As the most popular genre of manga, the themes of juvenile comics are mostly blood, friendship and hard work, and the theme that can most intuitively reflect this theme in addition to fantasy adventure is undoubtedly sports. There are many sports-themed anime masterpieces in Japan, and the most popular sports in Japanese manga should still be baseball.
In baseball-themed Japanese dramas and manga, Koshien is always the central theme. One of Japan's most famous national high school baseball leagues, "Summer Koshien", just came to a gorgeous end a few days ago. Koshien Summer Tournament uses a round-robin system, and both baseball schools and dark horse schools have an equal chance to compete. As the most popular sport for Japanese boys, teenagers who dream of "national hegemony" practice throwing and swinging baseball countless times a day, just so that they can stand on the clay court of Koshien in the summer.
There are many depictions of baseball in Japanese films, television, and anime, and some are dedicated to baseball as the main line to unfold the story. For example, the popular movie "Doraemon: Walk with Me", which has a scene of Nobita and his friends playing baseball. The famous Japanese manga artist Anda Chong also has a number of works set in baseball, and "touch" is the most typical representative.
The Japanese national team has selected five baseball comics for promotion, namely "Youth Baseball Glory", "Touch", "Major", "Diamond Ace" and "Ace Pitcher" (later added "Rookies"). In fact, these five comics were selected because of the reputation of the realistic stream, and "Young Baseball Yang wei" is even earlier than touch, and is recognized as one of the originators of realistic baseball comics. Japan coach Yuki Kokubo said, "Welcome these five players to the Japanese team. I'm a wildball teenager myself, and I've grown up watching "Youth Stick" and "Touch" and looking forward to joining the Japanese team as a comic book character to unite together." It can be seen that the influence of baseball comics cannot be underestimated.
"Touch", "Baseball Hero, Girl Next Door") - Anda Chong
"Touch" is the masterpiece of Japanese manga artist Anda Chong, along with Yoichi Takahashi's "Soccer Boy" and Yuhiko Inoue's "Slam Dunk Master", which is the pinnacle of Japanese sports manga. The manga began serialization in Weekly Shonen Sunday in 1981, and the anime aired on Fuji TELEVISION from March 24, 1985 to March 22, 1987, with a total of 101 episodes. In Japan, it is no exaggeration to say that "touch" has influenced a generation, if nothing else, the name of the male protagonist Tatsuya alone has been used by many parents on their children, such as in the summer of 2016 Koshien, the champion Ofakuin Academy, its ace pitcher at the time was called Tatsuya Imai.
"Touch" is a koshien romance, and the story revolves around Tatsuya Uesugi, a "waste wood brother" who has no motivation despite his baseball talent; his twin brother Kazuya Uesugi, who is talented and promising in both learning and baseball; and The three asakura Nan, who grew up next door.
Just before the final match of the Koshien local conference, Kazuya died in a car accident, and also terminated the agreement to take Konan to Koshien. In this sad summer, Tatsuya decided to pick up his brother's unfulfilled dream, relying on his super talent, Tatsuya became Mingqing's ace pitcher, and continued to work hard towards Koshien. Finally, in the last summer of his junior year of high school, he led the school into Koshien.
The Japanese wiki entry "Wild Ball Manga" once wrote about a comparison between the magic ball stream and the realistic stream, giving three examples: the representative work of the magic ball stream is "Giant Star", and the representative work of the realistic stream is "touch" and "Nine Heroes of Adversity" (which also provides the name of another little-known baseball manga). The famous manga critic Natsume Nobunosuke also held the view that "the trend of realistic streaming of technical action in baseball comics is really driven by touch".
"H2" – Anda Chong
H2 is the mature work of Andachong's career, serialized in the magazine Weekly Shonen Sunday from 1992 to 1999, and is Andachong's longest-running manga, which was later adapted into a TV series. Anda Chong continues his own style and strengths in this work, and "h2" is also the most exquisite of all his works. Although the lengthy baseball game may make many readers who do not play baseball feel like they can't touch the north; the ending is not so easy, but it is undoubtedly the pinnacle of Anda as a cartoonist.
The name of this game comes from the names of the two male protagonists, Kunimi Hiru and Tachibana Hero, both of which contain the meaning of "hero". Set against the backdrop of Chikawa High School, the story tells the story of a fiery youth whose goal is to win the baseball championship in Koshien. Hiroo and Hero, two old friends, chose different schools when they were in high school and joined the baseball department separately, competing with each other in order to enter Koshien. "h2" is an exciting baseball game, interspersed with the four-corner love story of Bilu, Yaling, Hero, and Chunhua.
