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| Pictured from left to right: Tetsuya Chiba, Akio Chiba, & Shigeyuki Chiba/Taro Nami |
Tetsuya Chiba was the oldest son of the family, being born on January 11, 1939 in what is now the Chuo ward of Tokyo, Japan. After him came Kensuke Chiba, who has maintained a rather private life so there doesn't look to be any readily available information regarding his birth. All we can be sure of is that Kensuke was born sometime between 1939 & 1943, as on January 29, 1943 Akio Chiba was born as the third son in Fengtai, Manchukuo (what's now Shenyang, China), as the Chiba Family had left Japan via the Korean Peninsula in January 1941 & settled in Manchukuo during World War II. Finally, on October 23, 1944, Shigeyuki Chiba was born in Fengtai, & after WWII ended in 1945 the Chiba Family would later move to Huludao in 1946, where they'd eventually be repatriated back to Japan as part of the 1,000,000+ Japanese citizens who returned to the country. In the interim between the war's end & their repatriation, the family was helped by Xu Jichuan, a Chinese coworker of the Chiba patriarch who would hide the family in his attic from those who looked to harm Japanese people still living in China, with Tetsuya latering remarking that his common use of "Jo/Joe" in his manga was likely a subconscious homage to Xu's selfless assistance, since the kanji for Xu's name ("徐") could be read as "Jo" in Japanese.
It'd be Tetsuya that'd put he & his brothers on the path of manga, as a random chance encounter with a manga adaptation of 1,001 Nights by Shigeru Sugiura housed within a miniature book he found on the road made him interested in the medium, especially since he already like drawing, despite his parents not wanting their kids to be reading manga. Tetsuya was encouraged by an elementary school classmate of his named Gyouou Kiuchi (who'd later become a well respected Tiantai Buddhist monk), especially once Kiuchi created an early doujin group called Manga Club in 1950. At 16 Tetsuya saw an ad for a children's manga artist & applied to rental manga publisher Nisshokan Shoten, which was run by Kunimatsu Ishibashi, who showed Tetsuya how to use professional tools & asked him to draw something as a test. Tetsuya would hand in 20-30 pages of manga every month for three months, always being told to submit more, and after 128 pages that told a complete story Tetsuya was paid 12,351 yen for his work, which at the time was more than the starting salary of a college grad. That "test" would get published in June 1956 as Fukushu no Semushi Otoko/The Hunchback of Vengeance, marking Tetsuya Chiba's debut as a mangaka... at only the age of 17. Tetsuya would make some more rental manga & shojo one-shots before making his serialized debut with in 1958 with Odette-jou no Niji/The Rainbow at Odettte Castle over in Shueisha's Shojo Book & Mama's Violin over in Kodansha's Shojo Club, neither of which lasted long... especially Odette Castle, as Shojo Book deciding to alter the publication of that only two months in led to Chiba leaving the manga (it'd be finished by another artist) & signing a deal with Kodansha.
And this is where the legacy of the Chiba Brothers would truly begin.
Simply put, the 60s were almost entirely all about Tetsuya, though it's this early start that helped open the door for the next Chiba to step on through. After finishing Mama's Violin in 1959 Tetsuya would make two more short shojo manga before making his debut in shonen manga (& sports manga) over in Weekly Shonen Magazine at the start of 1961 with Chikai no Makyu/The Promised Magic Ball, which he drew while the story was written by Kazuya Fukumoto. The manga told the story of Hikaru Ninomiya, the ace pitcher of his high school's baseball team, and what made Chikai no Makyu important was that it's generally cited as being the first baseball manga to use the term "makyu", which was originally used to describe a simple curveball (& later other types of breaking balls) but with this manga would start to be associated with wild & magical pitches that would otherwise not be doable in real life; this wasn't the first baseball manga to feature a makyu, but it's the first to actually refer to them as "makyu".
Chikai no Makyu would end in late 1962 after a solid two-year run, usually collected within seven volumes, & while Fukumoto would continue to evolve the makyu with 1963's Kuroi Himitsu Heiki/The Black Secret Weapon, which was drawn by Daiji Kazumine, Tetsuya would make his next mark that same year with solo series Shiden Kai no Taka/The Hawk of the Shiden Kai. This was a WWII manga about Taro Takijo, a pilot of the titular Shiden (Kai) that the Imperial Japanese Navy used. By Tetsuya's own admission this was a series he was asked to make by his editors, due to manga about the war being popular, so he wasn't all that enthusiastic about it & he later called it a "dull & tragic" failure with an all-too serious lead. However, it still managed to run a solid 1.5 years, often being collected within four volumes, has continually received reprints over the decades, and Chiba (possibly unintentionally) adding his own feelings towards to the war near the end helped make it unique amongst the other WWII-themed manga being made at the time. While an anime adaptation never happened, Shiden Kai no Taka would receive a "Phono Manga" adaptation on flexi disc in 1964, technically making it the first ever adaptation of a Tetsuya Chiba manga, while in 2015 a drama CD adaptation would be produced to celebrate the 70th Anniversary of the end of World War II; even when he felt that he had "failed" Tetsuya Chiba still managed to make a celebrated manga.
