What is the worth of Touch?
It is made of excellence and deserves to be on our Enlightenment list.
100.0%
1
It is too unremarkable to be on on either of our lists.
0.0%
0
It is vastly overrated and deserves to be on our Relations list.
0.0%
0
I have not read this manga because that'd be basically spoiling all of Adachi's other works.
0.0%
0
1 votes
| Touch is now up for vote. Decide if it hits a homerun straight into Enlightenment or if it strikes out into the benches of Relations. RULES: 1. You can only vote for a title if you've finished watching/reading it. You must've read or watched at least 60% of the published content for unfinished titles. There might be exceptions for very long finished titles as they are decided on a case by case basis, but usually amount to more than half of the published content. 2. Write your vote at the very top of your comment. 3. Below your vote, give a substantial explanation to back it up. It doesn't have to be lengthy; it just needs to cover the points you want to make. 4. If you have only read/watched the adaption/source material of the respective nominee, please state so in your post. 5. It will take a minimum of 5 votes for either Enlightenment or Relations to make it into any of the lists as an anime (3 votes for manga). If it fails to reach that, it will be deemed Invalid. 6. The votes for Enlightenment will have to outnumber the votes for Unremarkable and Relations for it to be included in our list; the same goes for Relations. If it fails to reach that, it will be deemed Unremarkable. 7. Behave yourself. We accept discussions and debate, not flaming and incoherent fanboy/fangirl behavior. 8. The fate of the poll will lie in the hands of the officers if it turns out that there are more first time voters than regulars or the series cannot be gauged by both voting and discussions. This polling process will last 14 days. BEGIN |
Ducat_RevelDec 21, 2014 8:00 PM
| Option 1: Enlightening When it comes to blending lighthearted moments with comparatively deep, emotional feelings, there's no one better than Mitsuru Adachi. Over the decades, his heartfelt stories centering baseball, covered with a subtle romantic plot has delighted fans over and over again. Touch, being one of his older works, show the genius of Adachi at every page. As usual, the plot is pretty standard for a manga. You have the lazy older twin, the hard working younger twin and the lovely girl next door. There are tournaments, heart pounding baseball action, failure, triumph etc. Pretty standard right? But its the characters and the portrayal of the relationships between them where Adachi weaves his magic wand. There's not even a shred of an instance where emotional exchange feels forced. Be it moments of tragedy or ecstasy, the characters are driven by genuine, heartfelt emotions to the point you even wonder if you're reading a manga or watching a real life description. So yeah, Touch, being my 2nd fav Adachi manga (behind H2), is definitely a landmark in sports manga or even any type of manga in general. It deserves a nice little spot in the E-list from how I see it. |
TrequartistaDec 7, 2014 10:59 PM
Kagami_Hiiragi said: Idc if you think its weird, I have a life and friends and an income of money. |
| Option 1 If I wasn't a diehard Asano, Inio fan, this manga would be in my top five. This is one of the two sports manga which I consider above other sports manga (the other being Ashita no Joe.) My reasoning: this manga elevates its character above the sport. Much like Joe (from AnJ,) Tatsuya's whole personality isn't confined to just being passionate and talented in a sport like Sakuragi, or Ippo, or Peco. In fact, Tatsuya never really cared for baseball. His personality is completely outside of it. But tossing him in the mix, forces him to reconsider things about himself and to work harder than before. It doesn't matter that he's good at it, the mere fact that he's not into it poses internal conflicts which are really engaging. The first major turn the plot makes would be tacky in the hands of anyone else. In fact, the set up is already pretty cliche. But Adachi delivers it with an honesty and sincerity which makes the scene pretty moving. How that one moment affects the other characters is pretty powerful as well. From that point on, the characters have to have to adapt to their current lives and make the best out of it. But it's the finale of the manga that I really fell in love with. Without spoiling much, Tatsuya shows that, once all is done, he's still Tatsuya. Just because he's grown doesn't mean he's denied any part of his character. And that worked so well to his benefit. If any other sports lead did that, it wouldn't be the same. But because it was Tatsuya, it really resonated. The manga does have a few flaws like Minami being sidetracked or Harada's convenient mature advice, but none of that really takes away the lasting power of the manga. It's a classic for a good reason. This definitely deserves a spot in the E-List. |
Ducat_RevelDec 8, 2014 3:24 AM
