All posts by DecomposingAtom

This is something that actually escapes a lot of fan's radar I feel like but yes Sawamura is a ridiculous prodigy. He isn't gifted in terms of strength/velocity like Furuya but he's incredibly gifted in other fields, many of which other don't have. Sawamura practicallyl haven't been properly trained until he enrolled into Seidou and he's only started playing and practicing baseball "seriously" for a better part of one year, even Furuya was trained somewhat more extensively by his grandpa or his middle school before he stopped playing. Sawamura's ability to create a Cutter by pure accident is a skill that's extremely rare even amongst pitchers. On top of that, Sawamura's flexibility helps him injects a huge amount of spins on his pitch which makes it rises at the plate and looks sharper than a similar pitch of the same velocity, this allows Sawamura to get strikeouts despite his lower velocity and has became sort of a deceptive power pitcher as he could rake up as much as 8 strikeouts through 5 innings. His unique form is actually something that many pitchers are taught but are unable to do, it requires a lot of flexibility for a pitcher to be able to hide his pitching arm behind the head like that and due to that hidden arm action, Sawamura pitching delivery is always on time and has a good rhythm, allowing him to repeat his pitching mechanics consistently which as a result producing consistently good pitches and consistently good performances. He acquired all of these in a span of 1 year, you cannot be a scrub and acheive this even with extra amount of efforts, it's when both talent and efforts are combined that a player would bloom.

Sawamura is quite a complete package compare to Furuya who has the only thing Sawamura lacks, the power aspect; however, there are many facets to pitching; namely control, pitch movement, change of speed and velocity and Sawamura has all of these beside velocity. It's unfortunate that many uses Furuya as a benchmark to compare Sawamura with and they seems to think Sawamura is not as good as Furuya because he lacks that one aspect of pitching but it cannot be further from the truth. 

I don't feel like the No. 11 matters much, it is a pitcher's number, it's his old number. As much as you would think that it means Furuya is still considered to be a Co-Ace in the team, it also means he's been moved backwards to his rookie's status, the 2nd best. Point of view is subjective and there is really only 1 Number 1 in a team so I don't think we should fault Furuya or Terajima for getting that Number or going in that direction.

There is a thing in baseball called pitching rotation. You rotate your starting pitchers, you keep them fresh so when the title match comes, all of your pitchers are less tired than the other team and they're in a position to compete better. The reason why Japan does not do this is because they lack the talent pool to. Most of the time, at high school level, the best player on the team is the Ace, and maybe the Captain who often plays 4th batter. It's simple as that, they simply don't have enough talent to be able to afford a sustainable pitching strategy. This is why Mei had to pitch every game for Inajitsu because frankly Inajitsu's bullpen sucks. In contrast, Seidou has a strong pitching squad, Sawamura and a less consistent but also good pitcher in the form of Furuya and a super solid reliever like Kawakami. It would be incredibly dumb to play to the cultural expectations of making the Ace pitches every game and waste his stamina and potential success down the line when Seidou is gifted with 3 very good pitchers. Terajima is also making a point here that I don't think the readers appreciate enough, that is for High school baseball teams to stop over-abusing these kids by making them pitch too much like Mei and destroy their future career by incorpotate the pitcher rotation and pitcher relay strategy heavily into Seidou more than any other team. The Japanese high school baseball association top brass are a bucnh of old crooks who only worry about the "tradition of the Japanese game" without much care about the consequences of the kids playing the game, this is why Japanese parents and younger kids are scared away from it and as a result, baseball recruits are dwinling year by year. As a representative of a baseball community, Terajima is definitely feeling that he is in a position to send a message here through Seidou, the protagonist team, and that is exactly what he is doing. The pitching rotation should not be condemned, it should instead be welcomed.

As an admin, it is my job to NOT encourage people to actually read from pirate sites or is willing to post any direct link to those sites. I would prefer that you stick with the official sources such as the raw mangas available for online purchase for Act 1 anime (season 1 and 2) which are also readily available.

However, if you do really want to read it free then you could find it on senmanga with all those missing chapters available; with that said, I never ever want to suggest this site because it's rigged with trojans and viruses so keep that in mind and know what you're walking into if you still want to proceed.

