I’ve become Adachi Mitsuru’s fans since I was in high school. So far, I’ve finished reading H2 and Touch manga, and I am reading Rough manga right now. In my opinion, Adachi is one of most romanctic manga authors in Japan. He is indeed writing about sport as main theme, but the way he elaborates the love story and also combines it with his typicall sarcasm joke is kinda amazing. When I was reading H2 and Touch, I could laugh so hard in a page and then cry a lot in the next couple pages. So, regarding Adachi’s awesomeness as manga author, I decided to make a post about him. I had hesitated between H2 or Touch before I wathced H2 live action that made me chose H2 as the material of my first post about Adachi.
H2 is a manga, an anime and even a drama, that are based on story by Adachi. H2 began as manga, but in the end, this story also has anime and drama. I think it quite delineate of this Adachi’s masterpiece. This story about childhood friend, first love, best friend and of course, baseball story as the timeline. It has 4 main characters , instead of 2 like the title, who have ‘H’ as first letter in their name. First, Hiro Kunimi is the main character. He has Hideo Tachibana as his best friend, Hikari Amamiya as his childhood friend, first love, and the main twist of this story, Hikari’s role as Hideo’s girlfriend. And just to make everything become even more twisting, Hiro also has Haruka Koga, a rich clumsy girl who has crush on him. I want to examine all of this characters one by one, start from Hiro of course.
1. Hiro Kunimi
I haven’t read all of Adachi’s work, but from 3 manga that I’ve been reading, all of Adachi’s main character are just like Hiro. I make him as comparisson because he’s the first main character that I know. Hiro is typical person who enjoy his life, not too ambitious about everything except for baseball, look like not really care about other but deep inside he’s most caring person, and just like other nomal teen, he loves porn.
He had lived next to Hikari’s house since he was a kid and became her childhood friend. Hikari’s mom, Sakura, loved him so much because she had always wanted a boy before Hikari was born. His relationship with Hikari’s mother is my favorite part in H2. They were so close and even made Hikari jealous to him. When Hiro was kid, he had little problem with his growth hormone that made him shorter than his friends in his age. But, despite of his physical shortcoming, he had excellent talent as a pitcher. He won many baseball matches, especially that were held in Hikari’s birthday. He always gave his winning ball to Hikari as birthday present. Later, he gave his first winning ball at Koshien to Hikari’s mother for the sake of her last wish.
The story started when Hiro joined Senkawa High School, a high school without baseball club. A fake doctor had had false diagnosis towards him, saying that he and his wife at the field, Atsuhi Noda, the catcher, had severe injuries and should stop playing baseball. At Senkawa, He met Haruka, the manager of baseball lover community at his school, as a member of football club. Haruka started to like Hiro, and lately together with Hiro, Noda and the member of baseball lover commnunity, they rebuilt baseball club in their school.
Without the love twisting, the epic story about Senkawa baseball club that started as unofficial club becaming National champion is already fantastic. The story of the humble Hiro Kunimi who lead his baseball club to have ‘coming from behind’ victories, passed all of their circumtances, from having baseball hater as principal, new members who were spy, and facing many great and talented opponents, is incredibly inspiring and one of most recommended story.
2. Hideo Tachibana
Clean batter and Home Run master. Tall and goodlooking, popular among girls, and one of most promising atheletes. I think every high school male student wants to become like him, and all the female students desperetly wish dating a guy like him. Just typical main hero in most of stories out there. He has some opposite natures than Hiro. He’s serious guy, he knows exactly what he wants and works hard to achieve it. He joined Meiwa Ichi High School, a school with high rank baseball club. He dated beautifull girl that he loved so much, Hikari Amamiya, who’s also a popular student. Perfect, I cann’t find another better word to describe him.
