It has been almost 30 years since the legend of Tatsuya Uesugi and the Meisei Academy High School Team was born in the National High School Baseball Championships. However, despite the glory the school received afterwards, the team has since languished in mediocrity and lost all fame.
Two step-brothers, Souichiro and Touma Tachibana, form a powerful battery after playing together since childhood and hope to revive the team’s glory.
However, though the brothers themselves are prodigious, there are endless obstacles between them and taking Meisei back to the championship plate.
Mix is… well, a Mitsuru Adachi sports anime, and probably one of his weaker ones. However, even a weak one is still a great sports story. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like Mix, head on down below.
Anime Like Mix: Meisei Story
For Fans of Mitsuru Adachi Sports Anime
Because if you like one Mitsuru Adachi anime, chances are very good that you will like the others. Adachi may tell some legendary sports stories in his manga, but we can all admit his best works are all very similar. You will notice similar themes, character types, character relationships, and dynamics across all his series. Not to mention the distinct art style.
Touch
For twins Kazuya and Tatsuya Uesugi, baseball is their passion. While Kazuya is the ace of the team and beloved around town, Tatsuya, giving up on ever earning the spotlight, lets his own talents wane despite being more naturally gifted.
The only thing Tatsuya isn’t willing to give up for his brother is Minami, the girl next door and childhood friend that treats both brothers as equals. It is Minami that spurs Tatsuya to try again and ultimately come out from his brothers’ shadow.
Mix is technically a sequel of Touch. However, it is not a sequel in the way that you see characters from Touch make an appearance, but rather it takes place in the same school as Touch. Since the Koshien game from Touch that Mix references in its very first scene, a number of baseball teams have come and gone, and many of the adult characters are from those “not Koshien-level” teams.
Like Mix, Touch follows the baseball story of two brothers, this time, actual twins, as they aim for Koshien. However, Touch is more of a personal story whereas Mix is focused more on the team than the issues of the characters. Touch also has the traditional “two guys fighting over a girl” romance element, whereas Mix has a similar dynamic with their sister, but obviously does not pursue that because one side is actually related to her.
While you may not see the same characters that you see in Touch, watching Touch can add a lot of clarity to many of the clever nods that Mix includes.
H2
Hiro only has two loves in the whole world – baseball and porn. However, after an elbow injury, he gives up baseball and even avoids it so far as to go to a school with no baseball team.
At his new school, Hiro ends up joining the soccer team where he meets the daughter of his father’s boss and manager of the school’s unofficial baseball team, Haruka.
When the soccer team tries to embarrass the baseball team by challenging them, it urges Hiro to make his return to the sport he still loves.
Many of the Mitsuru Adachi sports anime, i.e. Touch and Cross Game, tend to focus more on the stories of the characters overcoming their issues in the sport or personally. However, H2 and Mix both take the approach of focusing more on the sport and the team playing it as the central plot.
Mix is about aiming for Koshien, has a main character that is a prodigy, and also has no real personal issues. H2 is about a character who quit a sport due to injury only to disprove his injury was misdiagnosed and aims to bring his school’s baseball team up to his level.
Cross Game
The Kitamura and Tsukishima families have always been close due to one owning a sports store and the other owning a batting center.
Being the same age, Kou Kitamura and Wakaba Tsukishima spend a lot of time together with Wakaba’s younger sister Aoba being jealous. However, this is a tale of these three friends and their deep foray into baseball.
Mix plays off a similar dynamic that both Cross Game and Touch use. All three series follow two characters that often butt heads over baseball and life. Unlike in Mix where they are step-brothers, the contentious pair in Cross Game are a guy and the younger daughter of the family his family is friendly with. It is also worth noting that while Mix avoids the romantic drama that is usually a staple in Mitsuru Adachi sports stories, Cross Game is often most beloved for its increasingly complicated romantic element.
For Fans of Prodigies Carrying The Team
Battery
Takumi is hailed as a prodigious pitcher. When he moves to a rural town, he is convinced his greatness can make his new high school team a powerhouse.
However, he struggles to find a catcher that can keep up with his pitches and clashes with his new teammates.
Both Mix and Battery are similar as baseball anime, but also in that they are baseball anime about a prodigious pitcher and his catcher. However, the step-brothers have a pretty good relationship in Mix, whereas Battery makes a decent chunk of the plot about the pair learning to work together as a pitcher and catcher need to.
All that said, Battery tends to focus more on team drama than the actual sport of baseball. The sport is often just a platform for character drama in sports anime, but usually the drama is a touch more finessed than it is in Battery.
2.43 – Seiin High School Boys Volleyball Club
After being forced off the volleyball team at his old school, star setter Kimichika Haijima moves back to his childhood hometown of Fukui.
There, he reconnects with his childhood friend, Yuni Kuroba, who is a member of his school’s volleyball team. Seeing Kuroba’s talents, Haijima tries to make him into an ace, only for a rift to form between them when Kuroba crumbles in a tournament under the pressure.
Now as students at Seiin High School, Haijima and Kuroba are on the same volleyball team again, but this time, Haijima tries to help Kuroba with his performance anxiety.
While about different sports, in their own way, Mix and 2.43 are about the problems that prodigies face. When you have a character so innately good at a sport, it is only natural that their talent would conflict with others who are trying so hard but falling short or, alternatively, a prodigy that is so naturally good that it is frustrating that people cannot keep up.