Seidou pitchers data

It's a bit messy as it's done by some fans and they try their best to input all the stats that they can collect of all the matches that were shown. It's more like run average instead of ERA though and frankly there's no way you could get WAR for these pitchers. What's clear however is that Furuya was better than Sawamura out of the gate in their rookie Summer Tourney; however, what's surprising is that during the Fall Tourney where Furuya was the Ace of the team, Sawamura pitched more innings (24.7 to Furuya's 21.3) and actually lost less runs (RA=1.82 to Furuya's 4.64). This is what fans probably felt like there was a big difference in Furuya's status as the Ace and Sawamura being downplayed by his own team at the end of Act 1. 

Sawamura however in Act 2 went on a tear and had a RA = 0.91 until the pre-Summer Qualifier and that helped slashed his RA in his high school career to 2.38 which was previously higher than Furuya in Act 1. It's very apparent that if you go by stats, Sawamura has the most growth out of the pitchers in Seidou and since Act 2 if not the Fall Tourney been posting better stats consistently than the rest of his peers and hence deserve the Ace title.  

Definitely Greg Maddux and Corey Kluber. Greg Maddux was consistently pitching under the 90mph range and he placed tremendous emphasis on control and movement of the pitch. One of his such great quote was "Control is more important than velocity, movement is more important than velocity, change of speed is more important than velocity". Maddux wasn't gifted with eye popping stuffs aka velocity so he tries to get batters out by working with what he was gifted with which was control and movement of the pitch. He also studies batters in great detail and was a very perceiving pitcher who could gauge the condition of a batter on the day to know what to throw to get him out. Maddux was gifted with a flexible body when coupled with his almost perfect pitching mechanics helped preventing him from suffering any major injuries throughout his long career. He was also famose for having a hidden arm release that hide the pitch behind his head for as long as posible thanks to his flexible shoulder and arm. There's also another one, Hyun Jin Ryu who's been pitching lights out and is called a lefty Maddux this year because of his style similarity with Maddux, low pitch count, great control, average velocity (for a Big Leager) but is extremely efficient.

Corey Kluber is also a pitcher gifted with good breaking stuffs and command that makes him good without having to have eye popping stuffs.

Kershaw on the other hand is a different pitcher from Sawamura. Kershaw has heat, he could hit 93-95 in his early days and he gets a lot of strikeouts on both of his Slider and almost unhittable Curveball. He's more of an upgraded version of Mei or a South Paw Amahisa istead of a Sawamura.

Another thing is Sawamura's cross-fire pitching delivery on his Cutter is similar to what Madison Bumgarner does in his pitching mechanics or Jake Arieta's. Cross-fire is not a pitch, it's a pitching delivery and Terajima made a huge confusion with his in-universe definition. It's also not something "exclusive to a South Paw". That's inherently wrong.

In addition, Sawamura's Cutter Kai is most likely an inspired pitch off of Marianno Rivera's Cutter. Just look it up on youtube to see that disappearing effect.

Frankly Mei x Miyuki battery would seems to work out fine on paper and they did work out fine during the Tokyo vs. LA game because there were almost no stakes behind it (yes Nation pride was at stake but there were no real pressure that comes with an official elimination game) so in other words, that battery hasn't been tempered and it hasn't really been tested. Miyuki likes to call the show, he doesn't want to let the pitcher refuse his game calling plan, Mei is also the same, he likes to pitch what he likes to pitch and unless it is Harada who makes the game calling, he'd be dead set on throwing what he wants (in fact he does throws what he wants to Harada too at times). So when there's a high stake situation, this battery could easily get in conflict about what kind of pitch to throw and that drift could be further widened if they have mixed results. 

Sawamura on the other hand just focus on executing the pitch, he lets Miyuki handles the game calling and take responsibility for the pitch that he calls. The battery has survived numerous challenges working this way for a long time, this method being ideal or not is another discussion altogether but for them it works more often than not and that's how they roll. Can Mei works with Miyuki the same way Sawamura can, arguably not. 

The different is that in Fall Tourney, there are no seedings. This leads to school having to play block games before playing in the main draw. Thus, the main draw is shorter in comparison to the Spring Tourney which should more or less have the same number of participants but there are seedings depending on the performance of the team in Senbatsu and to my knowledge, there are no block games aside the official main draw; hence, there are one more round in the Spring Tourney main draw.