However, arguably the first manga by Tetsuya that could be considered truly "iconic" would be 1965's Harris no Kaze/The Whirlwind of Harris, which told the story of Kunimatsu Ishida (an homage to Kunimatsu Ishibashi, who had to shut down Nisshokan Shoten shortly after publishing Tetsuya's first ever manga), a notorious delinquent of a school kid who keeps getting kicked out of every school he's enrolled in due to his penchant for getting into fights... though it's only troublemakers that he fights. In what would become true Chiba Brothers fashion, Kunimatsu would find a school "home" at Harris Academy, where'd he start channeling his penchant for fighting into playing sports instead, working as a Jack of All Trades-style reserve player for the various sports teams. The "Harris" of the title (& the name of the academy) was due to the manga being sponsored by confectionary company Kanebo Harris (now Kracie). Harris no Kaze would run until late 1967 & would become the very first manga that Kodansha ever released in tankouban form, being given the product code "KC1", where it'd total eight volumes. Harris no Kaze would also be the first Tetsuya Chiba manga to ever receive an anime adaptation, as from 1966 to 1967 a 70-episode black & white TV anime produced by P Production would air, & then from 1971 to 1972 Mushi Pro would produce a 46-episode color remake, renamed Kunimatsu-sama no Otoridai/Lord Kunimatsu Comin' Through due to the Harris license expiring. After finishing up Harris no Kaze, Tetsuya would then be teamed up with manga writer Ikki Kajiwara (under the pen name Asao Takamori) to make a boxing manga for Kodansha.
Yeah, that manga would be Ashita no Joe/Tomorrow's Joe, which ran from 1968 to 1973 across 20 volumes &, alongside Star of the Giants (which was also running in Weekly Magazine & written by Kajiwara), would not only redefine how sports manga would be made moving forward but also inspire & influence Japanese culture entirely, right down to an actual, real-life funeral being done after the death of a character. Joe's reach has gone so far that even references & homages made to other anime & manga by non-Japanese works can still have traces of Joe's influence, like Creed III's iconic Cross Counter shot officially being an homage to Naruto, but the reference itself actually dates back to the first Joe Yabuki vs. Toru Rikiishi fight. Everyone knows about Ashita no Joe & the long shadow that its impact has had on, well, everything (hell, I've already covered it across two anime reviews back in 2014), so how about we just leave it at that & finally move on to another Chiba sibling, OK? Trust me, we're only just getting started with this overview, and we'll return to Tetsuya in due time.
So, while Tetsuya was slowly establishing himself throughout the 60s, his second-youngest brother Akio would get his own start in manga as an assistant to him, something Akio would do until 1971; Akio was known for being handy with repairs, but had health problems so he switched to drawing. In the meantime, Akio would finally get his first published manga in 1967, at around the age of 24, with the one-shot Sabu & Chibi in Kodansha's Nakayoshi, before making his serialized debut in 1968 with Akane-chan & Sakura-chan with Kodansha, a companion piece made to go alongside the Akane-chan TV anime that was airing at the time, which itself was based on Tetsuya's 1966-1967 shojo manga Misokkasu (which would get renamed Akane-chan, to match with the anime). By this point Tetsuya had also mended fences with Shueisha, having serialized the short series Mosa in Shonen Jump in late 1969, and that's likely how Akio wound up making a variety of one-shots for Bessatsu Shonen Jump (which would later get renamed Monthly Shonen Jump in 1974) between 1971 & 1972; he'd also make a one-shot for Shogakukan's Bessatsu Shonen Sunday. However, in the February 1972 issue of Bessatsu/Monthly Jump Akio would debut his second ever serialization... and it'd be the manga that would define his entire career & legacy. Captain started off telling the story of Takao Taniguchi, a middle school kid who recently transferred from the prestigious Aoba Academy to the more standard Sumitani Junior High & wishes to join their baseball team, since he was a part of Aoba's. However, a misunderstanding results in the Sumitani players thinking that Taniguchi was a regular player for Aoba (when in reality he was only a reserve player), so now Taniguchi does his best to live up to their expectations, eventually becoming "Captain".
Unlike most baseball manga of the era, which relied heavily on the wild & unrealistic makyu that Tetsuya had helped establish back in the 60s, Akio decided to treat Captain realistically & focus more on the camaraderie that comes about by kids who simply play a game that they all love; this, in turn, would eventually become part of a new standard for baseball manga after the 70s. However, an interesting thing eventually happened in Captain: Taniguchi graduated to high school. When this happened Akio did something unique... & rather wild. In Issue #27 of 1973 of Weekly Shonen Jump the manga Play Ball debuted, which told the story of Taniguchi eventually joining Sumitani High's baseball team (he injured himself during his last game against Aoba, so he initially had no interest) & helping them go from a weak team a strong one. Meanwhile, Captain continued on in Monthly Jump to tell the story of Sumitani Junior High's baseball team, only now with Taniguchi's teammate Marui now acting as "Captain" (&, in turn, becoming the new main character). So throughout most of the 70s Akio Chiba made two baseball manga concurrently in Captain & Play Ball, with time advancing between them about as consistently as could be (considering one ran monthly & the other weekly), with Marui eventually also graduating from Captain & joining Taniguchi in Play Ball, & over time Captain would have four different main characters (Takao Taniguchi, Marui, Igarashi, & Shigekazu Kondo), with the end goal looking to eventually have all four "Captains" join together as part of an all-star high school baseball team.
