Summary
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One of the best things about anime and manga is the fact that they explore so many different kinds of stories in interesting and unique ways. The medium’s ability to breathe life into all kinds of stories about all kinds of things, and bring viewers into different worlds in which they perhaps would never have taken an interest. It goes without saying thatsport and anime have been interconnected for a very long time, and in this current era, we have had the pleasure of watching anime become ubiquitous, and see more athletes and entire sporting codes become more connected with the media of anime and manga.
From basketball to kabaddi (yes, kabaddi), sport in anime has been a constant exploration codified by highly successful, influential titles likeTomorrow’s Joe,Slam Dunk,Captain Tsubasa,Blue Lockand many more, but which sport has been explored the most in anime and manga?
Setting Up the Field of Play
This Exercise Will Be Restricted to the Top 50 Rated Sport Anime on MAL
There are over 700 identified sports anime titles listed on the anime aggregator site, MyAnimeList, and it would obviously be a huge task to leaf through every single one to see what kind of sport it depicts in its story. However, it could still be very interesting to take the top 50 rated sports anime titles, as well as the 50 with the most fans on the site, and take note of which sport comes up the most. What was expected before the research was conducted was that basketball would have the most associated anime titles, followed by baseball and then football (soccer), but that could be the author’s bias. Sequel seasons or spin-offs will not be counted as individual sports anime. Let’s first identifythe top 50 sports anime on MAL:
1
2000
2
2014
3
1970
4
5
1993
6
2011
7
2018
8
2004
9
10
2009
11
2008
12
2013
13
1998
14
2024
15
2022
16
Welcome to the Ballroom
2017
17
18
2025
19
2023
20
2001
21
22
2021
23
1985
24
25
26
27
2007
28
2005
29
2015
30
31
32
33
2019
34
2006
35
36
2002
37
2010
38
39
40
41
42
1989
43
1983
44
45
1981
46
47
48
49
50
Basketball
The order of the ranking here is not the most important piece of information we can glean from the table, but rather, we can do a raw count of the number of times certain sports came up in this Top 50. There is also another way this information could have been presented, with a Top 50ordered by number of members on MyAnimeList, but for now, we have a general idea of the titles regarded the “best” sports anime. There was an interesting football anime boom in the 2000s, most likely inspired by Japan’s joint hosting of the 2002 FIFA World Cup.
Surprisingly, football came up a lot more than basketball, with 7 of 50 titles being concerned with it in some way, but as mentioned previously, this isn’t too surprising concerning the popularity of the sport and the fact that Japan hosted the biggest competition in world football at the turn of the millennium, at the height of the careers of some of the most celebrated athletes the sport has ever seen.
Which Sport Has Inspired the Most Anime?
And the Winner Is…
In the above 50 titles, baseball is the main sporting code depicted in at least 9 of 50 titles, most of which are adaptations of manga titles. Basketball comes up only three times, despite one of those times having been in the case ofSlam Dunk, one of the most influential shōnen manga titles of all time, which was one of the main draws ofthe Golden Age of Weekly Shōnen JumpalongsideDragon BallandRurouni Kenshin. Surprisingly, football came up a lot more than basketball, with 7 of 50 titles being concerned with it in some way, but as mentioned previously, this isn’t too surprising concerning the popularity of the sport and the fact that Japan hosted the biggest competition in world football at the turn of the millennium, at the height of the careers of some of the most celebrated athletes the sport has ever seen. Baseball has been a part of Japan since its introduction to the archipelago in 1859, shortly after thecessation of thesakokulockdownwhich saw the country seal itself off from international interactions for over 250 years.
The reason for the sport’s dominance in depiction through anime and manga is simply an expression of the fact that it is the most popular sport in Japan. Professional baseball teams first appeared in Japan in the 1920s, with a league being established in the mid-1930s. By 1950, the sport had grown big enough in Japan to feature two leagues: the Central and the Pacific Leagues, together forming what is referred to as National League Baseball (NLB). Japan has seen glory in world baseball a number of times, most recently defeating the United States 3-2 to win the World Baseball Classic in 2023 to make it the third Classic win in the history of Japanese baseball. The national team in Japan is alsooften regarded the world’s bestby the international governing body of baseball and its variants, the World Baseball Softball Confederation. We’ve had anime about ancient boardgames, skating in the future, boxing in the future, various performing arts, football, rock climbing, rugby, badminton and even karuta, but its clear the sport we keep coming home to in the format of anime and manga is baseball, to the point of completely unrelated titles featuring “baseball episodes”.
