This article on how anime helped me understand why people love sports includes light spoilers ahead for several notable sports anime, including Hajime No Ippo, Haikyu!!, Kuroko’s Basketball, and Blue Lock.
Sports… I’ve never been interested in them. And that is tough growing up in a place where it is built into the community. I remember being a child and eating sausage sambos in the local pub after a match; that was genuinely my favourite part of the day. However, after several years of complaining and reading in the car during my brother’s matches, I was eventually left at home. I could never get into anything sports-related, whether it be Taekwondo, football, GAA, or rugby — and I tried. Decades passed and then came an unexpected window into that world: anime.
I’ve always wanted to understand everyone around me. It’s a fault, honestly. And sports was a layer to my family that I could never fathom. I wanted to understand why they’d scream at the top of their lungs during a match, why they’d cry when something went right for people they had no real connection with, or when they’d swear bloody murder when a loss happened. With anime I found it.
The Only One Who Can Beat Me Is Me
It began with Kuroko’s Basketball, a phenomenal anime about a generation of the greatest basketball players in Japan and one boy’s dream to find what the sport meant to him. It was incredible. Kuroko himself was the usual plain-jane protagonist, but he was surrounded by some of the most visually stellar characters in anime, with my personal favourite being Daiki Aoimine. This wunderkind could do anything and had become jaded because he had no one that could match him. That was until Kuroko and his new team beat him in an absolutely phenomenal battle of basketballs.
I think what makes this so thrilling is how anime takes the terminology within sports and makes it extravagant and over the top. The term ‘in the zone’ is thrown around all the time in our world, but in Kuroko’s Basketball, it’s a superpower. Its use is both visually sumptuous and nerve-wrackingly intense. Not only that, but each major character has a unique trait that they excel at. Whether it be speed or jumping capability, every skill is treated with reverence.
The Moment You Back Down Is the Moment You Lose
The same can said for my second sports anime, Hajime No Ippo. Perhaps the greatest sports anime out there, Hajime No Ippo is intoxicating to watch. Seeing a young fool like Ippo rise from his humble days as the victim of bullying to a young champion has been an incredible ride. Learning about the multiple styles of boxing and the ins-and-outs of the strategies one can bring to the ring is inspiring, as is the ingenuity of many of the characters within Hajime No Ippo.
From the underdog story of Ippo himself to the towering talent of Takamura to the genuinely unnerving Mashiba, these are truly memorable characters. Not only that, Hajime No Ippo is one of the longest-running manga in Japan coming in at approximately 1400 chapters. Mangaka Jōji Morikawa has been telling this particular story since 1989.
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I come back to the imagery of all these great anime and what they’ve achieved when bringing someone like myself to sports. Hajime No Ippo is stunning with its work on the body of a boxer and what these fights can do to a body.
This brings me to Haikyu!!, which is absolutely gorgeous in its depiction of volleyball. While watching it with my fiancée, both of us were taken aback by how Shōyō moves in the anime. It’s startling in style, and the characters are wonderfully sweet and reminiscent of those within Kuroko’s Basketball. Even from its early days, this anime showcased what brings everyone to sports: the camaraderie, the community, and the love of the game.
Soccer Is a Game of Constant Evolution
To bring it full circle, the latest sports anime I’ve watched is the kill-or-be-killed football anime, Blue Lock. It’s strangely ironic that the sport that I least care about, football, is also the anime where the ruthlessness of sport is so on show, and it’s glorious. With the least interesting visuals (including a lot of questionable CGI) Blue Lock relies on its Battle Royale-style premise. And I love it. Watching this series, I can’t help but have my family in the back of my head. I wonder how they’d view it. Would they laugh or scoff? It’s always in the back of my mind.
Watching these anime, I’ve learned so much. I’ve seen the power of trust, friendship, and teamwork. Thanks to the power and extravagance of animation, I’ve adored these stories. What has helped are the characters and their motivations, and I believe this is what I previously missed about sports. Seeing the humanity of these characters bolsters the power of the stunning visuals.
After watching all these stories and developing a much greater appreciation of all these sports, I’ve had an absolute blast. I’ve come to understand why people fall in love with them, having fallen in love with them myself. I just wish I understood the off-side rule — this is something that still eludes me.
