I should preface this article by explaining that I’m not a fan of sports in general. Despite much peer pressure from both family members and kids at school, I have never been part of a sports team (with the one exception being a chess team in primary school) or followed any sports teams (even e-sports teams). However, that does not mean that I can’t enjoy a story about sports. The effort and determination to be the best at what you do is quite endearing and can create engaging stories.
Sports has been an important source of stories for anime and manga for over half a century. The popularity of sports in postwar Japan as well as the hosting of the 1964 Olympics caused a boom in the production of sports manga and many of these were later adapted into anime series. It has remained a popular genre with several sports series making the list of best-selling manga of all time.
The popularity of sports anime and manga has not necessarily translated to the West. Many publishers of sports anime saw their series “bomb HARD” and, while the situation has improved with some sports series such as Haikyu!! and Kuroko’s Basketball attracting a Western following, sports series remain a tough sell in the West.
With regards to my own personal experience with sports anime and manga, I confess that my experience is rather limited. However, that is not to say that I have not watched/read and enjoyed sports anime and manga. One of the earliest sports anime I can remember watching was a series called Bamboo Blade. A mix of slice of life and kendo, Bamboo Blade became an early anime favourite of mine.
It took a few years before I would/could watch more sports anime. I eventually managed to pick up both Ping Pong the Animation and Yuri!!! On Ice, both of which I would also recommend. However, my library of sports anime remains highly underdeveloped with many sports anime that I would like to see such as Hajime no Ippo and Touch remaining unavailable.
Speaking of Touch, while my manga collection is also quite lacking in sports titles, I do have the entire series of Cross Game. Cross Game is a sports manga about baseball and was written by the legendary mangaka Mitsuru Adachi (who was also the author of Touch). An incredibly powerful and emotional series, it is easily the best sports series I have ever read/seen. It also made me hungry to read more Mitsuru Adachi titles (much to my disappointment, there were no more in English).
I don’t believe that one has to be interested in sports to be invested in a sports story. However, with a few exceptions, it seems like sports anime/manga will continue to remain niche in Western fandom. Let me know what sports anime/manga you have read, what you thought about them and why you think they have failed generally in the west.
Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk, amazon.com or bookdepository.com for all of your needs!