Unfortunately, what originally started as a short-term series for Play Ball turned into a long-running & popular series in Weekly Jump, & when combined with the success of Captain in Monthly Jump it created an absolute grind that slowly chipped away at Akio's health. Eventually he was told by his doctor that he had to temporarily stop making manga for his own well being, so in Issue #31 of Weekly Jump in 1978 Play Ball came to an end after 201 weekly chapters & 22 volumes, while Captain would later end in the March 1979 issue of Monthly Jump & total 26 volumes, leaving both technically with more of the story to tell; Akio always intended to one day return to these two series, but we'll get that later. However, in 1980 an anime TV special based on Captain aired on NTV that was produced by Eiken, and it did so well that it got an expanded re-airing later that same year & then a theatrical showing in 1981. After the success of those a 26-episode TV anime adaptation of Captain debuted in 1983, turning the series into an all-time classic that has inspired numerous kids to take up baseball in Japan, with some even going pro. Easily the most notable of these cases would be the legendary Ichiro Suzuki, who later admitted that when he signed with the Orix BlueWave in 1992 he literally brought with him to the dorm a full VHS set of the Captain TV anime. Meanwhile, over 20 years later, Eiken & Magic Bus (which had helped produce the Captain anime) would debut a 26-episode TV anime adaptation of Play Ball that ran for two seasons in 2005 & 2006, showing the continued legacy of Akio's two baseball manga.
While Akio was debuting Captain & Play Ball over in Jump Tetsuya was still working on Ashita no Joe, which would finally come to its iconic end in mid-1973, the final page of which has been paid homage to & parodied to this very day. Just a couple of months later, though, Tetsuya would pull an Akio & follow up Joe with not one but TWO new manga! First, Issue #33 of Weekly Shonen Magazine in 1973 saw the debut of Ore wa Teppei/I Am Teppei, a kendo manga starring Teppei Uesugi, a wild child who was raised in the mountains by his treasure-hunting father but in reality is the third son of a prestigious family in Tokyo. Teppei is then enrolled into Ourin Academy, where his penchant for getting into fights transitions over nicely to kendo, but eventually his poor grades & bad behavior get him expelled, upon which he transfers over to Todaiji Academy to continue his kendo journey; in some ways this was essentially a spiritual successor to Harris no Kaze, only now with a single sport. Ore wa Teppei would go on to be another smash hit for Tetsuya, eventually running until 1980 & totaling 31 volumes, with Tetsuya admitting that he made Teppei a wild child to help inspire students who were busy going to cram school & had little time to have a life outside of school. Most notably, the manga would be discovered by Kazuhiko Torishima, who in 1976 reluctantly joined Shueisha as an editor & started reading shonen manga, & when he came across Ore wa Teppei he was floored by how easy it was to read, in terms of panel layouts & angles. Torishima would then use Ore wa Teppei as he default when helping train new artists when it came to panel layouts... and, well, Torishima would most notably later be Akira Toriyama's very first (& most influential) editor. There was also a TV anime adaptation of Ore wa Teppei by Nippon Animation & Shin-Ei Animation that ran from 1977 to 1978, but it surprisingly got low ratings & was cancelled after only 28 episodes.
Meanwhile, over in the August 1973 issue of Shogakukan's Big Comic Tetsuya debuted Notari Matsutaro/Matsutaro the Relaxed, a sumo manga starring Matsutaro Sakaguchi, a young man living in a small mining town in Nagasaki Prefecture who's immensely strong but has no sense of responsibility or smarts (he was notoriously held back in middle school for three years), instead caring only about himself. One day Matsutaro gets into a fight with a sumo wrestler who's on tour & gets beaten up, but Matsutaro chases after him & gets his revenge by beating up the sumotori at the venue he was competing in, all in front of his fellow rikishi. Seeing the potential, Matsutaro is offered the chance to join a variety of stables, and in the end he decides to go to Raijin Stable in Tokyo... solely because it's where his old middle school teacher Reiko Minami has recently moved to, and Matsutaro is madly in love with her (don't worry, there's only a five year difference between them). In the end, Notari Matsutaro was a manga about a sumotori who has all of the potential in him to become a yokozuna, but only seems to really put in true effort when there's prize money. However, much like how Joe Yabuki slowly grew from a no-good louse to a highly respected & influential man, Matsutaro would also slowly grow as a person over the course of the manga, eventually becoming a well respected sumotori & inspiring his friend & stablemate Kiyoshi Tanaka to also grow. Tetsuya would seemingly make Notari Matsutaro at his own pace over in Big Comic, running all the way until the June 1993 issue before going on hiatus, followed by a return from October 1995 to May 1998, eventually totaling 36 volumes; despite Matsutaro eventually marrying Reiko & entering semi-retirement, Tetsuya never claimed to have ended the series.