| Option 2 (To clarify: I've watched the anime for it and checked up on the nuances in the endings between the anime and manga but otherwise they generally seem very close). Again, I REALLY wanted to love this series, and between seeing the high ratings on ANN, reading Justin Sevakis' fantastic Buried Treasure article on it and being absolutely blown away by Part 1 (first 27 episodes, not sure what part of the manga it is), but once the core dynamic was lost, the series started to lose its perfectly tempered pacing and plot intricacy and things unraveled in various spots. Starting with Part 2, my main problem with it is that there seems to be a deliberate lack of drive in the team almost as if the characters KNEW they had to wait until their final year so things would gain some urgency and the plot centered purely around Tatsuya's quest. The current third (forth?) years (namely Kuroki and Sachiko) seem like they have some subtle acknowledgement of where Adachi attends to go with the plot and it is kind of fatalistic and unceremonious how they are written out of the main story with them being eliminated from the League so early in the year, and then despite them having some melancholy that their big dreams of going to Koshien was crushed too, I sensed a bit of "oh well, it's Tatsuya's story" from them. It makes that chunk of the series just kind of advance and go through the motions without much weight to get you invested in things, everything just kind of happens. It doesn't even feel like they were weighed down by the big twist at that point either and had moved on, trying to kind of push forward and win, but still being bogged down by the looming self-awareness to the story's direction; if they would have emphasized the twist's impact more still into those later stages it would be digestible at least, but it didn't sit well with me. Also there was the really contrived deal of getting Tatsuya to quit the boxing club to get him on the baseball team, because "reasons" really. Then there's a certain someone who gets introduced who is a malignant tumor to the whole series and it is repulsive and unfathomable how someone such as him could be conceived in himself coupled with how fantastic, layered, flawed and relatable characters like Tatsuya, Kazuya, Minami, etc and their dynamics are in this particular series (again mostly in Part 1); he's one of the most deplorable characters I've seen in most media so far honestly. I'm of course talking about Yoshida. He starts out as this very passive and sincere guy but all he really does is follow around Tatsuya, idolize him, copy him, and then try to surpass him where he makes a drastic and really obnoxious shift to King of the Pricks, being a totally inflated narcissist and aggressively chasing after women, relentlessly trying to rub his nose in Tatsuya's face at EVERY. SINGLE. INSTANCE. And just being one of the most parasitic and soulless individuals ever. At this point too his presence starts to further fuel that notion of "this is Tatsuya's story, and we accept it" as we get to that time where Tatsuya and Yoshida do some practice pitching against Akio Nitta. Yoshida is able to strike him out while Nitta is able to hit Tatsuya's pitches, but for some bewildering reason, Nitta "senses" Yoshida is inferior and Tatsuya will be his main rival seemingly only through a kind of main character syndrome thing. Adachi does try to nip Yoshida in the bud at one point when he gives him the cruel fate of being sent away to South America when he wants to join a rival school and beat Tatsuya, and I liked that Adachi was totally crapping on his own monstrosity...until he had some sympathy and let him come back for the semi-finals; it really wasn't needed and that abrupt circumstantial closure would have been a much more fitting end to his stupid arc, but Adachi kind of half-assedly reignites the rivalry briefly before shutting it down again insignificantly which felt like a trivial exercise. I'm jumping around a bit, but I'll just say Part 4 (and 3? Once Yoshida temporarily leaves) start to pick up some of the pieces, but feel a bit dragged out still and lack the intense and layered character dynamics of Part 1, but characters like Kashiwaba are still quite great; HE was a good love to hate character, and then he actually blossomed into someone sympathetic, we really could've just had him for the big jerk of the series honestly. On another hand, I feel Minami's subplot is also a bit ultimately tacked on and suffers from some microcosms of the earlier complaints really. She gets idolized by all the other gymnasts, they go out of their way to push her more, they are kind of self-defeating at points, and Minami kind of gives up her separate, smaller dream just to see main character Tatsuya's through, and the way the gymnastics thing closed felt a bit muddled to me, I swear they said she could advance to the next tourney despite coming 5th in that smaller one, but she just kind of passes it by. Speaking of muddled, the whole "Tatsuya is Tatsuya, not Kazuya" thing is very wishy-washy in my book, and it doesn't seem like they are explicitly going out of their way to separate them despite preaching it 95% of the time (a few times Minami was strangely doubtful, it was weird). Kazuya threw pure fastballs, Tatsuya throws pure fastballs. Kazuya was the ace Meisei pitcher everyone relied on, Tatsuya is the new ace Meisei pitcher everyone relies on, etc. Ideas of Tatsuya playing baseball for Kazuya, playing for himself and his own Koushien and playing only out of obligation and not liking baseball are kind of thrown around and it doesn't provide really steady ground as