Yeah, everyone has their favorite sport. I'm not suggesting you should try to like the sport but I usually suggest people to, if they could, spend a little time learning about the game through watching highlights or anything, you don't need to have to watch the entire game (although I do really suggest you watch Koshien live coverage available on Asahi Shimbun's website, it's a lot of fun and since Terajima watches Koshien as well so you could see what kind of things he picked up that year) so people can explore more about the world depicted in Daiya no Ace. Although again, that's totally your choice.

As for Sawamura interaction, I really don't mind it. Guys tend to be very abbrasive and dumb at that age, they say a lot of dumb things, be it Miyuki, Zono, Furuya, Sawamura or Okumura. Sawamura is inherently very loud mouth so I can see how he could appear as annoying to people, I'm not going to even bother defend that, he has it coming. Although I look at him from the positive side, that he has the guts to repent and apologize for things he said when he realized it was bad and not every character in-universe has that in them, in fact most of them doesn't. I like Sawamura because he really owns up to his actions instead of sweeping it under the carpet or act like there should not be consequences to their action. In addition, it's sort of both a blessing and a curse for Sawamura that Terajima has said that Sawamura being loud is a character trait that really defines Sawamura to him and that he's unlikely to ever going to change that so if you can't stand it, it's unfortunately there to stay although with that said I do want to add a bit of spoiler that Sawamura has matured very quickly after becoming the Ace, things that he was flipping out about or being loud about in protest previously, now he takes that with a smile. We don't know how far Terajima is going to change Sawamura but Sawamura 2.0 is already there and it's an encourging development. That's also why I like Asou so much more in Act 2 after he's realized how much of a douche he's been and it's time for him to stop just the pep talks and start to walk the walk as well.

As for translation, I don't take anything regarding to the technical aspects of the game from another translation and I'll look at it in its original form and the context related to come to my understanding of its meaning. As for the translation of the dialogues and such, there are a lot of variants, additional words added in attempt to clarify the meaning and context of the dialogues as you know, Japanese at times can be 曖昧/ambigous and they leave a lot to interpretation. Complaining about a translator's interpretation or their translating style is not sensible especially if you can't even read the original text so it's not a conversation I would usually care to join.

I follow baseball (both MLB and NPB) on a daily basis and I also try to watch Koshien almost every year so I do admit I look at the story not just on its narrative but also the game, the level of playstyle and even the stats which is why I tend to not be too invested in characters that don't contribute much to a game or doesn't deliver. I would say that if you can, do try to get into baseball a bit, it would help you enjoy the series more as there are some things you cannot pick out unless you have a certain knowledge about baseball and sometimes up to date information about the game. For instance, it was very apparent that Terajima had only a limited amount of knowledge about baseball in the beginning, he messed up the definition of pitches which confuses the hell out of people, he never ever post stats of the players, etc. but since Act 2 started, he's started watching MLB a lot more and he's started employing stats and even some batting nuances from the MLB that hasn't really made its way to the Japanese game yet. That's a growth not just for the story but also for the author writing the story and it excites part of the fandom to see the the author taking time to research and upping his expertise.

You can take it as Kataoka being meticulous with this word choice to maximize Furuya's excitement, I do agree with that point of view; however, from the context of the story at that moment, he could have easily worded it differently and still got the same effect on Furuya. He choose to word it like that signify to me that both Kataoka and in extension Terajima wants to emphasize that point of being the Ace, the meaning of trusting the Ace in said moment. Again, it's a title match, there's no way an Ace will not pitch.

The reason why the Ace story is signficant is Daiya no Ace is, at the end of the day, a very pitcher centric story. The players' stories are there but Terajima spends most of his time focusing on the pitchers and it's no surprise that most of the most important players on a team in this story are pitchers or the Ace of their respective teams so we really can't understate how important the Ace narrative is and how it dictates a lot of the story and its development. Hence, as the main narrative has finished (Sawamura becoming the Ace) I'm eagering waiting for Terajima to give us as much character developments for the other casts as we can get before the story return to the inevitable pitcher showdown again down the road. The other characters make the story richer but Terajima really does not have much spare time to spend on them in between games and off-season due to the main pitcher narrative going on. That's how I feel about the story.

The nuances of a mental advantage is there I do agree though my point was to stress that to Kataoka, based on the narrative that was presented, trusting the Ace was more significant. I mean, what kind of coach does not let his Ace pitch in a title game, when the title and the ticket to Koshien is at stake not even 1 inning. We also have to take into considering the context of the story being in a Japanese high school setting where both the peers and the audiences expect the Ace to be the best, if they don't see that trust represented by the coach then they would start to question his decisions. Notice how Kataoka worded his sentence "You're the Ace, you go and close it out". He was literally emphasizing the reason why he made the decision there and it was a valid move.

