The Best Sports Anime Ever Made

            The Best Sports Anime Ever Made

If you’re just getting into sports anime, it can be a little overwhelming — there are hundreds of series to choose from, and not all of them are worth your time. That’s why we put together this list of eleven all-time classics from the early days to the modern era. Whether you like fast action, deep character development or wacky hijinks, there’s something in sports anime for you.

Ace Of Diamond

Baseball is wildly popular in Japan, and there are dozens of anime series focused on the game. One of the most robust and watchable is Ace of Diamond. Pitcher Eijun Sawamura is the top player on his small high school team, but when he transfers to prestiguous private Seidou High School, he discovers that he’s no longer a big fish in a tiny pond and one player’s skill isn’t enough to win games. Over 126 episodes, the show does an impeccable job of balancing the on-field action, where each game has huge repercussions for Sawamura and the team, with the interpersonal relationships between the players. It’s a textbook example of successful sports anime.

Slam Dunk

Basketball is in many ways the perfect team sport for anime adaptation. It’s fast-paced, with players contesting each other both on the horizontal and vertical plane. Players can have outlandish and individual appearances that help them stand out from the crowd. And the ebb and flow of the game can make for high drama. Classic sports anime Slam Dunk tells the tale of delinquent Hanamichi Sakuragi who joins his high school team to impress a girl and discovers his passion for the game, becoming a better person along the way. Putting together a team of misfits and outcasts, he brings his school to the top of the league. The anime is from the mid 1990s but still holds up well today.

Ping Pong The Animation

Based on a manga series by the quirky Taiyo Matsumoto, Ping Pong The Animation preserves that artist’s unusual character designs and love for Dutch angles and weird framing. Childhood friends Peco and Smile are both members of the Katase High School table tennis team, and over the course of the eleven episode series they wrestle with what it means to have a talent, both the joy and the responsibility of it. The anime version goes deep into many of the series’ supporting cast as well, and it’s just an absolute pleasure to watch director Yuasa Masaaki work with the material.

Major

One of the underrated aspects of anime is how the medium lets creators play with time in a way that live-action TV can’t. One of the coolest examples is baseball series Major, which starts out with main character Goro Honda in kindergarten and ends with him in his mid-30s. Honda’s father is struggling pro Shigeharu Honda, who is killed by a stray pitch leaving his son an orphan. Undeterred, Goro joined his local Little League team and, over the course of the series, worked his way up to the majors and started mentoring other children. The dramatic scope of Major is really stunning and the show handles complex emotions with delicacy and restraint.

Capeta

Go-kart racing is officially a sport, and unlike many other auto-themed anime series, Capeta leans in hard to the rules. The show starts with ten year old Kappeita Taira’s father building him a kart out of scrap material from his job at a paving company. In his first race, Capeta manages to nearly overtake a young pro, which awakens the spirit of competition in both kids that will continue through adulthood. The anime really captures the grind of racing – how drivers need to train their reflexes and also how things can go swiftly and horribly wrong on the course. It’s also expertly paced, balancing the thrill of competition with the quiet moments between Capeta and his father as they chase their dreams.

Hajime No Ippo

Plenty of anime series tackle the subject of one-on-one combat, but few do it in a real sports context. Hajime no Ippo, based on the manga series by George Morikawa, is an exception. High school student Ippo Makunouchi just can’t stand up for himself and so is regularly beaten down by bullies. In the aftermath of one such attack, he’s befriended by a pro boxer who brings him to the gym and is startled when Ippo just lays down holy hell on a punching bag. The series follows his attempts to learn the “sweet science” and battle numerous opponents along the way. One thing the anime does really well is add dimensionality to Ippo’s counterparts in the ring – they all seem like real people with their own reasons for boxing, not just caricatures for him to punch out.

Eyeshield 21

All of the drama and power of American football is brought to the world of anime in Eyeshield 21, based on the manga series by Riichiro Inagaki Yusuke Murata. When Sena Kobayakawa starts at Deimon Private Senior High School, he just wants to blend in with the crowd. But when the football coach of the Devil Bats notices his speed and agility, he’s drafted onto the team and forced to wear a helmet that hides his features so other teams don’t poach him. While American football isn’t super popular in Japan, that’s part of the charm as Sena and his coach have to scrape up misfits and weirdos to build a championship team. Murata’s quirky character designs made this series a huge hit.

Prince Of Tennis

One-on-one sports lend themselves well to anime adaptations, and tennis is a great example. Based on a wildly popular manga, Prince of Tennis follows prodigy Ryoma Echizen as he tries to come out of his pro father’s shadow and develop his own style of tennis. The anime delivers a striking, hyperkinetic take on the game, with plenty of trick shots and special techniques on display, but the real draw of it is Ryoma’s growth as a character and his relationships with teammates, coaches and rivals. Prince of Tennis was one of the series responsible for starting a new sports anime boom in the early 2000s.

Captain Tsubasa

It’s sometimes hard to really grasp the cultural power of anime and manga in Japan, but Captain Tsubasa gives us a good example. Before the series premiered in 1983, the country didn’t even have a professional league. A generation of kids grew up with Tsubasa’s incredible action on the pitch, and numerous modern-day pros like Lionel Messi watched it dubbed into Spanish when they were young. It’s also one of the longest-running series on this list, with a new set of episodes just released for the 2018 World Cup – considering that the anime begins with main character Tsubasa Oozora as an 11 year old boy, that’s pretty spectacular.

Haikyuu

If there’s a sport, there’s probably an anime about it. Haikyuu is one of the few volleyball-centric series out there, but it’s also a favorite of many fans for how it delivers unabashed enthusiasm and character development at the same time. Protagonist Shoyo Hinata falls in love with volleyball after stumbling on a championship match on TV, but in his first match he gets absolutely slaughtered. Undeterred, he ends up teaming with his rival to develop an unstoppable partnership that uses both of their natural skills. In addition to high-energy action on the court, Haikyuu also boasts a truly great soundtrack and an engrossing supporting cast.

Yuri On Ice

One of the most acclaimed anime series in any genre of the last few years, Yuri On Ice takes a much-maligned subject — competitive figure skating — and uses it to craft a deep and resonant story of mentorship, romance and discipline. When promising Japanese figure skater Yuri Katsuki suffers the worst loss of his career, he returns to his hometown unsure if he’ll ever compete again. That all changes when his idol, Russian skater Victor Nikiforov, takes an interest in him and offers to coach him to the top. The relationship between the two men is teased out with incredible narrative delicacy. Make no mistake: this is the story of two men falling in love, with sports as the medium of their romance. Skating is how the characters communicate, express their emotions and deal with the world. It’s quite the accomplishment.