I'll start this off with a warning, the majority of the first quarter of the show is Drama, but it's the kind of drama that doesn't seem forced whatsoever. It comes as an organic result of the characters and what drives each of them. It's a very human story about 3 friends and baseball and what it means to each of them. once a certain character enters the baseball field it very quickly becomes 85% about the sport
The strengths of Touch!:
-Most major characters are written intelligently and only add to the story. Even characters that seem annoying or totally dislikable eventually grow on you and come to be a well rounded part of the story you can't really see it the same without them.
-The drama is mostly well thought out and reasonable where you won't often think once it's over "that wasn't necessary" as is common in poorly written dramas.
-Usually I'm all over soundtracks and this isn't an exception, 3 of the opening themes are very good and 2 of the ending themes are good (even the background music can have you toe-tapping if you like older music).
-Touch's story is fantastic, as previously stated the drama is good. The sports aspect of it matches that quality perfectly. Plenty of nail biters for not just people who are into sports, some of the matches and events actually have real effects on the characters inside and outside of the field (which really helps the dynamic feel of the story).
The unfortunate weaknesses of Touch!:
-I'll be real, this show is older than Dragonball (it starts before it but ended after DB's first year). The art is VERY dated, the more high octane moments get a quality boost of course but thats not the part that didn't age well; It's the character designs. I personally love older shows and don't mind this usually but some of the character designs don't age well at all (though at the time they honestly weren't that bad).
-There are 2 plot points in the show that do take a little bit longer than they probably needed to to finish up, this being said it's not like it takes 10 episodes to finish something that could have ended reasonably in 5-6. These issues take 3 episodes to finish when they could have done it quickly in 1 and thoroughly in 2 (something that newer shows REALLY need to learn from)
-Lastly, the very last episode is a little ambiguous in its conclusion, HOWEVER, the 2 movies made after that give it a proper conclusion and really do give it as close to a perfect ending it can get. Thankfully neither of those movies have any of the weaknesses I listed here. It's still of course an older movie but the budget must've been quintupled because the movies look 10x better and aged much better (again, keeping in mind the age). And if anything the movies have the opposite problem of trying to speed things along.
In conclusion: Touch! is undoubtedly one of the best sports anime out there in terms of general quality, while not being the greatest in terms of strictly sports content. If I had to rate the 2 aspects separately I'd say I would rank it 9/10 in terms of drama (in field drama included) and a 8/10 in terms of sports (in field drama included, without the in field drama probably a 7 but let's be honest who doesn't enjoy rivalries and personal connections with other teams). If you can get past the outdated art style and really finish it (including the movies) you will easily come to agree that Touch! is a genuinely great sports series that needs to be talked about more.