He won Kanto tournament, with Hiro and Noda when they were in middle school and he already became Meiwa’s main batter even in his first year. Altough he’s serious guy, doesn’t mean that he’s not friendly and cann’t make a joke. As I said before, he’s almost perfect as human. He’s nice guy who cares about his friend although he’s also rigid, you can say that he’s innocent, Hiro even call him credulous, but he’s not too ignorant to not realise the deeper feeling between Hiro and Hikari. He’s born with huge talent but hard working is always his nature. He has achieve a lot but never been counceit. Everything on him has made people around him like him, his opponents repect him, and last but not the least, Hikari fall in love with him.
His love story with Hikari is the most interisting part of this series. At the beggining of the story, Hikari envied Hiro because he tought that Hideo cared him more than her. It couldn’t help because Hiro was indeed his best friend and he was facing hard time with his new baseball club. Hikari even asked him, who would he choose if he had to choose between Hiro and her. Hideo indeed was never in situation that forced him to answer her question, but it was already difficult for him to stand between his bestfriend and girlfriend. Lately, the situation was backward. He asked Hikari to choose ‘once again’ between him and Hiro. Hideo had dated her for almost six years, but it couldn’t help the great Hideo Tachibana to gain confident that Hikari loved him more than her childhood friend who’s also his best friend, Hiro.
3. Hikari Amamiya
I think she’s the main heroine of this story eventough we also have Haruka. Adachi created a gorgeous character who made even college students fell for her when she was in middle school. But she chose to date Hideo, a boy who was introduced by his childhood friend, Hiro. She joined archery club in high school but eventually became additional baseball club manager where Hideo joined. She loved Hideo, but she felt more comfortable with Hiro. She didn’t want Hideo to see her strong side. I don’t really understand why, but maybe because she tought that Hideo was hard working person so he wouldn’t be suitable with her who also had hard willing toward something she wanted.
She always wanted to became journalist but she never showed her passion to Hideo. It made him tought she wasn’t serious. In other hand, Hiro as her childhood friend understood her feeling better. I think, it’s unavoidable, after living in the next door for years and both family had been so close, there was nothing that they could hide about each other. But Hikari always loved Hideo and Hideo had same feeling toward her. Everything was going smoothly until that fateful day came, Hiro lose in Hikari’s Birthday and unable to give the winning ball to her. Hiro had never lose in Hikari birthday since they were kid and it made him depressed. To make everything even worse, few hours later Hideo won his match. Both Hiro and Hideo wanted so badly to face each other in baseball field in serious game as opponnent. But Hiro’s loose had denied it.
Hikari came but comfort him but it ended with Hiro confesion that she was his first love. Everything became more complicated but Hikari was never a bad girl. She stayed faithfull to Hideo altough maybe Hiro was also in her heart. This story would never be so sweet if Hikari had different character.
4. Haruka Koga
She is a girl who’s crazy about baseball. She had wanted to become flight attendant since she was kid in order to marry famous baseball player. She insisted to become manager of baseball lover community in Senkawa although they told her that they didn’t need a manager. She’s cute girl who can easliy pick any club that she want, but she prefer baseball to anything else. She’s rich, Hiro dad work at her Dad’s company, but she never had complaint about her dirty work as baseball club manager. I have no idea how could a huge baseball fan who’s also rich, end up in a school without baseball club like Senkawa, Maybe it was indeed her fate because at that school she met another person who also loved baseball so much, Hiro.
One thing that I like most about her is she’s always sincere. Her pure love toward baseball and Hiro can touch everyone who watches the drama. She had started liking Hiro since she knew that Hiro was a great pitcher. He was her hope to hold an official baseball club and she believed with Hiro as their ace, they could make it into Koshien. She was always by Hiro’s side and albeit she knew about Hikari but she never had grudge againt her. Eventough sometime she was jealous but she never put Hiro in annoying situation due to her feeling. She understood perfectly that she wasn’t his childhood friend like Hikari who knew loads of things about Hiro, but she was willing to understand him little by little. Just like Hikari, altough she could choose any guy she wanted, but she chose to wait for Hiro responding her feeling and faithfully stayed by his side.
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