Drop your prejudice for sports anime and actually watch some

I do plan to watch Giant Killing. At least check is out.

And I picked up Prin­cess Nine from my lib­rary this week. Def­in­itely excited about that.

Actu­ally, every ath­letic per­son I know likes sports anime fine (shrug)

Most people I know who don’t watch sports anime simply don’t care about sports. So it’s like… you already don’t care at all about half the series’ con­tent right there, so why bother? Yeah, it could be really good, but like you’ve writ­ten in a post before try­ing out a bunch of series just for that minus­cule chance that you’ll come across a homerun tends to be a waste of time; espe­cially when you do it in a genre where you don’t even have a fall­back on, that some­thing else you can at least enjoy even if you don’t like the other parts.

Of course, if a sports anime is try­ing to sell itself as some­thing more than just pure sports that’s a whole dif­fer­ent mat­ter. I picked up Yakyuu Taishou Musume for its his­tor­ical set­ting, and I checked out Basquash because the idea of giant-robo-basketball is just… ridicu­lous. But frankly a lot of Sports anime fails to sell itself as more than just “sports”, and genre-crossing can do this cat­egory a whole realm of good.

The sports genre on aver­age has treated me a lot bet­ter than most anime genres. For one, I will watch any­thing in tour­na­ment format. Any­thing. Also, sports inher­ently comes with action, strategy, sus­pense, and drama. Throw­ing good char­ac­ters and com­edy into the mix usu­ally isn’t too hard either.

Actu­ally, you’re look­ing at it a little wrong Digit­al­boy. It’s not “I’m not inter­ested in being a doc­tor,” rather it’s “I’m not inter­ested in med­ical dra­mas.” It’s the genre rather than the ele­ment. To some extent, a per­son who has no interest House, ER, and Grey’s Ana­tomy would have decent jus­ti­fic­a­tion for not watch­ing Mon­ster. In the same vein, someone who lacks interest in base­ball, bas­ket­ball, or foot­ball, would have decent jus­ti­fic­a­tion for not watch­ing Cross Game.

Of course, it’d be great for every­one to broaden their hori­zons a bit, and that’s what I’ve been try­ing to do this year.

“To some extent, a per­son who has no interest House, ER, and Grey’s Ana­tomy would have decent jus­ti­fic­a­tion for not watch­ing Monster.”

Well, not really, since Mon­ster isn’t a med­ical drama at all. :p

Thank you, thank you, thank you for this post! The most import­ant thing to remem­ber about sports anime is that it’s the char­ac­ter­iz­a­tion that’s the most import­ant, not the sport itself. If you end up caring about the char­ac­ters, it doesn’t mat­ter if you like the sport that they’re play­ing. I could care less about kendo, but I thought Bam­boo Blade was funny and enter­tain­ing. I hate watch­ing box­ing, but Hajime no Ippo was fascinating.

Per­son­ally my favor­ite all time sports anime (and one of my favor­ite anime in gen­eral) is Touch, which if you can get over the 80s anim­a­tion style, is a won­der­ful series. If people like Cross Game, they may also like Touch, as they’re both based on manga by the same mangaka.

I am also look­ing for­ward to Giant Killing.

To reit­er­ate what Baka-Raptor said:

TOURNAMENT FORMAT IS AWESOME.

Now with that said, I always say that I hate sports/mecha anime, but I like every­one I see? I guess I ignore myself. I should watch more sports anime.

Then again, I’ve seen, what, three shows in each genre? If that. A small sample size but a sample size none the less.

I think some people have addressed the idea that typ­ical anime fan != sports fan, but even from the pro­spect­ive of a sports fan such as myself sports anime still has a couple hurdles to overcome.

A) Sports anime is the twin brother of shounen action genre. Lengthy epis­ode counts, tour­na­ment formats, crazy exag­ger­ated powers, sim­ilar char­ac­ter tem­plates across shows. Sports anime isn’t for the typ­ical anime fan you’d find in the blo­go­sphere, more for the Sounen Jump crowd.

B) I’d rather watch live sports to sat­isfy my sports fix.

Hav­ing said that, I’ll pick up a sports anime once in a while for a little some­thing dif­fer­ent in my anime diet, but I have no desire for heaps of it.

Also, search “Prin­cess Nine”

I’ve been think­ing about this issue myself lately — I was look­ing back on what I’d watched in 2009 and real­ised I hadnt watched any sports anime at all (or watched the1st few epis­odes and then dropped).

I fall into ‘hate sports, dis­like sports anime’ cat­egory — I have abso­lutely no interest in sport of any kind (the excep­tions being the Olympics, the World Cup (only when Ire­land are in it ) and when Down are doing well in the Gaelic) apart from that I avoid it like the plague. Its kind of bled over into my aver­sion to sport related anime — which is odd given my love of shounen anime. Man­aged about 70 epis­odes of Prince of Ten­nis once upon a time but got bored.

I’ve made an effort to get rid of this mind­set recently mainly due to Cross Game which I’m really enjoy­ing. Cur­rently watch­ing Basquash (which is mind­lessly enter­tain­ing if you don’t pay too much atten­tion to it) and have One Outs on hand — definately plan to watch Hajime no Ippo (mainly because a friend is pres­sur­ing me, and that same friend is respons­ible for mak­ing me give One Piece another chance so I respect her opin­ion) and try Major.

Board game series don’t seem to have the same men­tal block — Shion no Ou and Hikaru no Go I really enjoyed and Kaji was bril­liant (Akagi I havent got­ten round to yet).

This sea­son I definately plan to give Giant Killing a chance — the art appeals to me and I just gen­er­ally have a good feel­ing about it.

@Scamp — “What AJthefourth said is true, it’s about the char­ac­ter­isa­tion far more than the sport itself.… While there may be added enjoy­ment if you do like the sub­ject mat­ter, char­ac­ter­isa­tion is what drives anything.”

Any medium is cap­able of good char­ac­ter­iz­a­tion (as well as comedy/drama). With that in mind, I think I’d rather select a medium I’m more likely to enjoy the pro­cess or rather than a medium I’m whole­hearted unfa­mil­iar and non­car­ing about. It’s like, if I can pick a sports anime which has inter­est­ing char­ac­ters or another anime which has good char­ac­ters PLUS other genre medi­ums I like, it’s pretty obvi­ous what I would choose given a lim­ited time.

Choices aren’t made by “whether this is good” but by “whether this is bet­ter than the altern­at­ive”. Course, one can argue that every­one also watch a lot of crappy shows, but they’re mostly tri­als into the newly aired, and you’re just as likely to pick up a crappy sports anime.

You need to see Slam Dunk or Eye­shield 21 , if you dont like it then you dont like the genre.
They are both great animes and more awe­some manga
When I saw Giant Killing in the lineup a Hell Yeah!! was heard.
Sport anime is very vis­ceral , you have the under­dogs and root like crazy for them.
And Hiruma from ES21 is one of the greatest char­ac­ter I read or saw.

I’m a HUGE fan of sports anime and can tell you Giant Killing and Major S6 are abso­lutely addict­ing!! Rather, I’m very much thank­ful for the lack of moe and ecchi titles… anime just hasn’t been the same since the recent explo­sion of interest in ecchi and harem animes… disgusting.