Mitsuru Adachi’s H2 began in Weekly Shonen Sunday on 29 July 1992 and ended on 24 November 1999 at chapter 338, collected in 34 volumes. The two H’s are read as the initials of Hiro Kunimi and Hideo Tachibana, and also as the four of them, since Haruka Koga and Hikari Amamiya are equally the subject.
Hiro, a pitcher, is told his elbow will not take it and enters a high school with no baseball team. The story starts when that diagnosis turns out to have been wrong, and he rebuilds a team on a corner of the ground the football club uses. The games are drawn plainly, with little dialogue, and the more decisive the moment the fewer words there are.
As in everything Adachi draws, the distances between the four matter as much as the baseball. Three seasons pass without anyone saying the thing precisely, and only at the end does it become clear how much each of them already knew. Complete at 34 volumes, with animated and live-action adaptations.
