Volume 8 of Cross Game is the final volume of the series. After the romantic melodrama-swamped mess that was volume 6, this book is blessedly focused on the rematch between Seishu Gakuen (the school Ko pitches for), and Ryuou Gakuin, who defeated them the year before (seen in volume 5). At stake is the chance to reach the Koshien high school championship. Since this is their last year, it's the last chance for Ko and Akaishi to make Wakaba's dream of them playing in that championship come true.
But Ryuou Gakuin have their own ace pitcher and star slugger, superior to the ones that headlined the team last tie, so it's not going to be easy. Adachi cuts between the action on the field and Aoba and Junpei watching in the stands (also at stake: Aoba's big sister agreed to marry Junpei if the team makes Koshien). Ko promised Aoba he'd throw a 100 mph fastball, and so Adachi throws in a lot of close-up panels of the radar gun readings on the scoreboard.
This is the frustrating thing about this series for me. Adachi is really damn good at making the games tense. Lots of small panels that jump from one the ball taking a funny hop, to the reaction in the dugout, to a close-up of a foot touching home plate. Then sometimes Adachi will switch to an establishing shot, the bleachers for example, then back to a small panel of a ball bouncing off the steps. He may not draw the ball making contact with the bat, but you the see the leave the pitcher's hand, and you see where it ends up.
Aoba's cousin, Mizuki, doesn't attend the game, but Adachi uses that to good effect, as Mizuki finds himself drawn into watching the game on TV, and when there's a big hit, he can hear to crowd's roar all the way from the house. (Mizuki also ends up stumbling across Aoba's journals, which help him make peace with the fact she likes Ko, and he goes on walkabout. Still feels like Adachi introduced Mizuki, then had little to do with him.)
Adachi also has some fun with the announce team, at times having one of them make a comment, then switch to the dugout in the next panel and have the manager point back at the previous panel to ask his players if the comment was correct, or vice versa. Late in the game, he switches out the announcer who pretends to be knowledgeable with one who responds to his partner's rhetorical questions as though they were literal. It help with the rise and fall of the tension.
Point being, the presentation of the game is expertly done, and I would have gladly taken a lot more of that. We also get to see Azuma let himself really enjoy playing baseball, even though he's sad on some level that he'll never get to face Ko - this version of Ko, a true ace pitcher - one-on-one.
Adachi also throws in a funny at-bat where the opposing pitcher, a little annoyed at all the oohing and aahing over Ko's velocity, decides to strike out Ko on three straight fastballs. He only hits 93 mph, but Ko's surprised at how fast that is. As Akaishi notes, it's because Ko never gets to see how fast his own pitches are from the batter's box.
Overall, it's very enjoyable conclusion to the book, even if I'm never clear on why these baseball manga are always about getting to the championship at Koshien, but never actually show any of the games played there. It's like having a baseball movie, but cutting off when the team earns the right to go to the World Series. Just odd.
Huh, look at that. Broken clock and all that.
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