The first sixty or so chapters are a monument to boredom. One slice of white bread and another slice of white bread compete to see which one of them is the more perfectly flawless gift to humanity. Kazuya has a twin, but he doesn’t do anything. Characters like Harada seem to pop into existence whenever the plot demands it. Who knows if a plot exists. The love triangle progresses with excruciating slowness. There’s a load of two-dimensional, one-off thuggish villains thrown in for the sake of having something happen. There isn’t a whole lot of baseball. And then Kazuya dies. And then the story really startsafter all that set-up, with most of it being in excess to the rest of it. A new rival shows up to reinstate the love triangle, and Minami and Tatsuya’s relationship resets. They have no chemistry together. Minami is dull.

Tatsuya’s been forced to play the role of his dead twin brother. His honesty in expressing his unwillingness to conform, and him sacrificing who he is for the sake of others is selfless and even heroic. The situation lends a lot of depth and richness to the straightforward story.

Watching Tatsuya’s transformation is the main reason to keep reading. Characters still pop into existence without any foreshadowing. None of the matches are particularly memorable. Akio and his sister are stereotypes. The conflict they make is artificial. There’s also a villain, and his development is trite and predictable. Other developments happen, and have a similar quality, where they’re ham-fisted, and contrived. But the manga manages to make it work.

It works because Tatsuya is someone worth rooting for: for who he is, who he wants to be, and what he wants to achieve. The ending closes this out perfectly. Tatsuya defies the expectations of everyone, even the reader. It’s something you have to see.