Lucky Clover (Four-Leaf Game) – Anda Chong
The legendary four-leaf clover has such a beautiful and soft poetic meaning, one leaf is prayer, the second leaf is hope, the third leaf is love, and the four leaves will gently tell you that happiness is all around you. Anda Chong's other baseball anime masterpiece, Lucky Clover, serialized in Weekly Shonen Sunday from 2005 to 2010, is the 54th shonen award winner of the Elementary School Manga Awards. There are also anime and games adapted from this.
This work has a lot of similarities with Touch, and it also tells a warm story. The Shutamura family and the Tsukishima family are family friends, and the cheerful and rough teenager Shutamura Hikaru and the second daughter of the Tsukishima family, Tsukishima Wakaba, have become friends of Aomei Takema, while Aoba and the third daughter Tsukishima Aoba are a couple that cannot be tolerated.
Hikari and Wakaba have a beautiful agreement to set Koshien. Unexpectedly, in the summer of the 5th grade of elementary school, Wakaba unfortunately fell into the water and died, causing a great blow to the people around him. In the midst of grief, the light silently buried the dreams of the two in the bottom of their hearts. As Wakaba's younger sister, Aoba felt several times more sad than others, but she chose to grit her teeth and celebrate her sister's death with practical actions.
In high school, Hikari joins the baseball department with his friends Akaishi and Nakanishi from elementary school, but at this time the baseball department has been occupied by new baseball students from outside the school and has become a tool for the principal's agent and the gate supervisor, but in order to realize Wakaba's last dream, Komitsu defeats the army of international students who oversee the gate and moves towards koshien's dream step by step.
A year later, Aoba joined Hoshihide. Once again, the two wrote about their most beautiful youth. Anda Chong's baseball comics have never been pure competitive plots, he is using the element of baseball to express some beautiful emotions, thus impressing readers. In his pen, baseball is just a part of life.
Major (Major League Baseball) – Takuya Manda
From 1994 to 2010, the manga was serialized in the Elementary School Hall "Weekly Shonen Sunday" and won the 41st Elementary School Hall Manga Award. The animated version ran for a total of six seasons between 2004 and 2010. The baseball-themed sports comic received absolute support, releasing a film version of it at the end of 2008 before the fifth season aired.
The work depicts a complete baseball world, from Japan's Junior Baseball League to National Junior League's soft baseball, from high school baseball to Japan's professional baseball, from the American Farm League to Major League, and even the World Series and Baseball World Cup. Through the continuous growth and expansion of the protagonist, the background of the story is constantly updated, telling a story of inspiration, family and friendship.
The male protagonist, Goro Honda, is a character who has loved baseball since childhood and is willing to challenge, but he is also a character with a tragic fate. He lost his mother at an early age, his father was a professional baseball player, but in a game, his father died of touching a ball, and Goro became an orphan at the age of five and was adopted by his kindergarten teacher, who later married his father's former teammate, and Goro also changed his surname to Shigeno.
In the anime, Wu Lang is undoubtedly a genius, but because of his unyielding personality, he always makes himself scaly, from the baseball to the high school, he always puts himself in a very poor environment, and then struggles to climb up, so he has not achieved a decent honor, only those who have fought with him understand how good Wu Lang is as a pitcher.
After high school, Goro came to the United States alone to challenge the Major League, and his goal was changed from Koshien to the Grand League. Step by step, he became the main pitcher of the first-tier league team, climbed to the World Series, and won the championship. Goro is a very charismatic character, he has his own characteristics, has endured hardships, and insisted on his dreams.
In this work, in fact, in addition to baseball, there are some things worth pondering, when Wu Lang approached his dream step by step, the people who played baseball with him also embarked on their own different lives, which is also a portrayal of real life, different people have their own lives after all, have their own troubles, but the previous happiness will never pass away.
"Diamond Ace" – Yuji Terajima
The manga has been serialized in Weekly Shonen Magazine since 2006 and has since been adapted into anime television and stage performances. The animated version of this work now has 126 episodes, which is also a well-made sports fan. In 2007, his work won the 53rd Shogakukan Manga Awards Junior Manga Division Award, and was the first of the weekly Shonen Manga Series to receive this award. In 2010, he was awarded the 34th Kodansha Manga Awards Junior Division.
The story tells the story of Eijun Sawamura, a talented but unknown baseball teenager, who grows up at the famous baseball school Aido High School with the goal of becoming an ace pitcher and playing in Koshien.
"Diamond Ace" can be said to be a very enthusiastic reproduction of the reality of Japanese high school baseball competition. After losing the last game of junior high school, Sawamura Eijun received an invitation from Rei Takashima, vice president of the baseball club of Tokyo Baseball FameNomichi SeijiKugaku, to the fierce battle zone of Japanese high school baseball and aspired to become the team's ace pitcher, but because his pitching has a very special nature, that is, the irregular changes in the ball he throws out, this makes Sawamura difficult in training.