While Mix has those elements in it, the story of Mix is kept rather positive and focused on the overall player and team goal of nationals. 2.43 is more focused on the frustrations of a prodigy and the effect they have on the team.
Big Windup
Ren Mihashi was an ace of his middle school baseball team, but only because his grandfather owned the academy. Due the obvious and unwanted nepotism, Ren was crippled by anxiety over how his pitching led to the team’s constant losses, even with the endless practice he put in.
The bullying of his team and low self-esteem got so bad that Mihashi decided to go to high school in another prefecture, intent on giving up on baseball despite his love for it.
However, when he is unwillingly dragged onto the school’s reviving baseball team, he finds that his new teammates might just be his perfect match.
Both Mix and Big Windup are baseball anime series, but of a distinctly different flavor. Touma is a gifted pitcher who is initially kept down by his team manager, then often held back by the lack of experience of the other members of his team. Alternatively, Big Windup is all about a pretty good pitcher who is crippled by anxiety and almost leaves the sport altogether.
Like Sou supports Tou as both a catcher and brother, Abe supports Mihashi as a catcher and a friend. However, Big Windup puts more emphasis on Mihashi’s growth as a player.
For Fans of Underdog Teams
Giant Killing
Struggling to stave off relegation and hemorrhaging fans, the East Tokyo United soccer team is looking at the end of its life cycle and imminent disbandment. However, in one last attempt to turn things around, they hired a new and slightly eccentric coach.
Considered one of the soccer greats when he was younger, can new coach Tatsumi Takeshi turn around the team he once played for as a coach?
While being a prodigy is fine in a team sport, you are nothing without teammates and solid coaches – that is the lesson that is emphasized in both Giant Killing and Mix.
While Giant Killing is about adult professional soccer, it, like Mix, follows a team on a real downswing. However, both series have rather lackluster teams not necessarily because of a lack of ability, but because of problems with their coaches. While Giant Killing puts a bigger emphasis on it, both Mix and Giant Killing follows teams that turn around their losing streak when players that used to play on that team come back to coach.
Farewell, My Dear Cramer
In middle school, Nozomi Onda honed her soccer skills on the boy’s soccer team and thinks playing soccer with girls would drag her down.
However, her former coach convinces her to join the girls’ soccer team where her paths cross with other prodigious soccer talents who all hope to bring women’s soccer back into the spotlight.
While Mix follows a once-championship team turned lackluster, My Dear Cramer follows a sport that has become lackluster. Neither gets the attention they once did, but both are fielding passionate and talented players.
However, both series are focused on the team learning to play well together with seriously talented players leading the way. While they follow teams of different genders, they don’t really focus on different issues. Motivated players have similar problems and desires no matter gender.
For Fans of Aiming for Nationals Baseball Anime
Major
Major tells the story of Gorou Honda, a boy that has always been obsessed with baseball.
At first it started as admiration for his father, a professional pitcher. However, even after an injury forces his father off the team, Gorou aims for the sky.
Follow him as he climbs up to professional greatness!
Mix may be one of the less popular works of a legendary sports manga author, but Major is a legendary baseball series in its own right. What makes Major so legendary is that it follows a player from childhood to the major leagues. It also has a sequel that starts following his child doing the same.
Mix is different in that it is about step-brothers, but there is no season of Major that doesn’t follow a baseball team all trying there best, aiming for the top, and growing as players. Both series are intense baseball anime about dedicated players.
Ace of Diamond
After a bad last pitch, Eijun Sawamura is frustrated when his last middle school ball game ends in a loss. Determined, Eijun and his team vow to make it to Nationals in high school.
However, everything is thrown for a loop when his unique pitching style earns Eijun an invitation to Japan’s top high school for baseball. Accepting, he struggles to find his place on a team of such talent.
When comparing Mix to some of Adachi’s other works, I said that Mix had more of an emphasis on the struggles of the team as a whole rather than the drama of a character. When you have prodigal talent, you don’t need to focus on them struggling to “getting better” since they are already great.
Ace of Diamond is a baseball anime that focuses on the opposite. While Eijun may be as fiery as Touma, he lacks the talent, or rather, is on a team of all talent. So Ace of Diamond is about his struggle to improve and work with his team while the team as a whole is pretty good.
Tamayomi
Yomi and Tamaki have loved baseball since they were children, often playing catch together whenever they could. While they promised to keep playing baseball when they were older and Tamaki grew in skill as a catcher, Yomi’s talent as a pitcher languished.
When Yomi decides to quit baseball in her first year of high school, she meets Tamaki again and a game of catch with her reignites Yomi’s desire to pitch. This leads the pair to work to revive their school’s currently defunct girls’ baseball team and aim for nationals.
While Tamayomi is about girls’ baseball, it, like Mix, follows two players who have played together since childhood. Their passions for baseball both started playing catch with each other, and this eventually led to them being a pitcher and catcher duo on the same team.
While both series are baseball anime about underdog teams aiming toward the national tournament, Mix is a little better at nailing the passion you look for in sports anime. Tamayomi tries, but it doesn’t capture those moments you look for in sports anime as well.
Do you have more anime recommendations like Mix? Let fans know in the comments section below.
