This Week in Anime - Can't Beat the Classics [2/2] - Forum (2025)

Running through the classics is tough man, it's good to appreciate where it all came from but for example I'm trying to watch Galaxy Express and well stuff just ran slower back then

Aside from its length (101 episodes, 3 films, & 2 TV specials) making it no doubt more than a bit expensive to fully translate, I would imagine that Touch is likely still something that no one could ever license for cheap, since that anime is an all-time classic in Japan.

Still, as far as I can tell, there was never any real push to market Adachi's work overseas. Touch, alone, is one of the best-selling manga series in Japan, and the anime adaptation from the 80s was generally pretty well-regarded. And even if the 101-episode run was daunting (though it pales in comparison to many other shows) it's not like that was the only option -- there is the original movie trilogy which, iirc, is just a condensed cut of the TV anime. There's no reason they'd have to localize *everything.* (Also, don't forget the handful of live action adaptations!) That would've almost certainly been a much cheaper option, and could probably have found an audience in the late 90s/early 00s when the "anime boom" was really taking off.

If they'd gotten in a bit early, I could see Touch becoming a big hit in the late 90s, alongside DBZ and Sailor Moon. Especially considering that was when the big McGuire/Sosa homerun race was giving Baseball a pretty big boost in popularity in the US.

Well, here's another reason why I think Touch and other classic baseball manga (along with their anime adaptation) should get a release in the US in this current era:

ufotable Animates MLB Players' Breathing Techniques in Demon Slayer Collab Short

MLB's Latest Anime Ad Imagines More Baseball Superheroes — Set to Ado's Music

If you got MLB collaborating with anime studios, then this is the right time for Touch and other Adachi's baseball titles to get a debut release in the US. Hell, we still haven't got the first Major anime series on Crunchyroll other then Major 2nd. I'm glad we have Mix Meisei Story on CR, but yeah, I wish we have Touch and probably other classic baseball anime/manga in the US given the collaboration with MLB and anime studio, and also the rising popularity of sports anime/manga title thanks to Haikyu!!.

This would be a great time for Touch to get a US release given the evidence above in fact.

Recently I happened to dig out a tankōbon of Yokoyama Mitsuteru's Tetsujin 28-gō and reread it. It has chapters which are not included in the Akita Shoten edition.
I can understand that boys in the Shōwa 30s and the early Shōwa 40s were excited at Tetsujin 28-gō.
In Japan, the tankōbon of Tetsujin 28-gō were published mainly by 'ordinary' publishing companies. But if a publishing company in the Anglosphere gets the licence to release an English edition of the Tetsujin 28-gō manga, it may be an art house-like publishing firm.

As for Yamamoto Sumika's Ace wo Nerae!, in almost the same period as Ace wo Nerae's, Tsuchida Yoshiko's Tsuru-hime Jāt! was serialised in the same magazine Weekly Margaret.
Tsuru-hime Jāt! had a chapter which was a spoof on Ace wo Nerae!, and the heroine of Tsuru-hime Jāt! also mentioned an anime adaptation of Ace wo Nerae! in another chapter. They suggest the popularity of Ace wo Nerae! in the 1970s.
And the spoof of Ace wo Nerae! in Tsuru-hime Jāt! was pretty funny.

Viz has tried twice in the past to push Adachi. First was in the late 90s/early 00s with Short Program, two collections of short stories, and then in the late 00s Viz both streamed the Cross Game anime & released the entire manga across eight omnibuses. Denpa right now is working on Short Game, another collection of short stories, and they've been fully honest about how much of a risk even doing that book is for them, because Adachi has always sold extremely poorly in English.

And then there was the Mix anime form FUNimation, which wound up being the first Adachi anime ever to receive a physical release in English (though second overall, as the UK got the Slow Step OVA on VHS in the 90s), though it pretty much came & went without anybody really talking about it at all.

There's a major difference between Touch & the anime that the MLB have done cross-promotion with: Touch is from the mid-80s. Therefore, if Touch was to be given an English release it would never be given any sort of cross-promotion with the MLB, and most people who are fans of Demon Slayer won't bother to watch a baseball drama from long before they were born. As for Haikyu! fans, Touch doesn't have the added appeal of pretty boys in its cast, since Adachi's style is more focused on being simple & straightforward.

I don't think you understand what I'm trying to point out: if you have MLB doing cross-promoting with anime studio, then it could normalize baseball anime/manga titles which can extend to and include Touch! in the US.