From 1990 to 1991 a 10-episode OVA adaptation of Notari Matsutaro would be produced by (the second) Mushi Pro, and then in 2014 a 23-episode TV anime adaptation titled Abarenbou Rikishi!! Matsutaro/Rowdy Sumo Wrestler Matsutaro!! was produced by Toei Animation, which featured actor Ken Matsudaira as Matsutaro; the anime's title was a reference to Abarenbou Shogun, the long-running jidaigeki series that Matsudaira starred in. I actually reviewed the 2014 anime back in the day, and my overall positive feelings towards it generally clashed with other critics, who hated the show from Episode 1 in large part due to how much of a louse Matsutaro can be; I mean, he literally steals candy from his own baby brother. However, that's really just kind of Tetsuya Chiba's thing, i.e. take an utterly unlikable person as the main character & show them grow & become better over time. After all, parents actually hated Ashita no Joe at first, as they felt that Joe Yabuki was a horrible role model due to his initial penchant for lying, cheating, & even literally using orphaned children to scam money out of people.
So you might be starting to wonder where Shigeyuki Chiba comes into any of this, and that's partially because Shigeyuki actually never used his real name professionally; also, he never actually drew manga. Instead, Shigeyuki would use the pen name "Taro Nami" (so I'll start referring to him under that name from here on out) & work as a manga writer, and though Ore wa Teppei initially only credited Tetsuya Chiba on its covers, later re-releases would start crediting Taro Nami for "Script Collaboration", while Notari Matsutaro's return in the mid-90s saw Nami help out there, as well. The same would be true for Tetsuya's next major work, which was his follow up to Ore wa Teppei after that finished. Debuting in Issue #43 of Weekly Shonen Magazine in 1981, Ashita Tenki ni Naare/Here's Hoping for Good Weather Tomorrow (named after a phrase used by kids when doing geta divination) was a golf manga that told the rise of Taiyo Mukai, a teenager who after graduating from junior high took a job at the local country club's driving range, as he dreams of becoming a pro golfer with guidance by Ryokoku, a retired pro. The manga is made up of various tournaments, & eventually sees Taiyo passing the pro test, becoming the youngest in history to do so, with the second half detailing Taiyo's pro career, eventually climaxing with the British Open at St. Andrews, Scotland. Tetsuya made a golf manga as he felt that there was a stigma at the time of it being only for adults, so he wanted to make a series that'd help get kids interested, as well as explain some of the unique terminology used with it, & he also admitted to having trouble at the start, since he had only made sports manga featuring some form of physical contact up to that point. Alongside the late Fujiko Fujio A's legendary Pro Golfer Saru, Ashita Tenki ni Naare is now seen as an iconic golf manga, one that would run until mid-1991 & total 58 volumes, becoming Tetsuya Chiba's longest manga of all time; it'd also see a TV anime adaptation done by Tsuchida Pro that ran from 1984 to 1985 for 47 episodes. However, despite the sheer length, it's never seemingly brought up anywhere near as often as most of Tetsuya's other biggest work, though it's remained a beloved classic by those who have read it.
As mentioned, Ashita Tenki ni Naare was another manga where Tetsuya Chiba was originally credited by himself, but in later releases Taro Nami was credited as a collaborator... so when was Nami's first "true" credit in manga? That'd happen in 1982, when Akio finally returned to manga after a three-year hiatus to recover his health after the double-grind of Captain & Play Ball; Nami was around the age of 38, so he was definitely the late manga bloomer of the family. Wanting something less strenuous, Akio teamed with his little brother to create his next Monthly Jump manga, Fushigi Toobo-kun/The Mysterious Toobo, which told the story of Toshio "Toobo" Tanaka, a young boy who had the ability to communicate with plants & animals, but struggled to speak with other humans, and the manga showed Toobo learning how to communicate with other people & using his abilities to help everyone. While Nami was only credited with "Original Concept", this does look to be the first manga he was credited on from the start, & it'd run for six volumes before ending in 1983. Akio & Nami would then team up again for Akio's next manga, Champ, which debuted in the April 1984 issue of Monthly Jump & told the story of Taichi Yatsuda, a boy who lives in a mountain village with his grandfather & one day sees a trio of pro boxers pay a visit to train. This then inspires Taichi to become a pro boxer after graduating from school. Unfortunately, Champ wouldn't last long... and not due to a lack of popularity.
