I am a relatively disillusioned human being, as a rule. My friends warn others, with no prompting, that I am “not much of a hugger.” I am valued by my work team for being the person who can find everything wrong with a project in the span of an hour. I cannot physically sit through the end of You’ve Got Mail because it’s just too damn happy.
With that said, today I would like to introduce you to my primary source of non-prescribed serotonin—my safe space from the horrors of the world (particularly as a denizen of Washington, D.C.) and the depressing literature I spend my time drowning myself in. That’s right. I’m talking about sports anime.
Sports anime are joy. Sports anime are suffering. Sports anime are the drama of human life condensed into teams of young adults and adolescents vying, if not To Be the Very Best (Like No One Ever Was), to at least Do Right by the Team (and Therefore Themselves).
I love sports anime because they seek to understand the complex reasons human beings push their bodies and minds to the limit, even in the face, and event, of failure. Sports anime allow us a peek into the inner sanctum of whatever instinct, desire, or need drives people to attempt difficult things over and over and over in individual and collective celebration of our brief, beautiful existences as capable bodies on this earth.
I am here to argue that you, too, should partake in this celebration—not by playing sports, but by watching sports anime.
But I don’t like/watch anime.
Savvy Dot and Line reader, I beseech you: Anime is not a monolithic category. Perhaps what comes to mind when you think “anime” is “Sociopathic Teenage Boys in Giant Robots Pulverizing Each Other in Space” or “16098000-Episode Quasi-Medieval Odyssey with Plot that Pushes the Boundaries of Human Understanding.”
(Disclaimer: The author enjoys both Gundam Wing and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood immensely.)
While there are, indeed, anime series that fall into those categories, I have great news: #NotAllAnime are Those Anime. (Actually, though, not, like, ironically. Who can tell these days?) Sports anime are definitely not Those Anime. Sports anime are far more approachable and down-to-earth.
A typical sports anime focuses on a protagonist and their team (there is always a team, even if the sport is individual) as they venture to win the Spring Interhigh Tournament or Hakone Ekiden or some other competition or title. These protagonists and teams are almost always an underdog looking to claim or regain glory. Many practice matches, smaller tournaments, and growth opportunities occur. They may never achieve their goal, but the important part is what they learn and the friends they make along the way.
But I don’t like/watch sports.
That’s fine. Preferable, even. Watching sports anime could be considered the inverse of being forced to watch football the Friday after Thanksgiving with your estranged father-in-law.
Sports are about the contact. The victories. The raw power and sweat and gatorade-drenched uniforms.
Sports anime are about the connection. The failures. The limitations and achievements of the rotting meat sacks we call bodies. And occasionally the limitations and achievements of the wrinkly chaos monsters we call brains.
To better understand the difference between a typical sports star and a sports anime star, consider the governing trope of many popular sports anime protagonists:
- Haikyuu!! is about a short boy who aspires to become an ace volleyball spiker despite his height.
- Daiya no Ace is about a naturally gifted yet woefully untrained pitcher who is recruited by a school with a top-tier baseball team.
- Yuri!!! on Ice is about a talented but stagnating figure skater who can’t seem to get past the idea that he isn’t good enough to compete at the highest level, even though he’s been doing it consistently for years.
In an American sports drama, these lone prodigies-qua-heroes would triumph over their biological, geological, and economic limitations through sheer force of will and capital bestowed upon them by God and/or Sandra Bullock. (I am told these are not synonyms.)
In Japanese sports anime, these individuals learn to their limitations because of the group. Heresy, you say—everyone knows even teams are about the star! I invite you to bear witness to the power of the sports anime, in which groups grant outcasts the power to transcend individual limitations.
There is a good amount of cultural analysis that might explain why sports anime have these characteristics. That analysis, however, will have to wait for a different article.
But I don’t know anything about sports.
Most, if not all, sports anime feature a good amount of explanation of the development, mechanics, and/or discipline involved in the sports they’re about. There’s something to be said for encountering sports in that way, versus a win-or-lose, closed-doors club kind of affair.
This kind of detail can prove useful. For example, I can now contribute a shocking degree of detail to conversations about baseball thanks to watching Daiya no Ace. (This sounds like a joke. It is not.) This is especially useful because I live in a city whose baseball team just won their first World Series. No one needs to know my modicum of knowledge about breaking balls or batting averages or RBIs comes from anime. Do not blow my cover.
Fine, I’ll bite. Where do I start?
Like anything, sports anime are not all created equally. Some sports anime are solely about the sport, which means you barely see the players’ lives outside of the game. Other sports anime are less about the sport and more about how the characters’ lives are shaped by their involvement with the team (i.e., slice of life). There are a few sports anime that even merit consideration as artistic meditations on the human condition in and of themselves.
That said, this list will breakdown your options not by sport or length or release date or any other normal taxonomic nonsense, but by what you’ll get out of it:
- Just the Sports™
- Slice of Life
- Pushing the Genre Forward
The borders between these categories (particularly Just the Sports™ and Slice of Life) can be somewhat porous, so I’ve tried to bucket the list below to the best of my ability. In a perfect world I would include a methodology section, but have you seen the news lately?
