April 9th, 2020 
Charles Solomon 
Baseball is enormously popular in Japan, and the Summer Koshien tournament that determines the national high school championship is one of the most anticipated sports events of the year. Nearly every Japanese schoolboy dreams of pitching in the Koshien.
Dreams of the Koshien tournament haunt the shonen (boys’) sports series, Mix Meisei Story. In 1986, after moving up to the adjacent high school, alumni of Meisei Junior High went to the tournament. Since then, the program has languished, although the chairman of Nikaidou Electronics, a wealthy alumnus, lavishes equipment on the team. But brothers Touma and Souichirou Tachibana just might have the talent to pull Meisei out of the cellar.
Although they’re the same age and even share the same birthday, Touma and Souichirou aren’t twins. After Touma’s mother and Souichirou’s father died, their surviving parents married. They all live together with Souichirou’s younger sister, Otomi, who keeps her brothers’ game statistics.
Souichirou is all of ten minutes older than Touma, but that’s enough in Japanese society. He’s the elder brother who goes on dates while ordering Souichirou around, making sure he keeps eye on Otomi (half the guys at Meisei Junior High seem to have a crush on her). Souichirou is the team’s catcher. Like Takaya Abe in Big Windup Oofuri, he’s also the team strategist. Touma is louder and less calculating than his stepbrother. Although he’s an excellent third baseman, he should be the team’s pitcher.
But Mr. Nikaidou insists that his son Daisuke remain Meisie’s star pitcher, even though the young man’s physical limits prevent him from fulfilling that role. Kuroyanagai, the team’s spineless coach, would never dream of contradicting Mr. Nikaidou by grooming another pitcher.
Mitsuru Adachi’s manga “Mix” debuted in 2012; the TV series premiered seven years later. A long-time mangaka (manga artist), Adachi has written several other series about baseball and/or triangular relationships. “Mix” is actually a sequel to “Touch,” which featured twin brothers who loved the same girl. It ran from 1981 to 1986, and was adapted to a TV series and live action and animated theatrical features.
Adachi clearly is on his home turf, and he delivers the elements that should make an exciting sports drama. But Mix Meisei suffers from two problems that prevent it from reaching its obvious potential. It’s simply too hard to tell the brothers apart. Touma has slightly spikier hair, but he and Souichirou are the same height and build, with virtually identical features. The Japanese voices sound a little more distinctive, but their English counterparts are hard to distinguish—and sound too much like adults to be convincing as 13-year-olds.
American viewers also may grow impatient with Odahiro Watanabe’s measured pacing. Admittedly, baseball is a slow game. (On The Simpsons “Treehouse of Horror XVI,” aliens Kang and Kodos got so bored at a world series game, they sped up the space-time continuum in an unsuccessful attempt to make it exciting.) There’s little suspense or a feeling of much being at stake in the game sequences: When Meisei gets into a local tournament for the first time in years, the boys seem to be playing in second gear.
Audiences get involved in the play-by-play of other anime sports series: Prince of Tennis ran for years, and viewers never seem to tire of the adventures of the Iwatobi Swim Club in the Free TV show and films. The dynamic between the shrewd Abe and talented, neurotic pitcher Ren supplies drama and humor in Big Windup; the efforts of ace pitcher Ryo to establish the first national-level team at a posh girl’s school excites fans of Princess Nine. Maybe if the audience were a little more invested in Touma and Souichirou, Adachi’s vision in Mix would feel more compelling. But the series did well in Japan, and rumors of a second season persist.
Mix Meisei Story, Part 1
Funimation: $49.99 2 discs, Blu-ray
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