Absan Review: The Slugger Who Made a Career Out of Not Being the Best
by Shinji Mizushima
Read the first volume. If it doesn't hook you, put it down. It'll hook you.
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What if the most honest baseball manga wasn't about winning the championship but about still being on the team at 45?
Quick Take
- One of the longest baseball manga ever — 107 volumes, spanning decades of real Fukuoka Hawks history
- Absan is not a prodigy or a hero; he's a career professional who became essential without becoming famous
- The sake is not a character flaw — it's who he is, and the manga respects that completely
Who Is This Manga For?
- Baseball fans who want a manga that treats the sport with the complexity of a career, not just a season
- Readers interested in long-form sports manga that tracks aging and change over time
- Anyone who finds the "not the star but still here" story more interesting than the chosen-one narrative
- Fans of Shinji Mizushima's work on Dokaben and other baseball manga
Content Warnings & Age Rating
Age Rating: T (Teen) Content Warnings: Alcohol themes — sake is a significant part of the protagonist's character. Baseball. Adult life themes including aging and career longevity.
Suitable for teen readers and above.
Yu's Rating
| Category | Score |
|---|---|
| Story Depth | ★★★★☆ |
| Art Style | ★★★★☆ |
| Character Development | ★★★★★ |
| Accessibility for Non-Japanese Readers | ★★★☆☆ |
| Reread Value | ★★★★☆ |
Story Overview
Kageura Kazuyoshi — nicknamed "Absan" — is a professional baseball player for the Fukuoka Hawks. He is a pinch-hitter specialist with genuine home run power and a relationship with sake that is neither condemned nor celebrated by the manga — it simply is.
The series ran from 1973 to 2014, covering more than four decades and tracking Absan's career through real historical periods of the Hawks organization. He ages. His role on the team changes. Teammates come and go. The game itself evolves around him.
What makes Absan distinctive in the sports manga genre is the refusal to structure itself around championships and defining moments. Some seasons are won. Some are lost. Absan hits home runs in some games and strikes out in others. The continuity of a professional career — its ordinary rhythms interrupted by occasional extraordinary moments — is the subject matter.
Characters
Absan: A protagonist whose defining quality is consistency. He is the same person in volume 107 as he is in volume 1 — which is either the point or the limitation, depending on what you want from manga protagonists.
His teammates and opponents: The Hawks roster changes over four decades, and Mizushima uses real players and real eras as the backdrop, giving the series a specificity that general sports manga lacks.
Art Style
Mizushima's art is warm and detailed — the baseball action is drawn with the authority of someone who deeply understands the sport, and the quieter scenes (Absan at a sake bar, Absan watching younger players) have the same careful attention.
Cultural Context
Absan ran in Big Comic Original from 1973 to 2014. It is one of the longest-running manga in Japanese publishing history, and its longevity is inseparable from its subject — a career player who endured. The manga is closely tied to the real history of the Fukuoka (later SoftBank) Hawks organization, incorporating real players, coaches, and seasons into its narrative.
What I Love About It
I love that the sake is never resolved.
In most sports manga, a protagonist's personal habit — especially one like heavy drinking — would be a character flaw to overcome, a story arc to resolve. In Absan, it's just part of who he is. He drinks. He also hits home runs. The manga holds both without requiring one to cancel the other.
This is rarer than it sounds in Japanese manga. The refusal to moralize about a character trait that the genre would normally treat as a problem is a form of respect for the character's wholeness.
What English-Speaking Fans Say
Not known in English-speaking markets. Among Japanese sports manga readers, Absan is recognized as one of the great long-form achievements of the baseball manga genre — a work whose meaning accumulates over decades rather than building to a climactic moment.
Memorable Scene ⚠️ Spoiler Warning
A late-career scene where Absan, now older than most of his teammates, hits a home run in a situation that should be insignificant — a mid-season game, no stakes, no audience record. But the teammates watching from the dugout understand what it means for him to still be able to do this. The scene doesn't editorialize. It trusts the reader to understand.
Similar Manga
| Title | Its Approach | How Absan Differs |
|---|---|---|
| Dokaben | High school baseball with tournament structure | Professional career manga spanning decades |
| Major | Hero's journey from childhood to professional play | Career player who was never the hero but stayed |
| Touch | Romance and baseball with emotional peaks | Baseball as career continuity, no romantic center |
Reading Order / Where to Start
Volume 1. The series rewards reading in order because its meaning is cumulative — the later volumes are richer for knowing where Absan started.
Official English Translation Status
Absan has no official English translation.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- One of the most complete portraits of a professional sports career in any medium
- The refusal to moralize about Absan's sake habit is genuinely unusual
- Mizushima's baseball knowledge gives every game scene authority
- The long form pays off — 107 volumes of earned character depth
Cons
- No English translation
- 107 volumes is a significant commitment
- The low-stakes structure may frustrate readers wanting dramatic peaks
- Cultural specificity of the Hawks history may be opaque to non-Japanese readers
Is Absan Worth Reading?
For baseball fans and long-form manga readers, yes — this is one of the definitive career-length sports narratives, and its patience with its protagonist is something the genre rarely achieves. For readers wanting dramatic climaxes or short commitments, this is the wrong place to look. But for those willing to follow a career from beginning to end, it's extraordinary.
Format Comparison
| Format | Notes |
|---|---|
| Physical | Japanese editions available |
| Digital | Available in Japanese |
| Omnibus | Selected collected editions available |
Where to Buy
No English release yet. That just means you find it before everyone else does.
*Affiliate link — I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
Written by
Yu
Manga Enthusiast from Japan
I grew up in Japan and manga literally saved me during a tough time in elementary school. My English isn't perfect, but my love for manga is real — and I want to share it with you.