Do all sports manga about scrappy kids from tiny teams in the middle of nowhere start the same? It can certainly feel like it at times, and you could be forgiven for thinking that Ace of the Diamond is just Ao Ashi with baseball instead of soccer or [insert name here] with baseball instead of [sport]. But there's a reason why this is the case: the primary goal of a good sports manga, in my opinion, is to set up a group of underdogs with the odds stacked against them in one way or another. The story needs to be equally about the protagonist and the sport, and their relationship to one another works best if, despite enormous talent, they still need to learn some things from the ground up. Oftentimes, that lesson involves working with a team just as much as it does understanding what they don't know about their game.

Ace of the Diamond gives us Eijun Sawamura, a plucky young teen from a rural area of Japan. Eijun, like Haikyu!!'s Hinata, has been dominating with a cobbled-together team formed purely because of his love of the sport. He has no real experience playing with a strict, firmly coached group in a highly competitive arena, and while he dreams of Koshien (Japan's premier high school baseball tournament), a lot of that comes from his sheer love of the game. That's why, although he's upset when a fight during a game costs him a bunch of high school offers, he's still willing to just stick it out with his middle school team – even, at first, when an offer from prestigious Seido High School in Tokyo comes along.

Obviously, Eijun takes the offer with some not-so-gentle physical persuasion from his badass family. (“Thuggish” could also be used, depending on your opinion of them, though they're clearly meant to be funny.) And everything changes once he sets foot on Seido's field as a bona fide high school student – because suddenly, he's not the big fish in a small pond anymore. Now he's just one of many talented (and better trained) pitchers, and his success is by no means guaranteed, especially since he doesn't have the formal experience most of his teammates have had for years. Eijun is a classic underdog, and the whole of Seido's baseball team – varsity and JV – are his heels.

If there's one thing that shines through in these first five volumes, it's how much creator Yūji Terajima loves baseball. Eijun is his mouthpiece in this as he strives to learn and become a better player, but in the brief afterwords in each chapter, Terajima waxes eloquent about his own high school baseball days and how he feels like he's reformed a connection with his past self through this series.

Despite this, these volumes don't slip into rosy nostalgia; Eijun's struggles are real, and he only overcomes them through sheer grit and hard work. In fact, nobody on the team, not even the most vaunted third years or innately talented younger students, just coasts by. Furuya, the first year set up as Eijun's rival, has tunnel vision and isn't necessarily great at being a team player. Chris, a third-year catcher, is coping with his father's overwhelming pressure as a former pro and an injury that has sidelined him for a year. Haruichi is constantly underestimated and overlooked, despite his immense talent, and just as frequently compared to his skilled older brother. And of course, as is de rigeur in these stories, all of the adults have no business being anywhere near children, much less coaching them.

The main focus of these opening books is getting Eijun established at Seido and moving him from “the kid who doesn't get to play at all” to “member of the varsity team.” Despite this, the strongest storylines actually belong to Chris, with whom Eijun forms a battery. While Eijun would prefer to form a battery with second-year Kazuya, Chris is instrumental in his growth as both a player and a person. Unlike most of the other characters in the story, Chris is quiet and measured, holding his emotions in check and working calmly with the brash Eijun. It's not that he doesn't feel things deeply or resent his injury; he just keeps all of that private and uses it to fuel his relationships with others. Chris believes in Eijun's talent and pitching, but he also knows what the younger boy needs to grow, and that's a steady hand to guide him. He's kinder than the coaches, but not a pushover, and it's Chris who really helps to bring out Eijun's abilities, which in turn is something that helps him to deal with his own issues. Chris loves playing baseball just as much as everyone else, but he's also mature enough to understand that there's more to life than high school ball. Still, despite this maturity, Terajima also shows us that Chris is still a teenage boy as the volumes go on, making him feel like the most well-rounded character in this set of books.

These first five volumes are clearly just the beginning of the story. Even if you aren't aware of the sheer number of books it runs to (forty-seven in the first series alone), it's plain from the character work and pacing that this is going into exhaustive detail. It's not quite as immediately gripping as some other sports titles, but there's a good sense of movement to the art, particularly in the lower bodies, and it's easy to root for the boys being set up as the primary protagonists. Ace of the Diamond feels like it's going to be worth it for the long haul, and I'm looking forward to watching the characters grow.