English Dub Season Review: Mix: A Meisei Story Season One

There are a lot of twins and relatives who play baseball together, especially on the Meisei High School team. Set 30 years after the school had brought home the title by way of the twin Uesugi brothers (the basis for Touch), we meet stepbrothers named Tachibana attempting to do the same.

The main premise of Mix: A Meisei Story revolves around these stepbrothers, a pitcher named “To” and a catcher named “So”. And not only does the duo have in common their love and passion for their game of baseball, but they both also have respectful lineages to the game and even to the aforementioned championship team. Touma’s now-deceased mother, Naoko, was an ace softball coach and his father, Eisuke, was a secondary pitcher for Meisei and a longtime friend of Meisei’s current coach Gorou of whom was also a player.  Souichirou’s deceased father, Keiichi Sawai, was an ace who Eisuke used to back up, however, this fact wasn’t known until Eisuke and Mayumi Tochibana hooked up.

So and To may have baseball in common, but that might be the only thing they have in common. During the course of Mix: A Meisei Story we notice that So is a ladies’ man and pretty much has dated all the time while his stepbrother is a bit more shy around girls and more overprotective to his stepsister Otomi who drives all the boys crazy with her dog “Punch”. Regardless, everyone’s goal is to make it to the Koshien tournament for a chance to play for the National High School Baseball Championship. But, these kids got to make it there first and the competition is fiercely competitive.

For the most part, the baseball action is a bunch of fun here, just a few and far between. We either go super fast through games or we spend four episodes on another, regardless we’re constantly checking into other characters as to what the hell they are doing during the course of the action and, quite frankly, wish we would stop getting that. Moreover, the English dub is hurt by none of the baseball stats and ID cards being in English, so you can’t gain any deep relationships with players and have no idea if someone is a threat or not in particular instances. Baseball is a statistics game, and if you don’t have them, then it’s a challenge to get excited about the in-game drama. To help with this, the show employs store-brand slice-of-life arcs and storylines that typically bore me and by the end of the 24-episode series are hardly even part of the show anymore. All of the bit characters introduced end up being spectators, which is fine, but this series could’ve just as easily been 12 episodes, no slice-of-life, just baseball and probably be a bit more up-tempo and action-packed.

This one gets mixed up and needs to be more straightened out to get your sports anime nerds something to grasp on to. Otherwise, the slice-of-life stuff isn’t really going to stick to the hardcore fans of this subgenre looking for more bang for their buck.