On September 13, 1984 Akio Chiba was found dead in his studio, having hung himself from the second floor; he was only 41. Akio was known to have suffered from bipolar disorder in his later years, and it's entirely possible that Nami working with him on Fushigi Toobo-kun & Champ was probably his way of helping his older brother return to some sense of normality after years of not making any manga due to his health. Akio died while in the middle of drafting Chapter 8 of Champ, and in the end his former assistant on Captain & Play Ball Hiroshi Takahashi (not the creator of the Crows×Worst franchise, as he wouldn't debut until 1989) would finish Chapter 8 & get it published in the November 1984 issue of Monthly Jump, bringing an end to a career that, in some ways, was probably still nowhere near its prime; Champ would be collected in two volumes. Still, the impact Akio Chiba had already made via both Captain & Play Ball was undeniable, and the Chiba Family would continue to promote Akio's works whenever possible, so that his legacy would never be forgotten. Even manga writer Buronson, the co-creator of Fist of the North Star, credits Akio Chiba for much of his career, from simply looking after him when he lived in the same apartment building that Akio's studio was located in to keeping Buronson's ego in check once Doberman Cop became a smash hit in Weekly Jump during the 70s by saying that he'd been "acting uncool lately"; as Buronson said in 2013, "If not for those words from Akio-san, I might have faded away after producing just one hit." Today Akio's catalog of manga is managed by Akio Chiba Productions, which is run by his oldest son Ichiro.
With Akio gone, Tetsuya busy making both Ashita Tenki ni Naare & Notari Matsutaro, & Kensuke never really getting into the manga game himself (he apparently did try, but would wind up helping run the business side of things for Tetsuya), where would Nami move on from here? Well, this is the point where Taro Nami would truly start to make a name for himself as a writer, & in the May 1985 issue of Monthly Jump the soccer manga Eleven debuted, written by Nami & drawn by Hiroshi Takahashi, Akio's former assistant who had drawn the final chapter of Champ just half a year prior. The manga followed Shigeru Aoba, the son of a former member of the Japanese national football team who died in Brazil after a traffic accident & wished to see his son take up the sport. Similar to that of Captain Tsubasa over in Weekly Jump, Eleven showed Shigeru's rise, from high school to a world youth tournament to training in Brazil to playing for the National Cup, the J.League, an African league, & finally the World Cup, & like how Tsubasa Ozora had his iconic Drive Shot Shigeru had his own special move, the Burekyu/Blur Ball (which today is equivalent to the modern day knuckleball/no-spin shot). Monthly Jump was never really known for getting anime adaptations of its titles throughout its life from 1970 to 2007 (only 10, in total, & half of those were in the 00s alone), so it's completely understandable for even the most ardent fan of Shonen Jump to have never heard of Eleven... but this series would be the first of many long-running sports manga to be written by Taro Nami. How long was Eleven? It ran until the January 2000 issue (i.e. nearly 15 years) & totaled 43 volumes, becoming the second-longest manga in Monthly Jump's history, with only baseball gag manga Wataru ga Pyun! by Tsuyoshi Nakaima beating it with a 20-year run (1984-2004) totaling 58 volumes. For comparison, there are only 13 Weekly Jump manga that have tied or surpassed Eleven in total volume count, & only around five in year count. Following Eleven Takahashi would make the short-lived golf manga Tentsuku Ten with Nami for Monthly Jump before retiring from manga, but this is only the beginning of Taro Nami's career.
After all, unlike his brothers, Nami wasn't drawing the manga himself... so he could more easily handle writing multiple manga at the same time. So a little over a year after debuting Eleven in Monthly Jump, Nami would debut another sports manga, this time over at Akita Shoten, & in Issue #30 of 1986 Weekly Shonen Champion debuted 4P Tanaka-kun, with the art drawn by Sanbachi Kawa (the pen name for Keizo Tanaka), a former assistant of Tetsuya's who had already been making manga professionally since 1980; in fact, it was Kawa who asked Nami to team up with him. 4P Tanaka-kun was a baseball manga starring Kyuji Tanaka, a promising "once in a decade" baseball prodigy who earned himself a scholarship at Eiko Academy, a prestigious North Tokyo school with an amazing baseball team... but there's a problem: The wrong Kyuji Tanaka was given the scholarship. Yep, the Kyuji that got enrolled is actually a complete novice at baseball, but due to circumstances regarding the scholarship he can't simply be expelled (especially since he did nothing wrong), so instead Coach Yasojima of the baseball team decides to put Kyuji through grueling training so that he'll either quit or get injured, & therefore have an excuse to leave... but Kyuji not only perseveres through it all, but even manages to follow the advice of his teammates & show that he's actually a really good batter & pitcher. Therefore, Kyuji becomes the pitcher & cleanup hitter of his team, hence the "4P" of the title, i.e. "4[th at bat] & P[itcher]". With Nami's experience in telling engaging sports stories via his time with Tetsuya & Akio, as well as Kawa's own experience with baseball resulting in there being a lot of accurate science & technique, 4P Tanaka-kun would manage to be a notable success for Weekly Champion, which at the time was in a bit of a creative rut, & even managed to continue succeeding into the 90s, when the magazine eventually became known for its embracing of wild & crazy excess, running until Issue #24 of 1996 & totaling 51 volumes. 4P Tanaka-kun would also go on to be called a "Legendary Baseball Manga" & has been cited as a major influence for professional players like Munenori Kawasaki (who eventually made it to the MLB) & Daichi Osera (who competed at the 2018 MLB Japan All-Star Series).
