MLB The Show 22 celebrates Shohei Ohtani with a manga themed PS5 cover

Here is an interesting fact that you may not have known about Shohei Ohtani, who will grace of MLB The Show 22: The two-dimensional superstar of the Los Angeles Angels is also an avid fan of manga – especially sports manga Main and Slam dunk. So the developers at Sony’s San Diego Studio gave him a manga-inspired cover for game collectors’ editions.

Furthermore, the cover is illustrated by Takashi Okazaki, the author of Afro Samurai. “A regular Collector’s Edition cover won’t suffice,” Ramone Russell of SIE San Diego said on the PlayStation Blog. “Shohei is a once-generation athlete with superhero-like abilities on the court. What better way to bring that to life than to have worlds collide on a truly unique cover? ”

Indeed, what better way. Here’s SteelBooks with Okazaki’s rendition of Ohtani, who appears to have pyrokinetic abilities along with an 88 mph fork-ball and home-running power with a tape measure.

The special editions with these cases are the $84.99 MVP Edition and the $99.99 Digital Deluxe Edition, both of which are PlayStation 5-only. Both offer four days early accessPS5 and PS4 versions of the game, along with a host of digital items and currency for use in the game’s Diamond Dynasty and other modes.

MLB The Show 22 launches April 5 (April 1 for special editions) on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and, first, Nintendo Switch. The game supports cross-platform play and progresses on all consoles; The features of the Switch version are on par with the PS4 and Xbox One versions.