Yes he did although the nice thing about Daiya is that the characters change through time, sometimes they progress, sometimes they regress and it feels very organic. Kataoka did say he wasn't willing to throw away a game to grow an Ace but during the Spring Tournament, that's basically what he did and he himself didn't realize it until he saw how he missed the chance of saving the game by not subbing Sawamura in and had to apologize to him unpon realizing it. Kataoka decision in that game not only surprised Ochiai, who was formerly a proponent of such way to build a team which is to favor the Ace for the long term benefits, but it also surprised the other coaches and players watching that game. They felt that Kataoka was trusting Furuya more than he did back in Fall and that he was willing to give the guy more leeway. When you look at it, it's tough to say he was totally wrong with that move. Seidou has been lacking a "zettai-tekina Ace figure" up until that point. Furuya became the Ace, he was promising enough, he did great in Senbatsu, why shouldn't you try to grow him and give him more expectations over the rest of your pitchers. If Furuya was able to recover and not lost 5 runs in 1 inning, Kataoka's decision would have turned out right but Furuya blew the chance, he was too bad that day so we had a different outcome. Kataoka wasn't like that in Fall but the expectation for Furuya and trust kept growing through time so Kataoka's surprising out of character actions were sort of within the range of expectation.

I'll refrain to comment on Miyuki because I have a very complicated view on Miyuki regarding his baseball and his actiosn but it is nonconsequential to this discussion. I'll just say this, MIyuki isn't perfect and that's fine but a lot of the fandom expect him to be perfect and they either like or dislike him because of it which to me is a bit extreme. A character who has flaws have more depth to them more often than not and that makes them more relatable. The last thing you want is for a character to be static, they have to either develop or regress to make it an interesting story.

Yeah we can agree to disagree, this is a discussion after all, not a debate. My view is that although the pitchers' peers do acknowledge both Sawamura and Furuya, the story has presented that Furuya, with a more impressive head start has always been given more trust and expectation than Sawamura; once Furuya became the Ace, people's expectations have sort of settled for both of them and those expectations got further reinforced by Furuya's performance in Senbatsu. The Ace position at the end of the day is chosen by the coach and he has to go with the guy who's red hot/the most reliable at that moment, it was the case for Furuya in Fall and it was the case for Sawamura in Summer. The team is therefore, in my view, more reactive to that decision instead of proactively giving expectations on who could be what, especially in their first year. The hint of that is how no one in the team has ever say or think that Sawamura could become the Ace or a better pitcher than Furuya in the whole Act 1 but after the Ichidaisan game and the jerseys reset, people started discussing how Sawamura is looking more likely as a candidate, a conversation that they has never done before that point, even Miyuki started questioning himself has he really ever given Sawamura the kind of expectation as a possible candidate or has he really recognize that Sawamura has the potential to go even further. That sort of nuiances are what I think Terajima has layered down into the story.

Whoops, my bad for assuming you're up to date.

In terms of actual pitching style, Kataoka and Sawamura are very different. One is a power pitcher with a Curveball while the other is a finese South Paw with moving pitches. However, the similarities between them are numerous. They are both the hardest worker within their team, Sawamura is always the last guy on running on the ground, pulling a tire and Kataoka was the same. They weren't exactly repsected by their teammates when they first came up, they have to slowly gain that trust through time with their performance. Furuya on the other hand was impressive out of the gate and people has high expectations for him. So yes, the similarities are there and you could say it did more or less played a certain part in why Kataoka choose to go with Sawamura for Summer.