While 4P Tanaka-kun would be Nami's second long-running sports manga, it also marked the start of a long partnership with Sanbachi Kawa, as while Nami would work with other artists on various manga he'd see his biggest & most consistent success with Kawa.
Speaking of which, here's another Nami+Kawa collaboration! Yep, while in the middle of making 4P Tanaka-kun, though admittedly during the latter half of it, Nami & Kawa would debut a second baseball manga, this time in the pages of Kodansha's Monthly Shonen Magazine, i.e. Nami wasn't in the same exact magazine as Tetsuya, but close. Debuting in the January 1991 issue, Kaze Hikaru/The Wind Shines (not to be confused with Taeko Watanabe's shojo manga that'd debut in 1997) focused on the Tamagawa High School baseball team, one that had in the past been a powerhouse competitor that made it all the way to Koshien at least once but now is known for often being eliminated in the first round. Currently on the team is Yutaka Nonaka, a substitute player with a meticulous mastery of mimicking other players, even pros, right down to practicing in front of a full-size mirror. When the team gets a new coach in Kimijima, a Tamagawa alum who went on to become a 3x Triple Crown winner in the Tokyo Big6, Yutaka's skills are quickly noticed & is promoted to ace pitcher & cleanup hitter, and he has the entire team essentially start over with basic training, because if they have any hopes of making it to Koshien then they'll have to work hard to make it happen. While Coach Kimijima is the person who inspires the team to aim for Koshien, it's actually Yutaka who helps the individual players the most, as his meticulous style helps him notice minor flaws in how his teammates play, and after addressing them every player improves massively. Kaze Hikaru is also notable for Sanbachi Kawa reusing a number of characters from 4P Tanaka-kun, but instead of being a shared world it's instead a "Star System" where they look the same but have different roles, like Tanaka's classmate Miki Yasojima now being Yutaka's older sister Minako.
As mentioned, there would later be another notable manga titled "Kaze Hikaru", though published by Shogakukan, so starting with Volume 28 in 2000 Nami & Kawa's manga was renamed slightly to Kaze Hikaru ~Koshien~, especially since the team finally made it to Koshien by that point, and some later re-releases of the manga even restarted the volume count at this point. Regardless, Kaze Hikaru would run until the April 2006 issue of Monthly Magazine & total 44 volumes, just surpassing Eleven in length. By this point you should have noticed that I haven't mentioned any anime adaptations for Taro Nami's various manga, and that's simply because (unlike his big brothers) there has never been an anime adaptation of a Taro Nami manga, despite his ability to write consistently long-running works; granted, if Shonen Champion was in a stronger place in the 80s I imagine 4P Tanaka-kun would have been animated. However, Kaze Hikaru would win the Kodansha Manga Award for Shonen in 1992, & as of 2021 had sold over 6.7 million copies, making it one of Nami's biggest successes; both Tetsuya & Akio have won awards for their work, so it makes sense that Nami would win one, too.
But enough about Taro Nami, what about Tetsuya Chiba?! Well, after multiple decades of work in the 50s, 60s, 70s, & even 80s, Tetsuya slowed down a good bit once the 90s hit, as alongside the continual run of Notari Matsutaro there would be only two new serializations from Tetsuya... and this included what would be his final manga for Weekly Shonen Magazine, the magazine where he made his shonen manga debut back in 1961 with Chikai no Makyu. In May of 1992 Tetsuya debuted Shonen yo, Racket wo Dake/Boy, Take Up Your Racket, which was a tennis manga starring Taishi Koga, a boy who transfers to prestigious sports school Futaba Academy so that he can join the boxing club, since he's obsessed with the sport... only to find that the boxing club is currently inactive. However, Taishi is recruited by the tennis club's Makoto Uno, mainly to stop the girls' tennis club from hogging the court, only for Taishi to challenge Makoto to a game... and he loses. However, Makoto happened to be using his right hand when playing, despite being a lefty, which means that Taishi didn't even get to see Makoto's true skills. This begins Taishi's journey into the world of tennis... despite technically wanting to revive the boxing club, but that just kind of seems to be the sort of sports manga Tetsuya made for Shonen yo, Racket wo Dake, which is honestly not too dissimilar to how Joe Yabuki originally had no interest in boxing until he met Toru Rikiishi. In all honesty, out of the many sports manga Tetsuya Chiba made in his career, Shonen yo, Racket wo Dake looks to be most forgotten of them all, never receiving an anime adaptation of any sort & only running for two years before ending in mid-1994 after 12 volumes. To be fair, by this point Tetsuya was 55 years old & while Kodansha & Weekly Magazine were obviously still happy to publish his work, considering everything he had given them, it likely was clear to see that his style of sports manga just wasn't going to cut it anymore. So not only would Shonen yo, Racket wo Dake be Tetsuya's final Weekly Shonen Magazine manga, ending a 33+-year run... but, from what I can tell, it'd also be his final (new) sports manga.