to what his true goals are, and so it starts to remove me a bit while taking out a bit of that emotional heft for how important the ending was. To close it out on that note, the ending was a bit abrupt - they essentially reach their goal (as to be expected) and that's pretty much it, there's no really big closure or final emotional punch at the very end it seems, it just kind of ends and it is a tad off-putting. As much as I don't like the general ending that much, I prefer the anime's rendition where the final episode has almost no dialogue and they breeze by scene to scene towards the end with very soft music and a wistful filter for the animation before that last step on the beach, it's very ethereal and dreamlike and at least creates a quaint little mood piece for that ending like reaching Valhalla or something, it was nice. Essentially, the series had a great first quarter as a complex yet tempered and engrossing slice of life with lots of personality, gut-busting humour, charm and smaller dramatic moments that unleashed more power than you'd think capable from them and was an easy, EAAAAAAAAASY 10/10, but the rest of the series doesn't uphold those heights and consistency, wobbling around say, MAYBE 6-9, or more likely 7-9/10 for the rest of it in different areas, taking too many leaps and bounds to get to its main goal and sadly, I don't think I can quite validate Touch's greatness fully, so I say 'tis unremarkable :/. Hopefully H2 delivers for me though. |
AngelsArcanumDec 8, 2014 11:10 AM
| Option 1: Enlightening So this reply is long overdue, although I did make it before the poll close--finally got off my lazy ass. It's been a while since I wrote anything of value, so this might (read: will) seem a bit lazy and weak, but at least I'm writing one. This manga is exemplary through utilizing the ordinary. This isn't saying that the manga itself is ordinary, far from it. It's one of the few manga that is able to convey facets of humanity and construct experiences that are so inherent to life this well, and so realistically. This is supplemented with the manga's strongest suit, subtlety. Subtlety in development and portrayal of emotions add another layer of realism--people in real life aren't merely subjected to an archetype and Touch really encapsulates this. Through character development the character may become someone so egregiously different because the director needs to blatantly educate the viewer that said character is now a different person to the beginning. Tatsuya still retains his core personality, while he has grown as a person he is still the same person from the beginning. His development most of time isn't expressed explicitly through himself, but is highlighted through character foils--Kazuya, Eijirou, Nitta, Yoshida. So it's no longer merely a one man show, the characters interact in such a way they construct this layer of depth and humanity. The story, the characters of Touch are superficially mundane, they aren't super NEETs who hack into the Pentagon at the age of 13, nor is it The Most Dangerous Game set in high school. However, the chapters aren't filled with Tatsuya and Kazuya drinking tea in their shed and baseball becomes merely a reason for continual existence. It progresses upon the foundation of baseball, and follows the life of Tatsuya and his aspirations and dreams. The development towards his goal is one filled with obstacles, which construct the basis of the drama. Both the journey and the inevitable obstacles are done well, they don't overstay their welcome--for the most part-- and serves a purpose without seemingly hamfisted into the show. Throughout the journey you learn more about the characters and their deep emotional involvement with one another, and the characters become more a person in a world rather than set piece. It's this meticulous design that really espouses traits of a good story. This optimistic outlook of life is explored and delineated through baseball, which serves as a catalyst for both the story and the character to mature. Adachi clearly shows his mastery in his field. Like Ducat, if I wasn't a fan of Asano and Amano this would probably be in my top 5. However, if this manga was up to Asano the baseball bat would be used to maul the hopes and dreams of a character. |
 |
SSC_Exin said: However, if this manga was up to Asano the baseball bat would be used to maul the hopes and dreams of a character. Too true. Too true... ;_; |
| Option 1 - Enlightening Touch is a one of a kind sports manga. The main character doesn't really about the sport he's playing, for starters, and the manga is more about slice of life than about sports. The sports aspect, instead, is used to enhance and develop the characters instead of the other way around. The manga is not biased in favor of any of the sub genres it is part of, and this gives the manga some excellent balance between romance, sports and slice of life. The characters are brilliantly developed, story is simple but moving and the sports aspect is relevant because you love the characters. I cannot recommend this highly enough. |
| "The more inexperienced you are, the more you want to show off." - Oreki, Hyouka |
| With 4 votes for Enlightenment and 1 vote for Unremarkable, I draw this poll to a close. Thank you for voting. |
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