I'll response to both of your last points together as they're related. The more accurate description to this would be that yes Kataoka does trust Sawamura but it wasn't as much as he trusted Furuya, because the later was the Ace of the team. Furuya had a meteoric rise to the top, he has a fastball velocity that's unrivaled in high school, he performed well when Sawamura and Kawakami were still very shaken after losing to Inajitsu. At that point, there's no reason for Kataoka or Miyuki to expect Sawamura would become the Ace especially in high school setting where the Ace jersey hardly ever change ownership once a guy possesses it. Now this leads into the Yakushi game. Technically, there was really no need to make a pitcher switch because frankly the last 3 guys up were the guys at the bottom of the lineup (aka the worst batters on lineup) and Sawamura just went through the heart of Yakushi lineup striking out their best 2 batters, Raichi and Sanada; he could handled the cleanups, he could have easily handled the last 3 guys. Both Raichi and Sanada got struckout despite having seen Sawamura's pitches 2 times through the order, the 3 guys on the bottom of Yakushi llineup weren't going to do better. Considering that momentum Sawamura had, on top of Seidou coming back on the top of the inning (which has already landed a huge blow to Yakushi's confidence) and the fact that Furuya was injured, there really was no need to make a pitcher switch. However, ultimately what was coming into play here is to Kataoka, going with the Ace for this situation shows that he trusts the guy and you're supposed to trust your Ace regardless of what his condition is, either he's injured or he just had a bad game, when the title is at stake, you go with the guy you trust most, even if you lose you suck it up to that decision. It was a controversal decision but there were sensible reasons behind it. On the other hand, it was clearly a narrative choice that set up Act 2 by Terajima, that unless you're actually the Ace of the team, when push comes to shove, it's difficult for the coach to favor you over the Ace, it is how it is so if you don't like it, become the Ace. To me, the tactical choice due to mental advantage or whatever was less signficant to the importance of Kataoka going with his Ace, the pitcher he trusts and that was sort of a microcosm of the entire Act 1.

Now back to the point of Miyuki and Kataoka actually believes Sawamura can become the Ace or not, to me it really didn't occur to them that Sawamura can actually be the Ace until the Spring Tournament. Kataoka's decision in Act 1 is an evidence that although Kataoka does trust Sawamura but that trust is only limited to certain extent, he's not willing to give Sawamura the benefit of the doubt that even when the guy is struggling, he's willing to give him a 2nd a 3rd chance to prove himself like what he gave Furuya in the Ichidaisan game and regardless of the validity of said decision, you can sort of see why he did such a thing because he knew Furuya was capable of greatness that he's shown in the Sebatsu. Kataoka just didn't expect his Ace to be that inconsistent and at the same time, him apologizing to Sawamura in that same game is a clear indication how much he was willing to give his Ace more leeway, so much so that he threw away the game and injured the guys waiting in line to save the game, Sawamura. From the narrative Miyuki and Kataoka does sort of expect Sawamura to become good but because Furuya is the Ace and he's shown good stuffs at times that it's difficult for them to dare think that they have another great pitcher in the same team but the fact that Sawamura surprised them and made them having to change their expectation for him in Act 2 is real. They were definitely surprised and they had to reconstruct how they were going to view Sawamura as a potential candidate in Act 2, before that in Fall, there was no reason for them to think otherwise. To have 2 pitchers equally as good as one another in the same year rarely ever happens so we could see how such a situation could surprise everyone involved and not just Miyuki and Kataoka.

Yeah, you'll see it later but Kataoka's former mentor, Sasaki has a great quote: "It's the team that nurture the Ace and it's the Ace that makes the team strong". It's a multual relationship that fortify both the team and the Ace and I think that's the way Terajima is going to navigate through the remaining of Act 2.

@小百合姫

Actually, you don't even need to wait for Miyuki and the rest of the 3rd years to go before feeling like the Ace race has became irrelevant. The main premise of the story has always been about Sawamura coming from behind, from a status that was below Furuya to prove to the team and especially Miyuki and Kataoka that he could be the better pitcher, the best pitcher in the team and therefore, the Ace of the team. For a large chunk of Act II has been mostly about the tail end of Sawamura's journey to become the Ace and living up to that hype, going over Miyuki's and the coach's expectations. That bit of the story is now done, Sawamura has fulfilled half of his objectives coming into Seidou. The remaining half is yes, together with Miyuki, as Ace and captain, take Seidou to Koshien, firstly by beating Inajitsu in the rematch and secondly take them as deep as possible (maybe go all the way) in Summer Koshien. The story now is about how Sawamura is going to adjust to being the Ace of the team, how he mature in the short time span that he's given (he's not given any trial run chance here as it's extremely rare for a pitcher who overtook another one from his year who's been wearing the Ace number for longer than he is heading into the biggest Tournament of the year, the Summer Koshien like this) and how he'll live up to his status. His recent developments are already quite impressive to witness.

