Tuesday, October 22, 2013

My thoughts on Sports anime

i've made it fairly clear that i'm not the biggest fan of aport anime.

i never got into prince of tennis.

anything that has a tournament in it tends to bore me to tears (sport or otherwise)


and any show that has the "if i just believe in myself i'll suddenly have a huge spike in improvement" every few episodes tends to just irritate me.



yet lately... i've been watching quite a few titles that could be called sports anime (though one is a little borderline)



It all started with Kuroko's Basketball.

i watched it simply cause i liked the character design, i played basketball myself for a while and was curious how could be done in an anime and i was giving a lot of shows a chance cause i had the crunchyroll subscription anyways.

and i loved it.

then (or around the saem time cause they may have been in the same season) i watched chihayafuru which is the rare "shoujo/sport" anime title... and i loved everything about it even though i didn't know a damn thing abotu the sport they were playing... but the rules were introduced slow enough so even someone who has to deal with the culture shock aspect can understand.



So this season when there were quite a few sports shows i was a little less pessimistic.

Kuroko's Basketball 2 - love it

Yowapeda - even though i hate bikes (i really really really hate bikes) i love this show.

hajime no ippo - kinda lost so i could get into it

ace of the diamond - . . . what a piece of crap.



so that got me thinking... is there a common thread through these shows that make them enjoyable to me (and only to me cause i've established my taste is strange and all over the map)



well it's not the fact that i like the sport cause the only one i've seen that was a sport i played was Kurobasket.... and if they made a paintball anime i'd probably be bored (or yelling at them if they took of their masks in the middle of the field so that we can see their face but is the dumbest thing you can do on the field) and like i said... not a fan of bikes and never even heard of karuta before chihayafuru.



it's not the art cause all of these have varying levels of 'prettiness'

it's not the music (though using grandrodeo or rookiez is punked is a quick way to get on my good side)



so it must be the characters.

In kurobas kuroko is a short, invisble and mostly unremarkabl guy who just happens to have a bit of an odd personality, a love for basketball and is pretty good at passing if nothing else.

Chihaya starts her series barely able to remember the poems in karuta but after years of playing and forming friendships through the game she works hard to make it a club in her school and make that club the best in japan.

yowapeda has the main character on a crappy bike but able to bike crazy distances since he's been doing it for a long time to fuel his anime addiction.



Ace of the diamond has the main character approached by the best school in tokyo and is given an oppertunity to go there but he doesn't want to cause his friends go somewhere else and then he goes to try it out anyways and omg he's so unique and special and he's getting better and

and

you know what? no i don't care... he may or may not have worked to get where he is but from what i saw he pretty much gets handed everything right away with no effort (or at least no effort that we the viewer see)



and thats the problem, the other three aren't aware how good they are or hold themself back with self doubt.... or they are just so obssessed with the sport that they don't care if they are good or not.

but most sports shows have the main character be awesome and kickass and do everything without trying and when he does need to try he just looks inside his heart and with whatever bullshit he still manages to pull through and win without all that pesky training.



but in the end this just just me rambling~ cause that's what i do
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