"help me make the / most of freedom and of pleasure / nothing ever lasts forever"

Ahhh, binge done. Yup, Cross Game is still a good series -- and the final two volumes (the original final four) are especially powerful, with Adachi bringing to bear the emotional weight of everything that has come before, using reminders and reverberations and small flashbacks that add more to Ko and Aoba's emotional arcs. The final panel nails it -- we don't need anything more than that they are still holding hands -- it tells us all there is to know about where they are now. "Can I lie?"

And let it be said, Viz has done a decent job with this. I can only hope it is selling well enough to bring Rough or Touch over. (H2 may be too much to expect.)

Now I want to rewatch the anime, which is faithful to the story but adds material (hinted at in the manga) to develop Aoba's character without distorting the emotional arc Adachi wrote.

---L.