There is also a whole fourth realm of sports anime that can only be labeled “Fan Service.” This includes the ever popular Free! (a swimming anime focused mainly on situations in which very muscular men strip off their shirts) and 99% of sports anime focused on women and girls. I will not include these on this list because 1) they’re pretty easy to find and 2) I cannot in good conscience recommend them.
But wait! Some of these aren’t about sports.
Okay, okay, you got me on a technical level. But the shows that are not about “sports” as we generally conceive of them (athletic feats done on a court, track, field, or rink) still focus on activities that feature key characteristics of sports: competition, discipline, tournaments, ranks, etc.
Things like shogi (a chess-like Japanese board game) and karuta (a Japanese card game) require players to sit and concentrate for long periods of time, with rapid bursts of movement interspersed throughout. This itself requires them to get and stay in shape and train just as they would for a normal sports activity. So I’m including them!
But wait! Does that mean music anime are sports anime?
While music can feature elements similar to sports (recitals as competitions, the discipline required to master a song, rising through the ranks of schools and orchestras and bands) music anime do not tend to focus on these elements in the same way that sports anime do.
Where sports anime focus on the way that competition brings people together, music anime typically focus on the ways music can transcend differences and boundaries between different people, groups, and styles. For example, Kids on the Slope is about the ways a buttoned-up classical pianist and unruly jazz drummer look past their differences to make some good damn music, but they’re not aiming to become the best musicians on the planet or go Platinum with a debut album. And while Your Lie In April features music competitions, the show is ultimately focused on its characters learning to break free from the mold those competitions enforce and appreciate music as something to be enjoyed for its power to connect people and transcend time.
I would totally be down for an anime that gives music the sports anime treatment. Maybe it exists already and I just don’t know about it, or maybe it still needs to be created!
But wait! Where are the women?
That, my friend, is the million dollar question. So far, most animation companies have proven themselves incapable of making any sports anime focused on women that doesn’t devolve into male-gaze-y boob jokes and moe (a creepy style of drawing women with big eyes and exaggerated physical features popular in the mid-aughts).
I have a lot of feelings even about the anime most frequently cited as “the best female-centric anime.” Anime Feminist has a good list of feminist-friendly anime, if you’re interested. As far as sports anime go, I will say that I appreciate Chihayafuru’s first season for its unabashed willingness to make its female protagonist do things like, say, suck up her snot mid-sob and drop kick people in a way that doesn’t feel tomboy-forced, just…awkward girl awkward.
But wait! Why are there so many exclamation points in the titles?
BECAUSE SPORTS ANIME ARE VERY EXCITING!!!
Ahem. Without further ado, here are some shows to get you started!
Just the SportsTM
If you want sports in your sports anime and little to nothing else, consider:
Haikyuu!!
Sport: Volleyball (or haikyuu in Japanese)
Seasons: 3, with a 4th beginning on January 10, 2020
Status: Ongoing
What it’s about: Hinata aspires to become Japan’s top volleyball spiker, despite being quite short. He joins the high school team of his idol, the Little Giant, only to find out that they have fallen from their former glory. Can his high school become a powerhouse once again and help Hinata achieve his goal?
Why it’s special: Almost every character in its massive cast is memorable; it explains volleyball in a coherent, interesting way that shows how much the creator loves the sport; the show is genuinely funny and charming; as the seasons go on, a few characters get very interesting backstories
Watch it on Crunchyroll (all seasons, sub), Hulu (seasons 1 and 2, sub and dub), and Netflix (seasons 1 and 2, sub and dub)
Daiya no Ace
Sport: Baseball
Seasons: 3
Status: Ongoing
What it’s about: Sawamura Eijun, a promising left-handed pitcher with no formal training, joins the baseball team at Seidou, a school that has not made it to Koushien (the biannual Japanese High School Baseball Championship) in six years despite being a baseball powerhouse.
Why it’s special: Baseball actually translates really nicely to an episodic TV experience; you’ll learn a lot about the game and its nuances; the first two seasons are packed full of memorable characters and are genuinely funny, in a goofy way
Watch it on Crunchyroll (sub)
Eyeshield 21
Sport: American football
Seasons: 3
Status: Complete
What it’s about: Sena is a pint-sized softy who wants to be a motivated, strong person in high school—so he joins the football team!
Why it’s special: There’s nothing quite like seeing a football game played out in Dragonball Z–style animation; the character designs are unique, even by anime standards; the animation style is a throwback to the dramatic proportions and visual effects of 90s anime; who doesn’t want to see a Japanese take on American football?