So what if Touch! is from the mid 80's, I mean you got Gen Z digging into retro stuff and that could include retro anime/manga. And if you include a demographic of retro lovers that are also fan of anime/manga and that love baseball. Yeah, you can have people that can read and watch Touch! Also, how do you know that people that watch Demon Slayer won't watch Touch!, you don't know how many Demon Slayer fans are also fan of sports anime/manga and that can include baseball anime like maybe there's one or more group of Demon Slayer fans that watch Ace of The Diamond, or Major 2nd. I can say the same Haikyu!! fans too, how do you know that one or more Haikyu!! fans didn't branch out to other sports anime, is it possible for a Haikyu!! fans to have ended up watching Ace of The Diamond or Major? That's a possibility?

If you got people that are branching out to sports anime, then of course they're going to watch baseball anime too and Touch is going to be something that's not going to be deterred to anyone that watched Ace of the Diamond or Major 2nd, or even Mix Meisei Story or even Cross Game (which is another work done by Adachi and got released in the US).

No, I get exactly what you're trying to point out, and I'm saying that there is literal decades of proof that it's based on a false equivalency.

Anime has ALWAYS had a fanbase that, by & large, prioritizes what's new hot & new, because that's just human nature. Yes, Gen Z does dig a lot of retro stuff, but liking something like retro gaming doesn't not equate to them also liking classic anime. For gaming there's a definitely "retro aesthetic" to be felt with 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit, etc. visuals, which is definitely helped by many modern games imitating those visuals for effect, but people don't really apply that kind of logic to anime of various vintages. Instead, it's more like how most people don't like to watch older movies because it just looks "old" to them, and especially so if it's a black-&-white production. Vintage games can look "retro", while vintage anime (like vintage film) is often just looked at as "old".

As for "how do you know that people that watch Demon Slayer won't watch Touch?", it's because people in the anime industry have had proof since essentially the very beginning of the English anime industry that classic anime that's at least 10 years old have continually been a hard sell. Anime from the 60s to the 80s was a tough sell in the 90s, anime in the 90s was a tough sell in the 00s, anime from the 00s was a tough sell in the 10s, and as time goes on any anime from each of those eras will only become tougher & tougher sells.

Yes, older titles have found more success within the past decade or so because of a company like Discotek, and some titles that were once seen as money pits now do surprisingly well, like Hajime no Ippo... but, by & large, the majority of the people who watch go crazy over a title like Demon Slayer aren't the people who are supporting those classic titles. Sure, there are some, but it's not the majority of those people. Instead, it's older fans who have continued to stick with anime, and therefore have become more willing to support older titles (either out of nostalgia or out of legit curiosity about watching titles they weren't around for the first time around), so absolutely no company that would license something like Touch would be hoping for the majority of anime fans to support it.

Yes, someone who likes one sports anime may be willing to watch another, but you do realize that all the other titles you mentioned as possibilities are fellow recent titles, right? Someone who watched Haikyu! & really liked it may very well have then gone on to watch other recent titles like Ace of the Diamond, Major 2nd, or Mix, because they were also made around the same time as Haikyu! was made. It's not incorrect to say that the vast, vast, VAST majority of Haikyu! fans are NOT going to then move on to watch titles like Touch, H2, Aim for the Ace, Attack No. 1, Musashi no Ken, Captain, Ring ni Kakero 1, Monkey Turn, Tomorrow's Joe, Slam Dunk, Dan Doh!!, Dear Boys, Star of the Giants, Capeta, F, Initial D, Wangan Midnight, Yawara!, or any other sports anime that are older than, at least, 10 years old.

Some will, sure, but that's a very small percentage, and that's been proven by literal decades of companies knowing that older anime will always have a ceiling to how well they can perform in English. Yes, anime is more popular now than ever before, but that doesn't mean that the popularity & acceptance of older anime has increased in a similarly-notable vein.

Would I love to see something like Touch get licensed? Absolutely, but I'm not trying to come up with scenarios to make myself think it's suddenly more possible because the MLB is doing cross-promotion with Demon Slayer, or because Haikyu! found a following. If Touch ever gets licensed it'll be because the people at the company that licenses it really love it & want to finally give it a chance over here, and they hope that anime fandom has aged enough over time that there are finally enough older fans to support it, because there sure as hell weren't enough back in the 90s, 00s, & 10s. They will not have licensed it hoping that Haikyu! fans are going to check it out en masse, or because they saw the MLB cross-promoting with anime. That's just not how it works out when it comes to older anime, and it really hasn't in a looooooong time... if it ever even worked out like that, in the first place.

Uh, what if I prove you wrong Lord Geo...

Uh, what if I told you that there is a big overlap between retro gamer that are also anime fan and growth in retro anime fandom, what make you think that retro gamers that are anime fan don't cross over to retro anime. I mean if you have something Little Goody Two-Shoes, and Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog both indie game titles that used retro anime graphic and character designs based on 90's anime. Then we don't know how many retro gamers or people that played these 2 game titles could've crossover to retro anime. So yeah, that's possible and can't be ruled out.

