Retro time! Touch is a 101-episode sports-drama anime based on the manga of the same name by Adachi Mitsuru. It also spawned three feature films, two TV specials and several live action versions in addition to the anime since its incarnation in 1981. Famous 80s j-pop star Iwasaki Yoshimi performed most of the openings and endings for the show, the first of which was recently covered by Bleach ending artist Younha.

The story of Touch revolves around twin brothers Kazuya and Tatsuya, and their childhood friend Minami. It’s generally accepted that Kazuya, a handsome, personable, intelligent up-and-coming baseball star who dreams of going to Koushien, will eventually end up engaged to Minami, to his twin brother’s annoyance. Tatsuya, despite his own hidden talents, consistently steps back to allow Kazuya to take the limelight, but little by little he finds himself unwilling to give up so much for Kazuya, especially when it comes to Minami. When he starts reaching for his own place in the world, though, everyone is going to sit up and take notice!

Touch is considered to be one of the best sports animes out there, and continues to be spoken of some 25 years after its first publication. It has never been licensed for North American distribution (there are fansubs available, however), but it has been dubbed into French, Spanish and Italian at points.

If you’re going to give Touch a look, though, start with the beginning of the anime - the movies take place much later on in the series, I’ve been warned, and will spoil some major plot points. Otherwise, enjoy!

Amazingly popular anime Naruto has been in filler mode for over a year now. For those who don’t know, filler episodes are made-up stories by the anime production company (although there can be some short fillers made by the manga-ka themselves) to allow the manga storyline some buffer before animating it. This has been controversial in the past, because the quality of the filler storyline is quite often very poor. In the case of the Rurouni Kenshin filler, the popularity of the show decreased to the point where it was cancelled and the animating of the next arc never went ahead.

This Naruto filler has been painful for me. It’s generally a single episode story, maybe extending to three episode long arcs, and are usually very stupid, ie: the punchline is that Naruto farts at the wrong time.

So it’s a huge relief to hear that the filler will end this coming spring! The next arc in the manga will have Naruto two and a half years older - now aged 15! The characters have been redesigned to show their new ages and it’s looking very awesome. This new Naruto will be called “Naruto: Shippuuden” (Naruto: The Hurricane Chronicles) and accompanying it will be yet another animated movie, later this year. Yay!