Watch it on Crunchyroll (sub)
Slice of Life
If you want your sports anime to include parts of the characters’ non-sports lives but still mostly be about the sport, consider:
Chihayafuru
Sport: Karuta (a competitive card game that involves Japanese poetry) (I am not kidding) (it sounds amazing)
Seasons: 3
Status: Ongoing
What it’s about: Chihaya discovers a passion for karuta when she learns the game to befriend a new student in her elementary school. Now in high school, she aims to become a champion karuta player and compete with her childhood team.
Why it’s special: I hate to say this, but it is 100% special because it focuses on a female protagonist; you get to learn a good amount of Japanese poetry without feeling like you’re learning Japanese poetry; it has an interesting angle into the neglect that comes when your parents don’t think your hobby is worthwhile
Watch it on Crunchyroll (sub)
March Comes in Like a Lion
Sport: Shogi (a chess-like Japanese board game)
Seasons: 1
Status: Complete
What it’s about: Rei is a prodigy shogi player learning to cope with the fact that the game cannot give him everything he needs from life; the show explores his past trauma and follows him as he builds a found family that makes his shogi game stronger.
Why it’s special: This series has a much quieter, more thoughtful feel to it than most sports anime; the storyline deals emotionally and poignantly with loss and the meaning of family; the cat animations explaining shogi should be declared some kind of UNESCO Intangible Cultural Treasure
Watch it on Crunchyroll (sub)
Yuri!!! On Ice
Sport: Figure skating
Seasons: 1
Status: Technically complete; a follow-up movie is scheduled for release in 2020, and a second season may follow
What it’s about: Yuri Katsuki is an elite figure skater who feels stuck in the middle of the pack at international competitions. Can a former multi-gold-medalist-turned-coach help him out of his slump and to the top of the podium?
Why it’s special: Provides LGBTQ representation (in a way that I won’t spoil) that is very much needed in both the sports anime and figure skating worlds; it features a diverse cast of characters from across the world; the animation of the figure skaters can be breathtaking (the director, Sayo Yamamoto, also directed the intro to Persona 5)
Watch it on Crunchyroll (sub) and Funimation (dub)
Pushing the Genre Forward
If you want sports anime that pushes the usual stylistic and/or narrative constraints of the genre, consider:
Ping Pong: The Animation
Sport: Ping pong (shocking, I know)
Seasons: 1
Status: Complete
What it’s about: Smile is a ping pong prodigy who isn’t interested in winning, particularly because he seems to be too considerate of his opponents’ feelings.
Why it’s special: The director (Yuasa Masaaki, who also directed the fantastic non-sports series Tatami Galaxy and the movie Lu Over the Wall) is known for his eye-catching, space-time-subverting animation style, and Ping Pong does not fail to deliver; the show’s visual direction and story is almost Wes Anderson-esque; the show is a touching argument that enjoyment is more liberating than victory in sports
Watch it on Funimation (sub and dub)
Run With the Wind
Sport: Running (a.k.a everyone’s favorite activity)
Seasons: 1 (23 episodes)
Status: Complete
What it’s about: A college student single-handedly cons convinces his nine housemates into running the Hakone Ekiden, a 10-person relay marathon held over the first two days of the year.
Why it’s special: It’s a worthwhile meditation on why we push ourselves to do monotonous and painful things like running; it pokes and pushes at many stereotypes that sports anime rely on; it will relieve you from reading Haruki Murakami’s writing on the subject
Watch it on Crunchyroll (sub)
Stars Align
Sport: Soft tennis (a Japanese version of tennis with a softer ball)
Seasons: 1
Status: Theoretically complete, but 12 more episodes were planned and may still be produced
What it’s about: The student council has determined that clubs that don’t win matches won’t get funding next year, putting the mediocre boys’ soft tennis team in jeopardy—but things could change after captain Toma bribes naturally athletic but tight-on-cash Maki into joining the team.
Why it’s special: This is the first sports anime I’ve seen that deals with the huge rift between what kids get out of and value about sports versus what parents do; it deals with the economic, social, and home life challenges facing many Japanese children and families in an honest and unsentimental way; it addresses the gender and sexuality questions of adolescence in an honest way that does not tokenize or other its characters; the director (Akane Kazuki) worked on such notables as Samurai Champloo, Escaflowne, and Cowboy Bebop
Watch it on Hulu (sub)
Why isn’t there a sports anime about [insert your sport here]?
I don’t know why there isn’t a hockey anime either, thanks for asking. I’m mad too.
First, the above list isn’t exhaustive—it just provides some quality series you can use as starting points for your adventure into the genre. If you continue down the path, more sports (and competitive non-sports) await!
Second, there are a million reasons there might not be a sports anime about [insert your sport here] even though there is a sports anime about rugby or badminton or shogi. [Sport] might not be popular in Japan, it might be hard to animate, it might not be any manga-ka’s or animator’s particular obsession; or it might just be a manga that no animation studio has picked up yet. We can just pray and wait.
With that said, I am confident you will find some sports anime that will scratch whatever itch you have and help remind you that sometimes, the world is alright. In the words of every coach and player ever to every other coach and player ever: Ganbatte!
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