As mentioned, Notari Matsutaro had taken a break after 1993, & I imagine that was done so that Tetsuya could focus solely on Shonen yo, Racket wo Dake, so once that finished up he was able to return to Matsutaro for its 1995-1998 run, with Nami now helping out with the writing; once that ended there would be no more sports manga (or, at least, serializations) from Tetsuya Chiba. Following this Tetsuya would mostly focus on one-shots here & there, and the only other new "long-term" serialization he'd make for the longest time would be the semi-autobiographical manga Haneta, which ran in MediaWorks' Comic Alpha from 1998 to 1999. Tetsuya would eventually make one final long-term serialization, but first we have two more Nami-written manga to go over.
With 4P Tanaka-kun reaching its end in mid-1996 that meant that Nami was now only writing two long-running manga of his own (Eleven & Kaze Hikaru), not to mention helping Tetsuya out with Notari Matsutaro's revival run (plus whatever other manga he wrote with other artists), while Sanbachi Kawa now only had one manga to draw... so that obviously meant that they needed a new baseball manga to fill in the gap; it's only natural. So in Combined Issue #36-37 of Weekly Shonen Magazine in 1996 the two would debut their third baseball manga collaboration, Dreams. This manga followed Takeshi Kuri, a talented pitcher & cleanup hitter who's also a notorious delinquent who smokes, dyes his hair, & has a long history of violence, so much so that by middle school he had already been kicked out of six schools & teams, with four of those teams being suspended & the two teams outright disbanding. His antics also tend to get him ejected from games, if they aren't outright forfeited, so he's generally seen as useless. Kuri gets one last chance at Yumenoshima High... where he punches the baseball team's coach Hiroki Kudo during an interview. However, Kudo offers to let Kuri stay if he agrees to live with him, hoping he can temper Kuri's attitude enough. Unlike the prior two Nami+Kawa collabs, which looked to take baseball a bit more serious & grounded, Dreams was essentially a callback to the era of the makyu, as Kuri would come up with a makyu he called the Baku Ball, after the mythological tapir-like "dream eater", which in turn led to other teams & players coming out with their own makyu & wild batting techniques. Kawa also utilized his love & knowledge of baseball to include complex & unconventional theories, like Synchronized Batting. While likely still nowhere near as insane as what was seen in something like Team Astro during the 70s, Dreams was likely the closest thing to a true successor to the makyu manga since that series (that wasn't a gag manga, at least).
Likewise, the drama was also seemingly upped more so than in prior works, as Kuri's wild behavior would often lead to extra tension, and this was all the emphasized for the final game of the manga, the Summer Koshien semifinal game between Yumenoshima & Reihou Dai Kowloon, where Kowloon would take advantage of Kuri's temper, resulting in him purposefully throwing a series of beanballs, getting ejected from the game, & even getting his entire high school baseball record erased from the history books, due to his storied past! Meanwhile, Kuri's ultimate rival Yohei Ikuta (who Kuri had finally managed to defeat earlier in the tournament) gets killed by a runaway car while saving a kid from being hit, creating a 1-2 gut punch to readers, though the manga would still end on a happy note with Kuri being given the opportunity to join a Triple-A team, after repenting for his past attitude. Dreams actually only ran in Weekly Magazine for just over seven years until Issue #47 of 2003, as it would get moved over to Magazine Special at the start of 2004, where it'd run all the way until the magazine itself got cancelled in early 2017; the final issue of Magazine Special had Dreams front & center for its group cover. In the end Dreams would be the longest & most successful manga for both Taro Nami & Sanbachi Kawa, totaling 71 volumes (still not the longest single-run baseball manga, though, as Major was 78 volumes) & selling in excess of 8 million books; still no anime adaptation, but imagine if this got six seasons, a la Major. However, similar to how Team Astro told only three games across 20 volumes, Dreams looks to have only told 11 games across 71 volumes, due to Nami & Kawa's habit of detail-oriented sports storytelling resulting in a slower pace.
Just as what had happened a decade prior in 1996, 2006 saw the end of Kaze Hikaru [~Koshien~] over in Monthly Magazine... so naturally Nami & Kawa didn't wait long to debut yet another baseball manga (though at least by this point Eleven had long ended). Only half a year after Kaze Hikaru's final chapter appeared in the April 2006 issue of Monthly Magazine, the October 2006 issue saw the debut of Sora no Platanus/The Heavenly Platanus, which starred Natsuo Kaihara, a short first-year student at Hamashika High School in Tokyo who's nicknamed "Dr. Pepper" (after the bell pepper, or "Piiman" in Japan, not the soft drink) & is seen mainly as a batting practice pitcher, though he dreams of being an ace pitcher, even though Hamashika's baseball team has never been anything amazing. However, when the team gets a new female coach named Misa Amaki, who used to play for the Japanese national tennis team, her unconventional training methods (like burying stuff in the ground to create irregular bounces for balls, or having the players pass to each other while running) start to improve the team's chances, especially once Natsuo is given the chance to show what he can do as a proper pitcher. Compared to all of the prior Nami+Kawa collabs, Sora no Platanus looks to be the least known of them all, and that would also track with its length, as it would only run for just shy of 11 whole years before ending in the August 2017 issue of Monthly Magazine & total only 28 volumes; a more than respectable number for most mangaka, but when compared to Nami & Kawa's prior collabs it's kind of a pittance.
