Touch (manga)

"Our family, the Uesugis, and our next-door neighbors, the Asakuras, had three kids born in the same year. This cute kid is Uesugi Tatsuya. that's me. This is my younger brother, Kazuya. We're twins. and this is our neighbor, Minami. We've always been good friends...but one day we noticed that one of us was a girl..."

A baseball/romance/SliceOfLife Manga by Mitsuru Adachi, which follows the lives of twins Tatsuya and Kazuya Uesugi and their neighbor Minami Asakura, as they experience triumph and tragedy both on and off the baseball field.

Tatsuya, the elder twin, is a lazy, perverted kid with no apparent ambitions or goals in his life. Younger twin Kazuya, on the other hand, is mature, intelligent, and a brilliant athlete, from whom everyone expects wonderful things. Their neighbor, Minami, is a bright and spirited girl, whom both brothers have known and loved their whole lives. Everyone believes that Kazuya and Minami would make a perfect couple, and that they're destined for each other - too bad he's not the one she's in love with. .

The Anime adaptation, which ran for 101 episodes, set viewership ratings records when it first aired in the 1980s.


 * The Ace: Kazuya Uesugi is kind, polite, hard-working, a sports star, makes good grades, and is popular with girls. Akio Nitta is cut from the same mold. Minami Asakura seems to be a female version.
 * Adaptation Expansion: As might be expected from turning a 26-volume manga into a 101-episode TV series, three theatrical movies and two TV-movies.
 * Be Yourself: Tatsuya eventually learns to step out of his younger twin brother's shadow,
 * Bratty Half-Pint: Yuka Nitta.
 * Brilliant but Lazy: Tatsuya, at the start.
 * Cannot Spit It Out: Yes.
 * Cool Big Sis: Sachiko Nishio.
 * Dogged Nice Guy: Sasaki to Yuka Nitta. He even changes schools and joins the baseball team in spite of a lack of talent just to be around her.
 * Don't You Dare Pity Me!: On top of everything that's gone wrong in life,
 * Drill Sergeant Nasty: Coach Kashiwaba.
 * Flashback Effects: In the anime, flashbacks to childhood have backgrounds done in the style of a child's crayon drawings.
 * Friendly Enemy: Akio Nitta.
 * Gecko Ending: Just barely, and there's nothing all that different.
 * Happily Married: Shingo and Haruko Uesugi.
 * Hard Work Hardly Works: Averted in Tatsuya's case. Although he is an amazing natural athlete, even better than Kazuya, years without exercising or practicing mean that he has to train hard to even come close to his brother's standard, let alone surpass him.
 * Hidden Eyes
 * Image Song
 * I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: All Tatsuya wants is for he, Kazuya and Minami to be happy together, even if it means letting Kazuya have Minami.
 * Jerkass: Coach Kashiwaba.
 * The Lancer: Koutarou Matsudaira, arguably Shohei Harada.
 * Lethal Chef: After  Yuka Nitta's cooking is like this, due to being too exotic. she eventually tones it down.
 * Mega Manning: Takeshi Yoshida is able to learn how to imitate a person's pitches perfectly just by watching them.
 * Mistaken Identity:
 * Names to Know in Anime: Yuji Mitsuya (Tatsuya), Noriko Hidaka (Minami), Shigeru Chiba (Shingo Uesugi), Kazuhiko Inoue (Akio), Mina Tominaga (Yuka), Ryusei Nakao (Nishimura), Hideyuki Tanaka (Kashiwaba), Yoku Shioya and Ryo Horikawa (Kashiwaba), Hiromi Tsuru (Sachiko), Kaneto Shiozawa (Kuroki)
 * Obfuscating Stupidity: Tatsuya doesn't even want to bother trying to compete with his brother in any respect, so he hides his own considerable talents under a bushel and gives the impression that he has no ambition in life.
 * Offscreen Moment of Awesome:
 * Painting the Fourth Wall: A fairly common trope in Adachi's works.
 * Panty Shot: Another common Adachi trope.
 * Pet the Dog: Kashiwaba never even touches the poor thing on-panel, but still...
 * The Rival: Akio Nitta to Kazuya Uesugi, Isumi Nishimura to Nitta (One-sided),
 * Romantic False Lead: Yuka Nitta would like to be this, but Tatsuya ain't biting.
 * Scary Asian Man: Shohei Harada. He's actually an uncommonly perceptive and wise Gentle Giant however.
 * Shipper on Deck: the twins's parents and Miami's dad really wanto Kazuya to marry Minami...
 * Sibling Triangle
 * Sibling Yin-Yang: Deliberate on Tatsuya's part.
 * The Spartan Way: Coach Kashiwaba's training methods are cruel and even outright criminal.
 * Speech-Impaired Animal: "Punch" the dog, though technically the closest thing he does to speech is snickering.
 * Triang Relations: Type 9. Both Tatsuya and Kazuya are in love with Minami, who loves both of them in return.
 * Twin Switch: Tatsuya often pretends to be Kazuya for laughs.
 * Well, Excuse Me, Princess!: Tatsuya and Minami's relationship starts out this way. She treats him somewhat harshly because she knows he's being lazy and immature on purpose.
 * Wham! Episode: Guess.
 * Wide-Eyed Idealist: Takeshi Yoshida starts this way,
 * The Spartan Way: Coach Kashiwaba's training methods are cruel and even outright criminal.
 * Speech-Impaired Animal: "Punch" the dog, though technically the closest thing he does to speech is snickering.
 * Triang Relations: Type 9. Both Tatsuya and Kazuya are in love with Minami, who loves both of them in return.
 * Twin Switch: Tatsuya often pretends to be Kazuya for laughs.
 * Well, Excuse Me, Princess!: Tatsuya and Minami's relationship starts out this way. She treats him somewhat harshly because she knows he's being lazy and immature on purpose.
 * Wham! Episode: Guess.
 * Wide-Eyed Idealist: Takeshi Yoshida starts this way,
 * Wide-Eyed Idealist: Takeshi Yoshida starts this way,