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Baseball Manga Major 2nd & Mix Celebrate 'Battery Day' With Anime Ad, Crossover Art
posted on by Egan Loo
Shogakukan's Web Sunday site began streaming an anime commercial for Takuya Mitsuda's Major 2nd sequel baseball manga on Saturday. The commercial promotes the manga's third compiled book volume which is going on sale on the same day. The commercial stars Mutsumi Tamura as Daigo Shigeno and Yūma Uchida as Hikaru Satō.
The eighth volume of another Shogakukan baseball manga, Mitsuru Adachi's Mix, also went on sale on Saturday. Saturday, December 12 is the day that Japanese baseball fans celebrate as "Battery Day," since 12/12 symbolizes the two arguably most important positions on a team, the pitcher and catcher (also known as the battery).
To celebrate both Battery Day and Shogakukan's two baseball manga shipping volumes on the same day, Adachi and Mitsuda drew a crossover illustration featuring Mix's pitcher Tōma Tachibana and Major 2nd's catcher Daigo Shigeno. The same art appears in full-page ads in the Yomiuri Shimbun, Sports Nippon, and Sports Hochi newspapers. The magazine is also offering 100 original Quo cards and 100 mini artboards to readers of Gessan and Weekly Shonen Sunday magazines in a random drawing.
Mitsuda launched the manga in Weekly Shonen Sunday on March 11 as the first new installment in the manga series in five years. The manga has over 1.5 million copies in print.
Mitsuda serialized Major in Weekly Shonen Sunday from 1994 until 2010. Shogakukan published 78 compiled book volumes for the series, which had 53 million copies in print.
The manga inspired its first television anime series in 2004, and the sixth television anime series ran in 2010. The manga also inspired an anime film titled Major: Yūjō no Winning Shot in 2008.
Source: Comic Natalie
