オール・ザ・マーブルズ！(1-3) – February 8, 2026 This is All the Marbles, a Beam catchup series which I could tell going in was a cool stylish baseball manga, and… yep! Specifically it turns out it’s a series about women’s baseball (not softball), and it follows two characters named Megumi (with different kanji), one a pitching prodigy and one a strong batter. I’m no sports manga buff, but I do get the impression that a major component of the genre is how kickass and stylized you can draw the act of doing the sport itself, and on that level All the Marbles definitely delivers, with a unique(-feeling to me) sort of – lanky and fluid take on especially depicting pitching. It looks really neat! The story works well too, although I honestly wouldn’t mind if it were a bit more like, (what I’m picturing as) straightforward shonen-y sports manga-ish, as I would say it’s more… airy than that, in a way where it’s not single-mindedly focused on building up big climactic sports drama (but also big climactic sports drama is fun and I wouldn’t mind if the moments of that were more directly intense in that way). Like despite the name of the series suggesting winning is really really really important to them,
although those sequences are exciting I would say the overall drama of like, wanting to find a future in women’s baseball, uncertainty the characters will be able to, and wanting to prove the sport in front of the world – that’s more the main thing that the series about I would say. Mostly in a good way! Since that’s a complex and interesting theme. I don’t always find the characters and moment-to-moment interactions super legible? The pitching Megumi is an interesting character since she seems to be hot/cold at different times and is also very single-minded about being dedicated to pitching. The other Megumi feels moooostly like sort of a straight man foil to her (and I didn’t really track anyone else on the team). (For what it’s worth also I do not get any gay vibes from the series – although it’s possible another reader would more. That would be another angle that could provide that bit of more like… straightforward ooey-gooey drama that would maybe take the series to the next level to me). Very cool series – didn’t quite hook me in this chunk into being over the moon for it. But it’s also possible I just wasn’t in a good enough mood when I did happen to finish reading these volumes. And it’s always possible further chapters in the magazine will hit me harder.
