Rarely will you find a series where the past is so much a main character in the story as Mix.  It’s kind of a perfect storm.  It’s Adachi, whose work is as self-referential as any mangaka who’s ever manga’d.  It’s a sequel and not just that, but to arguably the most popular anime and manga of the 20th Century.  And if all that weren’t enough, seemingly every development in the present is directly tied into an event from the past.  Things were are implied or subtextual in most series and boldface and all caps in this one.

All those threads are being tied together sure as salt, now.  And speaking of some, maybe Nishimura Isami needs some.  If he’s dehydrated that is, but that felt like a Chekov’s swoon to me.  I can’t recollect any hints that Isami was having health issues, but with Adachi you certainly can’t discount the possibility.  Meanwhile Arisa has cooked up a deal where she gets kiddy pictures of Ryou from Akai-major in exchange for providing video of his batting practice (no, nothing creepy stalker about that at all).  I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt for not knowing enough about baseball to realize how dumb that is, and maybe to Tomohito for his intentions after giving some advice to pass along.  But he’s not going to un-remember what he saw if Meisei were to meet Kenjou.

Back at Meisei Ichiban is finally getting some much-deserved praise for his standout performance against Hiryuu – though I must say there was a hint of condescension to it.  I’ve liked Ichiban right from the beginning and he’s refreshingly different for an Adachi player in many ways.  I thought his answer about being angry not for being yanked with one out to go, but at himself for being relieved about it was a very good one indeed.  Meisei having two legit starting pitchers is a very unusual (maybe unique) scenario for an Adachi team (and I’m not convinced Souichirou won’t take the mound in relief at some point before this tournament is over).

Mind you, Natsuno was right to be relieved at being relieved, considering that Touma “goes 120%” when he’s protecting someone else’s lead.  The next opponent on the docket is Eishin High School, and this is a big pile of threads from the past tangling with the present.  That was the opponent the day Sawai-san was injured – injured by Senbongi-sensei, in a game Tachibana Eisuke had to come in as a reliever and lost the game.  There’s a whole lot of folks’ baggage strapped to the roof of that car, especially given that the two schools never met in the intervening 27 years.

Ooyama-san was in that game too of course.  And things are looking just a little bit too familiar – so much so that he orders Touma not to cover first in this matchup.  That’s not going to work of course – especially given that in Japanese high school baseball (and Adachi) it’s common strategy for schools to bunt against unhittable pitchers to try and tire them out.  Ooyama at least seems to have figured that out early in the game (two batters into the bottom of the first).