Also did you forget Ashita no Joe? Nobody thought both the anime and manga would get official US releases many years later. But here's the thing even before the anime and manga got picked up for the US releases, I saw fans of Hajime No Ippo on Reddit telling their fandom to please support Ashita No Joe for the last few years even before the manga and the anime got picked up for US releases:

Hajime No Ippo Reddit thread (dated: Dec 2021): Just started reading Ashita No Joe. This manga is so dope. Joe is such a rogue and it's cool to see the similarities but also differences with HNI. (this Reddit thread from Hajime No Ippo was created 3 years before the manga and anime got picked up)

HNI Reddit thread: Is Ashita No Joe Worth Watching or Reading? (this thread was created a few days ago before Kodansha USA made the announcement that they acquired US release/license of manga).

I mean I can find a lot of Ashita No Joe being talked/discussed about on Hajime No Ippo Reddit threads (some dated back 10 or 11 years ago) even before the anime and manga get picked up for the US. Also, you can also argued that Megalobox could've also played a role for Ashita No Joe to get licensed in the US.

So what does this have to do with Touch!? We don't know how many Haikyu!! fans, and we don't know how many fans (that include Gen Z fans) of Ace of the Diamond, Cross Game may have been already aware of Touch! even before this conversation. If Ippo fans are able to raise awareness and tell their fandom to support Ashita No Joe even before the anime and manga got licensed in the US, then we don't know how many Demon Slayers fans, and Haikyu! fans (and also baseball anime fans) may have been aware of Touch!.

You still have Gundam fans that makes up of younger fans (including Gen Z) too, and I have no doubt a lot of them may have watched Gundam 0079 despite the animation has not aged well. Also don't underestimate the power of Gen Z appreciating retro technology which can translate to crossover to loving retro anime even if the anime came out before they were born. I mean Gen Z are responsible for Vinyl revival and that led to vinyl outselling CDs. Hell, the typewriters are making a comeback very recently despite the uses of smartphones and computers and you may want to thank Taylor Swift, and probably Gen Z too.

We don't know how many or how large are younger Gen Z anime fans that are also retro anime fans too, so it could be much bigger then we estimated.

Lord Geo, I looked at the comments on the YT video of the cross-promo video, and I can say this a lot of these people that watch that trailer are fans of both anime and baseball. That means we don't know how many or how big of these Demon Slayers fans that are also fans of Baseball. If you got a large Demon Slayers fans that are also baseball fans, then that mean they may have already been watching baseball anime like Ace of the Diamonds, Major 2nd, Cross Game, Mix already (I mean you have enough baseball anime on CR, so it's very easy for a Demon Slayer fans to watch those baseball anime already assuming they're baseball fan too). Oh, and I stumble upon this:

From Jujutsu Kaisen Reddit: As a huge baseball fan, the baseball game was great but this nod to Ichiro was even better

That's right, that's a baseball fan who is also a Jujutsu Kaisen fan too and we don't know how many more folks like that exist. So that's an interesting overlap right here if you're both a baseball fan and anime fan. So we don't know how many people that watch Demon Slayers, and Jujutsu Kaisen that are also baseball fans out there. If they watch anime and they watch or are fans of baseball, then we have to assume that they may have been already aware of or have done their research on baseball anime/manga titles and it's possible they may have done their research on Touch! assuming these anime fans that are baseball fans may have watched Cross Game, and/or Mix. We don't know how big the crossover of Haikyu!!! fans to watching other sports anime out there, but we know sports anime have gotten a bit bigger compared to back in early 2000's. We don't know how many people that watched Ace of the Diamond may have already watched other baseball anime titles like Cross Game, and Mix and may have became aware of Touch! already as of this post. If you already have Ippo fans that are already aware of Ashita No Joe and are willing to support both the anime and manga, then we have to assume people who watched Ace of the Diamond, Major 2nd, Cross Game, and Mix may have already became aware or read up on Touch already.

When I use the word "push," I envision a whole lot more than simply licensing and releasing media -- but also, you know, advertising and coverage in general.

If people don't know about something, they're not gonna buy it. The Cross Game release was the only Adachi media that really got much attention, to my memory, and even then... it wasn't much.

It came out in the US in 2010, so by that time the anime/manga fandom wasn't mainstream (the fandom started to gain more at that time but not at the level) like today, and please remember this came out before Haikyu!!!, so it was a different environment back then.

So I think today would work given that Adachi's Mix along with other modern baseball anime like Ace of the Diamond, maybe Cross Game could be given a 2nd chance/2nd life. Like I said, there are more sports anime fans including baseball anime fans today then back in late 2000's and 2010. So that's a big different between today and 2010.