On the other hand, the team aspect here to me is not about Miyuki. Miyuki along with Sawamura are certainly the 2 key factors in this team, they pull the team, they keep the team's shit together when it's needed but ultimately, it's about the other key players on the team that should show up to the party. You already know more or less what to expect from Miyuki and Sawamura, their level isn't going to fluctuate much, when it's crunch time, they will deliver, it's a known quality of them. However, the reason why Seidou should become stronger than the rest from my point of view is that they have an assembly of more talented individuals than the rest of their competition within the Prefecture at least. There are many teams that have only 1 or 2 key players Akikawa for example only has Shunshin, Hachiouji for example only has Kawabata. Seidou on the other hand has 2 pitchers that're amongst the best of in their year, Haruichi who's frankly a batting genius and for the first 2 matches in the manga right now, he's been the biggest driving force behind their offense and he's been driving in more Runs than either Miyuki or Zono, Mochi is easily the best SS in his year, Toujou is hugely underrated but he's an extremely good CF with consistent batting, Shirasu is almost a perfect RF, Zono is average but he has batting power that could be clutch at times. It's exciting to see this whole cast makes their plays and demonstrate why they should be beating their opponents to come to meet Inajtsu in that Final. So far Haruichi and Mochi has showed up to the party spectacularly and it's time for the rest of the cast to take some of the spotlights as well.

I do think that some could be jumping ahead a bit too much with 1st years like Okumura who I think isn't going to get a chance to play this Summer because of Miyuki being a captain and 4th batter on top of being the starting catcher, there's no reason you should ever sub this guy out. Okumura is there mostly to provide a different perspective to Sawamura and Seidou's story from the eyes of a rookie on the team. I know that Okumura is a new fan favorite but I also do get the feeling that Terajima will most likely not going to continue the story much further after Miyuki and Co retire so from that perspective, it's sort of more difficult to try to get too invested in the rookies on the team given that they'll barely get to play at all (for some), especially the deeper Seidou progresses, to contribute much and on top of that, there's no promising that we'll get much more from them past this Summer Koshien.

To me, this Summer Koshien journey is not just about Sawamura and Miyuki as the main battery, that'll be the core narrative for sure but it'll also be about the 3rd years and the current 2nd year on the team like Haruichi, Toujou, Kanemaru, how they'll start to carry the team down the line. That's where the baseball can get deeper and more interesting.

I, on the other hand, has no problem seeing Sawamura and Miyuki lose in an epic battle against Komadai. It's about the journey, it's not about the result. Sawamura becoming the Ace was the ultimate achievement because it took him sweat and tears to reach that point and it's not just because he's there that the story is done. A lot of people thought Sawamura becoming the Ace would be the "end game" of the manga, I've always believed otherwise, that it's instead the start of another chapter. I know a lot of people would be disappointed when Miyuki and Co actually retire and maybe Seidou loses the Summer Koshien but I would personallly be fine to see them lose because it would make the story feels more realistic that way that no matter how good you are, there're always someone better, no matter how hard you try there could be guys out there that try even harder and not just because you want to become the best that you actually can get there. If they do go all the way, great, even if they don't it's still great because again, it's all about the journey and the process. As long as Terajima give us an epic showdown, that'd be a glorious climax all the same.

For now, we only have confirmation for Season 3, nothing further than that. The manga is still going on so Season 3 is not going to cover everything of Act 2 manga, it'll probably ends with Sawamura becoming the Ace and then wait for the manga to progress a bit before any decision on another season could be made. There could be a 4th season but we will have to wait for that down the line. 

Technically, there are more (lucky losers) teams that could be "invited" to the Tournament depending on how much the Baseball Committee likes them. It just so happen that Yakushi is "liked" by the Committee (which in this case is basically Terajima himself) so they are there in Senbatsu. The Committee does tend to favor teams in big cities so yeah, it's not unusual for Tokyo to get an extra ticket.

I'm not too sure what your question is but to put it simply, the only time when Miyuki and Mei can face one another is in the Tokyo Prefectural Summer Tournament, the Spring Tournament and the Fall Tournament. Given that they're already senior, the only time they can face each other is now limited to only the Tokyo Prefectural Summer Tournament which is currently going on in Act 2 Manga. After the Summer Tournament and Koshien, these players will retire from competition and will be focusing on taking college exams so even though they're still in school, they're not allowed to play anymore matches during the last semester of their high school.

It will start airing from April of 2019