Interest
Touch Voice Actress Appears in Mix Manga Commercial
posted on by Lynzee Loveridge
Voice actress Noriko Hidaka might be better known to modern fans as the voice of the Dominator in Psycho-Pass, Kikyo in Inuyasha, and Near in Death Note, but prior to those roles she starred as Minami Asakura in the anime adaptation of Mitsuru Adachi's Touch baseball manga. The character could well be considered her breakout role when she was cast in 1985 and one she would to reprise in specials as late as 2001.
Meanwhile, Adachi has kept up his love of sports manga. His current series is Mix, one of this year's top-selling manga and like Touch, is about a pair of baseball-playing brothers. In fact, Mix is a spin-off taking place nearly 30 years after the events of Touch. Main character Tatsuya Uesugi is appearing in a cameo in Mix's 11th volume.
Monthly Shonen Sunday began streaming a commercial for the volume on Sunday. Hidaka appears in the commercial reading volume 11 in the "Andes" coffee shop in Tokyo, the same one that was used as a model for the coffee shop in the Touch manga, "Minamikaze." The manga counterpart was run by character Minami Asakura's father. A shelf to the left of Hidaka is stacked with copies of Monthly Shonen Sunday magazine and a shikishi board featuring none other than Minami Asakura drawn by Adachi.
In the commercial, Hidaka wonders aloud where Minami is in the volume.
Adachi also drew Cross Game from 2005 to 2010 in Weekly Shonen Sunday. Viz Media began releasing the Cross Game manga in North America in 2010. The Cross Game manga inspired a television anime series that ran from 2009 to 2010, and Viz streamed the anime.
[Via Nijimen]
