Volume 1 is massive, over 570 pages starting when the main character Ko and his friend Wakaba are in fifth grade. Ko comes off as either lazy, or just at that stage where different things grab his interest suddenly and for a short period of time, baseball not being one of them. He convinces his friends to form a team so they'll buy their equipment and uniforms from his parents' store. Wakaba's the second of four daughters, born the same day as Ko, generally sweet and friendly, well-liked by most everyone. That includes the toughest kid in their grade, Akaishi, who's looming presence spooks Ko into actually playing a his first game of baseball just for safety in numbers.
Then, having introduced several of the key players, Adachi kills Wakaba 150 pages in and shortly after, jumps the book ahead four years. Look, it's a 15+ year old series, and most of it revolves around that event, so I'm not worrying spoilers here.
The time jump allows Adachi to change things up from what we'd briefly been introduced to. Aoba, Wakaba's younger sister, baseball lover and Ko's harshest critic, plays on the junior high team as a pitcher, but Ko himself still seems to have no interest in baseball. His friend Nakanishi, who loved baseball, isn't on the school team, but Akaishi is, having abandoned fighting entirely. Over the next ~400 pages, things are gradually teased out. What changed for Akaishi. What Ko's really been up to. The goal that's going to, as far as I can tell having read volumes 1 through 3 and 5, drive the story forward from then on.
It's also a chance to introduce a pair of antagonists. One is the new high school coach, Daimon. Think all those college basketball coaches that win everywhere they go, but leave under a cloud of rules violations. John Calipari mixed with Jon Voight's asshole football coach from Varisty Blues. It's actually impressive how well Adachi conveys what an arrogant, cruel jackass Daimon is. Completely emotionless when he's telling a player they're off the team if they can practice because their arm is sore. Telling players they're nothing but fertilizer for the varsity team. At most, there's a smug smirk on his face. Having read the later volumes, it's intensely gratifying to see him get his comeuppance.
The other antagonist is Azuma Yuhei, who is the stereotypical extremely gifted, arrogant jock dickhead. He's not a loud braggart, but just constantly condescending and rude. He treats his own teammates like servants and admits he doesn't bother to learn names of people he thinks don't matter. When Daimon asks how many of his teammates' names he's learned, he says five.
The problem for me, having seen those later volumes, is Adachi's going to try and give Yuhei a past tragedy of his own to explain his personality and drive, but still be a dickhead. Maybe it's meant to be a very dry sense of humor, but he's so stone-faced most of the time it doesn't feel like it. As of volume 5 I still can't stand the character and want to see him fall on his face. I mean, Ko, Aoba, and Akaishi are all affected and driven by a loss far harsher than Yuhei's, and they don't act like assholes. Well, Aoba does towards Ko, but there's all sorts of other stuff tied up in that.
The writing and the art work for the scenes that are sad and solemn. In the aftermath of Wakaba's death, Adachi uses largely silent panels that focus on the characters' faces and their isolation. The way each of Aoba, Ko, and Akaishi try to deal with the loss and their grief. Most of the funeral service is shown as Ko trying to peer past all the adults in mourning clothes to see Wakaba's shrine, but there's only a single panel of it. It's a clear panel that dominates the page, but it's like that was all the glimpse he could get.
There's more humor than sadness, although Adachi highlights how memories of people you lost will crop up at surprising times. Ko and another character named Senda (a loudmouth braggart that repeatedly gets shown up, so I don't mind him the way I do Yuhei) receive the brunt of the humor, but Adachi pokes at himself occasionally. Characters do plugs for his past series, or when he wastes pages making jokes about his editors having no idea how difficult 18 pages can be to complete someone in story will complain about. I could do without the upskirt shots, even if I could be charitable and allow some of them are meant to be from Ko's perspective and it might speak to where his mind is at in 9th grade. But that argument definitely wouldn't work for all of them
Adachi's approach to drawing the actual baseball is to break it up into small, individual actions (see the page at the top of this post). A panel of the ball, then one of bat and ball. Or a panel of the ball bouncing into the outfield, then one of someone rounding a base. The game is one of a lot of small, individual actions happening on the same field, so it works pretty well. If it was basketball or American football, where so much of each play is reliant on how all the players move in concert or in reaction to each other, I'm not sure it would. But the having the panels tilt lets them lead the eye naturally to the next one, and he's able to do so in a way that feels like it matches the characters' movements. Like the tilt down and to the right is part of Ko's windup as he prepares to throw the ball.
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