrasts public reputation with private sacrifice: players who appear privileged may be coping with illness, coaches who seem unfair may be acting from complicated personal motives, and characters who appear comic or irresponsible may still possess deep loyalty and baseball intelligence. At school, Touma and Souichirou encounter teammates, rivals, managers, and coaches who broaden the narrative beyond the central family. Meisei’s baseball program is rebuilt through a mixture of inherited talent, tactical insight, personal rivalry, and renewed institutional ambition. The possibility of returning to the Kōshien tournament gives the team a concrete goal, but the story treats progress as a gradual process rather than a simple inheritance of past glory. Relationships outside the diamond, including Otomi’s friendships and musical activities and the romantic interests surrounding several students, are integrated into the sporting plot. The manga was adapted into a television anime by OLM. Its first season aired for 24 episodes from April to September 2019. A second season followed from April to September 2023, extending the animated presentation of the characters and Meisei’s baseball story. The print series continued in parallel and had reached 25 tankōbon volumes by November 2025. Mix therefore operates both as a sequel for readers familiar with Touch and as a standalone youth sports drama centered on a new generation.

• 2025

  Twenty-five collected volumes reported

  [1]Mix (manga)en.wikipedia.org

  The ongoing manga has reached 25 tankōbon volumes as of November.

• 2023

  Second anime season airs

  [1]Mix (manga)en.wikipedia.org

  The second television season broadcasts from April to September.

• 2019

  First anime season airs

  [1]Mix (manga)en.wikipedia.org

  OLM’s 24-episode television adaptation broadcasts from April to September.

• 2012

  Serialization begins

  [1]Mix (manga)en.wikipedia.org

  Mix begins serialization in Shogakukan’s Monthly Shōnen Sunday.

A character-driven Japanese sports and coming-of-age property that extends the legacy of Touch through a new Meisei High School baseball generation.

• Sports manga · 2012

  Mix manga

  The original manga series written and illustrated by Mitsuru Adachi. Set thirty years after Touch, it follows Touma and Souichirou Tachibana, their family, teammates, and rivals as Meisei High School attempts to recover its baseball prominence. The work combines baseball competition with family drama, school life, comedy, romance, and the consequences of Meisei’s earlier sporting history.

• Television anime · 2019

  Mix anime television series

  An OLM-produced animated adaptation of the manga. The first season contains 24 episodes and aired in 2019, while a second season aired in 2023. The adaptation presents the Tachibana family and Meisei baseball team through serialized sporting matches and character-focused episodes.

1. 1Mix (manga)en.wikipedia.org