One short History about me and this series. I'm Iustin, five years ago I did make a review on the manga cross game that I read and I quite like it with a simple review. In that time I was like maybe if I saw the anime i would have a more positive opinion on this series but the oppurtunity never rised, at least until a week ago when I said "Hey let's just watch Cross game since i quite like the manga and the other anime by Mitsuru Adachi(I'm speaking about Touch and Mix series)". So now i can start the review.

Let's just jump into the title of the review thx of the manga i already did know what happened and what should happen in the story but damn it still hits hard so hard in fact(I think that's probably since i am more an emotionally person). A part of my opinion has kinda change since i am 5 years older from the previous review of this series.

Story
I think this is the part when I say yeah it isn't anything special after all is just a romcom anime with sport and tragedy in the story but guess what you are wrong. The story is simple since is a slice of life but the other aspects way harder and beautifull than you can expect from this anime. The one thing that i really liked back when i readed the manga were characters, the realation between them and how well they are put in the story even if i did not like baseball then (not a big fan of sports genre but guess what i did enjoy after all in the manga and anime too.) The only difference is that right now i can enjoy more of baseball (mainly because of a certain other series but mainly because now i am starting to get the appeal of how implied is this series with this sports). The anime and manga can be fully watched and readed by a person who doesn't even like the baseball aspects and still like in the end mainly because this series has more to give than you can find it.

Spoiler, click to view

The death of Wakaba was still an great impact for me, and for characters too since for Kou was one of the biggest love in his life and for Aoba was the best friend and sister that she loved so much. The story makes a good point about the introduction cuz in part 2 we can see the aftermath of Aoba and Kou dealing with her loss in various way and how they did understand each other.

Part 2
There is a certain character that appear on this part

Spoiler, click to view

And yeah I'm talking about Akane. She is one of the stepping stone in the story for many kou and Aoba relationship mainly because Akane looks exactly like Wakaba and that's why her role is sth more like a stepping stone into the future. I like how well her role is highlited in the series and how well she could comunicate with Kou and Aoba.

Characters
I wanted to jump at the part of the characters since i wanted to speak about Ko and Aoba and their relationship. Like i said in my other review their relationship is the centre of the manga and anime. The rivalary and love between them is really great. Like i pointed out in the review of manga, the relation between this characters are great: Azuma with Kou, Azuma with Aoba, Aoba with Wakaba, Kou with Wakaba, Junpei with Ichiyou, Akane with Wakaba, Akaishi with Kou and a lot more the fact that this whole cast is great and their relationships are great is good to see. Mizuki, I still did not like him he was annoying in the anime too, but at least he got a nice conclusion. Senda was annoying too but he was more like a punch character for the comic relief.
My favourite characters in this series is still Kou. Aoba takes number 2 for being a good energy for our main character. Aoba is a tsundere and probably the character that has the most simalirity with our main. A lot of build up and comic moments are based just because they think the same way or because they think of each other which is an aspect that i love so much. For example in

Spoiler, click to view

the manga and anime was a dialogue of Aoba drinking expired milk and after some panels, minutes we see another dialogue of Aoba and Azuma disscusing that Kou was in the bathroom cuz he drinked expired milk.

Animation
I guess I am not one to say very much of animation since I can like an anime even if the animation is bad. Luckily in Cross game the animation is great is not some huge bomb animation or fluid animation like in other anime but i don't think that needs to be in that way to captivate my attention or other watchers. The anime did adapt all the manga and i like how they did. I like how they did pull up the color pages in frames for transition in the episodes i enjoyed watching them again.

Sounds
The opening hands up is great. You can feel the nostalgic vibe of this series from the opening alone and that's fantastic imo.

▶ The endings are nice too since i liked to hear them after every episodes.

The enjoyment
Since is like revisiting the story in another format for me it was a great experience since i could see the confruntation between my opinion of this series 5 years ago and my opinion about this series now. Is funny how i just said i will watch slow this anime and i finished to binge this anime just because the episodes made me entartained and really interested watching more even if i did already know the conclusion and some parts of the series. I think i will reread the manga in the future but idk how many years will pass until then but i am glad that i finally watched this anime.

Overall
This series got me again and I started to love more than i did so i think my score will be obviously just from my coments alone. I'm srry that my reviews aren't as thorough as other reviews(Mainly because I'm a simple person that enjoys many things and isn't very good at expressing his opinion)
My final score is 10/10 for the whole story.