Hmm.. Tacchan did you know?
Minami: Take a look at this Tacchan. There's plenty of things here that you should read.
Tatsuya: And what kind of stuff would that be? It's not those damn Alegbra problems are they?
Minami: No no! It's about Touch! You know that manga/anime from the 80's?
Tatsuya: Teh.. I'm too young to remember that.
Ok... Ok... Tacchan's denying his age. But Minami is right. Here are some interesting facts about Touch both from the anime and the manga.
Fun Fact #1: The Touch manga first came out in 1981 and spanned 26 volumes. In 1994, it was compiled/compacted to 11 Wide Ban Volumes. Because of it's many compilations... Touch was the manga that helped Adachi Mitsuru become one of the top manga-ka. Selling over one hundred million manga copies of his works. Only a very few have achieved this feat.
Fun Fact #2: Touch was very popular in Japan and in Europe. During its lifespan in the anime world which started in 1985, Over 30% of the Japanese population were glued to their TV screens. Just to compare, another one of my favorite shows,
Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou only had an 12.5% average with the viewing audience. And
Sailormoon's highest ever rating were around 11%. *_* Touch is great! Even
Miss Lonely Yesterday which came out in 1998, recieved a viewing audience of 25.5%. So I guess you can say that Touch never lost its "touch"
Cindy: I know I know... ^^'
Fun Fact #3: Touch was voted #51 by Animage (a leading Japanese anime mangazine) as one of the top 100 anime of the century.
Fun Fact #4: The manga was voted #30 by the Japanese public as one of top 50 manga of all time.
Fun Fact #5: Going back to the one hundred million thing, although Adachi has over 15 other amazing works to his belt, by 1990, the Touch manga alone sold that many copies. WOW! How come it's not popular here in the US? Waahh... we are so deprived.
Fun Fact #6: In 1983, Adachi won Shogakukan's Manga award. Shogakukan, like Kondasha is one of the largest publishers in Japan. They publish mostly shounen based stories.
Fun Fact #7: In July 2002, The Japanese viewers of the show,
Japanese Kore ga Nihon no Best 100 voted Minami as #7 and Tatsuya as #84 as one of the top 100 anime characters of all time. That previous month Touch was voted #19 as one of the top 100 anime of all time by the TV viewers. That cool! Here's the
link
Fun Fact #8: In almost every Adachi work, there is always a dog named Punch (he even mentions this in Katsu and his other works)
Fun Fact #9: Did you know that
Touch makes an appearance in another 80's anime classic? In the first
Kimagure Orange Road movie, titled, "I Want To Return To That Day," Kyosuke and the always beautiful Ayukawa Madoka (I have to say that because she really is so very pretty ^_^) went to see the first Touch movie,
Ace Without A Number. How cool is that? On that note, Madoka's seiyuu Tsuru Hiromi was also in that same Touch movie, playing Kojima-sensei, the manager of the baseball team. The scene was when Kazuya and Mimami were discussing their relationship in the study room. Incidentally enough, Kazuya's seiyuu, Nanba Keichii plays Komatsu in KOR.
