The Spring 2023 Anime Preview Guide

MIX Season 2

A new generation steps up to the plate in a moving sequel to the 1985 baseball manga, Touch. Stepbrothers Touma and Suichirou are ace players on Meisei High School's baseball team, and thanks to them, the team may finally have a chance at returning to nationals. But little by little, a tragic legacy unfolds as the stepbrothers follow in their fathers' footsteps.

MIX Season 2 is the second season of the television anime adaptation of Mitsuru Adachi's manga and streams on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.

Mix is a perfect example of a series that is likely to be successful in Japan but virtually unknown in the U.S. It's based on a manga by Mitsuru Adachi, who is a legend in his country of origin but virtually unknown to the English-speaking world. While sports series may have gained a fervent following worldwide, baseball anime in particular never really seems to have taken off. The old-fashioned, jug-eared art style is unlikely to attract the fujoshi element that drives much of the success of popular series like Haikyu!! and Sk8 the Infinity… which is not to say they're not good stories in their own right, of course.

Still, if you're reading this, you're probably someone who speaks English and does care about Mix. If you're one of those few—and no shade, I very well know the pain of being an enthusiastic fan that nobody else seems to care about—this premiere does a solid enough job of pulling you back into the show's gentle pace. Last we saw Souichiro and Touma, their team had just lost the preliminaries to go to the Koshien baseball championships. Now they're gearing up for a new baseball season. While they may not have made it all the way last time, their strength as a battery has caught people's attention and started getting high school baseball fans thinking that they may be able to return their school's once-champion team to its former glory.

I wasn't a huge fan of the first part of Mix, but life has been hectic lately, and the second season's premiere's gentle pacing and subdued character writing felt like sinking into a pleasantly lukewarm bath. It reintroduces the characters one by one, which was quite helpful—I wouldn't have remembered most of them had the show jumped right back into the baseball action. The script takes its time, checking in with each character through conversation scenes after a brief cut-in from the narrator. It's nice, albeit unexciting. It is also mercifully free of the constant ogling of middle school girls' bodies that marred the first part.

I'm not going to recommend that if you haven't seen the first part of Mix: Meisei Story that you run out and watch it immediately, because I was pretty eh on it overall. However, if you watched it and enjoyed it, this episode is a nice way to get back up to speed.