Mark Williams Jan 01, 2017
Honest, intelligent news and reviews for manga romantics
It’s not a fluke lately that more and more sports anime are being simulcast, and the manga are also getting licensed. Although the series are typically run and advertised as shonen, the shoujo audience has become very vested in these series as well. Here’s some reasons that we believe sports anime/manga are so popular with a female audience.
It’s not hard to find a boy on a sports team that’s crush worthy. Most of them are drawn to be attractive, or have some striking personality flaw that girls tend to like. I think watching guys get athletic and pump the testosterone is instinctively attractive to girls. So when you make a whole anime full of good looking boys pumping testosterone – it’s going to bring in the females.
The story or plot is essential to an anime, and a really well written plot helps to keep the audience engaged. Most of the time, the sports anime follows the same devices as say, an idol anime – who is our next opponent, and what contest are we striving to win? Sports anime do a great job of keeping up the momentum, and continuing to drive the main characters towards the next goal. Similar to an angsty drama, you become engrossed in the show wanting the characters to achieve their goal. If the show does it right, you feel right there with them, experiencing every emotion they go through.
Playing a sport requires a lot of action, and that makes the anime more enjoyable to watch than say, a high school love drama. Don’t get me wrong, I love shoujo anime dramas. But a sports anime has much more action, and fewer dialogue scenes that tend to make dramas tedious in places.
Romance, bromance, and fujoshi fantasy – sports anime have it all. Typically the boys playing the sport have a female manager that can become an object of desire. There’s the opportunity for romance to happen along the way. But more likely is the aspect of “bromance” that occurs on an all male sports team that gets the girls excited. The boys bond in sometimes hysterical ways, and watching the camaraderie happen is very enticing to girls. Especially if you consider the BL audience out there – there’s someone always trying to pair boys together. It’s common for many of these sports anime to have BL doujinshi and fanart, because fujoshi want to fantasize.
Sports anime and competition-based anime, in general, bring together individuals who don’t always get along. Despite personality clashes and differences in goals, playing on the same team means having to work together. You’ll get warm feelings as you watch the team work together to overcome obstacles. Those obstacles might include facing a much better team, individuals who don’t care about rules or sportsmanship, or their team’s insecurities. With each game you watch, you sit on the edge of your seat — feeling the exact same fears they have — hoping they can win. And if they don’t, you feel that, too. You almost become one with the team you’re watching, wanting them to succeed at their goal.
Sports anime have a very special place in the hearts of girls everywhere. Share with us some of your favorite characters and teams in the comments.
Thanks for writing this article; you’ve made me slightly more interested in becoming acquainted with the sports genre. Any sports anime you would recommend to someone who is new to this genre? Or perhaps ones which guys will like and will not consider the anime to be a kind of ‘fanservice’ for the girls?
I usually prefer to watch anime where viewers can follow the character’s growth quite easily and is not too complicated in the way that I will have to have a general sense of what the sport is and the rules that correspond with it. Having spent most of my childhood studying and spending time indoors, I’m not as familiar with sports as other guys my age, so I would like to watch a sports anime which is easier for me to understand the first time through.
I also prefer to watch ones which aren’t cliched and stereotypical; ones which keep you on your toes so my initial opinion of sports anime is quite negatively biased; that in one way or another, the protagonist will win and everyone will be happy.