Adachi Mitsuru is an extremely respected and popular manga-ka born in 1951, in Japan. He worked as an assistant to Ishii Isami after graduating from high school and finally made his manga debut in Deluxe Shounen Sunday in 1970 with Kieta Bakuon, based on a manga by Satoru Ozawa.

Adachi's works oscillate between shounen, shoujo and seinen (often touching several genres at once) with his most usual themes being sports (baseball, mostly) and romance.

Some of his most famous manga series include Miyuki, Touch (both winners of the 28th annual Shogakukan Manga Award in the shoujo and shounen category respectively), Rough, H2 (his longest series to date with 34 volumes) and Katsu! (boxing themed). All of these have been adapted to anime series, dramas and/or live-action films.

His latest series is Q&A, which started its serialisation in June 2009 in the inaugural issue of Monthly Shounen Sunday. Despite his works being rarely published outside Japan (only 2 volumes of the short stories compilation Short Program are out in the US), Adachi remains one of the most well-known and appreciated authors in his country of origin, having been described as "the greatest pure storyteller" and "a master manga-ka".


The baseball/romance themed Cross Game began its serialisation on May 11th, 2005, in the 22/23 issue of Weekly Shounen Sunday. As of August 2009 the series has been compiled in 15 volumes and is still on-going. Adachi received the 2009 Shogakukan Manga Award for shounen manga for it.

Cross Game tells the story of Kitamura Kou and his relationship with the four Tsukishima sisters — Ichijou, Wakaba, Aoba and Momiji. Part 1 of the story (the prologue), Wakaba's Season, centers around Kou in elementary school. He and Wakaba were born the same day in the same hospital and have been extremely close ever since. So much that they're treated as boyfriend and girlfriend by everyone. Aoba (one year younger and a baseball enthusiast and player) believes Kou is taking her sister away from her and thus claims to hate him.

Wakaba also sees the amazing potential Kou has, pushing him to become a baseball player and sharing her dream with him about one day making it to the Koshien. Wakaba tragically won't get to see her dream come true, though.

Four years later in Part 2, Aoba's Season, Kou is in his third year of junior high and slowly trying to make that dream a reality. Aoba has become a remarkable baseball player on her own, regardless of her sex not allowing her to play in official games. As time goes by, Kou and Aoba grow closer, despite her reluctance and the shadow of Wakaba's death over them.

Part 3 (untitled) continues the story during the summer of Kou's third year of high school. Several people have entered the scene affecting relationships and characters in numerous ways.

On April 5th 2009 a Cross Game anime produced by SynergySP began its broadcasting on the TV Tokyo network. It's directed by Sekita Osamu, with character designs by Kondou Yuuji and music by Nakagawa Kotaro (Planetes and Code Geass). In the series, Kou is voiced by Irino Miyu (Eyeshield 21 and D·N·Angel) and Aoba is voiced by Tomatsu Haruka (CANAAN and Kannagi). Having had an extremely good reception overall (even outside of Japan), the series is scheduled to be 51 episodes long and cover the whole manga, which is expected to end soon.