Still, similar to how Shonen yo, Racket wo Dake was notable for being Tetsuya's final sports manga, Sora no Platanus would mark the end of Taro Nami & Sanbachi Kawa's time working together, bringing an end to a 31+-year partnership that resulted in 194 total volumes of baseball manga across four series. Not only that, but Nami (& Kawa) would pretty much retire from manga following the end of Sora no Plantanus, leaving Tetsuya as the last remaining Chiba Brother to continue making manga, the first one to start & the last one to finish. Shigeyuki Chiba, a.k.a. Taro Nami, would pass away a little over six years later on December 20, 2023 due to carcinoma of the GE junction, i.e. a type of stomach cancer; he was 79. Meanwhile, Sanbachi Kawa is still alive to this day, & will turn 70 in January 2027. From 2013 to 2016 he made the manga Ashita no Joe ni Akogarete/In Adoration of Tomorrow's Joe, a three-volume series where he recalls his time working as an assistant to Tetsuya Chiba in the latter half of the 70s.
However, this isn't quite the end of the Chiba Brothers' story just yet...
So... remember when I said that Akio Chiba never truly finished both Captain & Play Ball back in the 70s, due to him needing to end both to take care of his health? Well, in 2016 Akio's family started talks with Yoshikazu Masukawa, then the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Grand Jump, about possibly continuing both manga where Akio had left off at. In the end both sides decided to go with Cozy Jokura (a.k.a. Yuji Moritaka), the creator of various baseball manga (probably most notably Gurazeni: Money Pitch, which got a TV anime in 2018), as he was immensely inspired by Captain & Play Ball growing up; he was born in 1963, so he was the perfect age for them in the 70s. So in Issue #9 of Grand Jump in 2017 the first chapter of Play Ball 2 debuted, continuing directly where the original manga left off at, with Jokura doing his absolute best to imitate Akio's art style & maintaining the all of the 70s-era elements, including the rules of high school baseball as they were at the time. The only real change from Akio's plans looks to have been Taniguchi no longer going straight to university after graduating, as he now attends a cram school. Jokura would continue to make Play Ball 2 in Grand Jump until Issue #11 of 2021, when it came to an end & totaled 12 volumes, finally bringing the story of Taniguchi's Sumitani High School days to an end at 38 volumes.
However, this was never just Taniguchi's story, now was it? With it being clear that Play Ball 2 was in good hands, it was decided that Captain could now also return, & in the May 2019 issue of Grand Jump Mucha the first chapter of Captain 2 debuted. Just as with its sister series, Captain 2 continued directly where the original left off at, in the middle of Shigekazu Kondo's time as "Captain" of Sumitani Junior High's baseball team, but now the serialization difference was reversed, as Grand Jump runs biweekly while GJ Mucha runs bimonthly. Therefore, Play Ball 2 was given the primary focus, while Kondo's story in Captain 2 was more or less handled on the side, but once Play Ball 2 came to an end Captain 2 moved over to Grand Jump starting with Issue #12 of 2021, i.e. the very next issue. The reason for that is because Kondo would graduate & move on to Sumitani High, and with Taniguchi acting as the team's coach all four "Captains" were now on the same team; as Akio had originally intended, Play Ball was the side story, while Captain was the main story. As of this piece Cozy Jokura continues to make Captain 2 in Grand Jump, and as of August 2026 is currently at 20 volumes. That makes the entire Captain story currently total 46 volumes, while the overall saga with Play Ball 1 & 2 included is at 84 volumes.
The three Chiba Brothers who all made manga may now be gone, but the story Akio Chiba started back in the 70s continues on to this day. There's really no better way to end this overview, now is there?
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And with that we've finally reached the end of the story of the Chiba Brothers, possibly the greatest family of mangaka Japan will ever have produced. This is obviously not a 100% complete overview of everything the three made, except for Akio Chiba, but rather a focus mainly on what look to be their most notable & important works. From what I can tell Kensuke Chiba, the second oldest of the four, is still alive, but would obviously be in his 80s by this point & is probably long retired himself, having likely passed management of (Tetsuya) Chiba Productions to someone else within the family, so the legacy of Tetsuya Chiba & Taro Nami will no doubt continue to remain in good hands, alongside Akio Chiba's legacy being maintained by his own son. With a name like Tetsuya Chiba there's no way I could NOT have written something to honor such a monumental influence in manga (& beyond), and I'll do something specifically for him alone this December, but I felt it was worth honoring all three Chiba Brothers for their contributions to manga, now that all of them are gone.
"Thank You" to Tetsuya Chiba, Akio Chiba, & Taro Nami for everything you all have done for manga, & for inspiring countless others in all manner of ways. May you all Rest in Peace.
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