Shibuya Xiao, who entered The Green Path at the same time as Sawamura, is a genius who can throw speedballs at a speed of 150 kilometers per hour, but he also has the disadvantages of poor possession and lack of physical strength, and the two players with obvious characteristics began to compete with each other, improve each other, and slowly become the pillar of the team in the lack of pitchers. At Sawamura's first local convention, the team lost in the final and failed to play Koshien. After bidding farewell to the powerful third-graders, Aido, who seems to be weak, gets a ticket to the spring Koshien, fulfilling the wishes of all the members.
This "Diamond Ace" is very in place in terms of character shaping, painting style performance, plot rendering, and there is also a more professional study for baseball. The most important thing is that it creates a very impressive atmosphere in baseball. If the works mentioned earlier are emotional anime, there are more emotional lines than baseball lines. "Diamond Ace" has more narrative about baseball, especially game scenes. And this work is a good reference to reality, such as the prototype of Inagi Industrial is Waseda Shi, and the prototype of the third year of the city is the third year of The Day, both of which are famous baseball schools in Tokyo.
"Ace Pitcher Boom Boom" - Higuchi Asahi
The manga has been serialized in Kodansha's Afternoon Magazine since 2003 and was adapted into an anime in 2007. The work is a manga about the growth of high school baseball players, focusing on sports psychology such as psychological training. It focuses on the psychological activities of the characters, shows the growth process of the characters' mental paths, and has a strong taste of innovation. In addition to the main plot, coupled with the psychological state and emotional ups and downs of the players of each team, it can be said to be a new type of baseball comic.
Saitama Prefectural Nishiura High School on the stage of the story is based on the story of the author's alma mater, the story of the transformation from a soft baseball club to a hard baseball club, and the scenery of the sports field is also presented. The protagonist Ryo Mitsuhashi is a teenager who hopes to become the ace pitcher of his team, in middle school, he is believed to rely on the relationship between his grandfather as the operator of the Samsung Academy, in order to become the ace pitcher of the school's baseball department, allowing Mitsuhashi to face the opponent's hitter alone on the pitcher hill, the result is not only that he is difficult to win in three years of middle school, but also leads to his cowardly, inferior and lonely personality, and even once considered giving up baseball.
After graduating, Mitsuhashi decided not to go directly to the higher department of Sanxing Gakuen, and transferred to Saitama Prefecture to apply for the higher education examination, and entered the prefectural XJTLU College. He wandered around the club exhibition, and then walked to the baseball department with the mood of just looking, but unexpectedly was half-forced to join by coach Hyakuden Maria, all members of the school's baseball department are first-year students, and have just transitioned from soft baseball to hard baseball. Under the guidance of catcher Takaya Abe, Mitsuhashi exerted his hard-working ability to control the ball with great precision, and through one game after another, strict training that took into account both technical and psychological aspects, and close interaction between teammates, Mitsuhashi gradually found self-confidence and a sense of trust among friends, and the whole team worked together towards the goal of winning Koshien.
Rookies – Morita Makoto
The manga was serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump from 1998 to 2003 and was later remade into a television series and movie. Strong black and white contrast, mature use of lenses, people who have watched "Rookies" believe that they will be impressed by Morita's painting style, and the young and enthusiastic college teachers have reorganized the baseball department where bad teenagers gather. Embark on the journey of the race, these bad teenagers also find common goals in these processes, grow and change.
Giant Star – Kajiwara Ride
The Giant Star, originally written by Kajihara Kajihara and painted by Nobu Kawasaki, was serialized in Kodansha's Weekly Shonen Magazine in 1966, and as soon as it was released, it became a bestseller, and after being changed to an anime, it became a hit and became a pioneer in sports-themed animation.
This anime tells the story of the protagonist Star Flying Male Horse with the dream of becoming a star of the Giants, under the strict training of his father, through continuous hard training, he trained a super high ball speed and grew into a well-known pitcher in the baseball world. It can be said that this is a work full of mud, harsh training, DC sweat, full of scars, are expressing the difficulty of realizing the dream, but the protagonist's never-say-die spirit also deeply infects the audience, and also makes this anime a classic of baseball anime.
"Baseball Boy"—Atsuko Asano
The anime Wild Ball Boy, also known as TouyaMate, is based on a children's literary novel by Atsuko Asano and aired on Fuji Television's noitamina on July 14, 2016. It mainly tells the story of Pitcher Harada Akira, who has the talent to pull out baseball, and in the mountain town of Nitta City, where he moved to junior high school, he meets Nagakura Hiroshi, a catcher who can use his full strength to pitch. The two who entered the baseball department of Nitta East Middle School were involved in friction between the staff and the adult affairs of the teachers, and sometimes clashed with each other, at the same time, as pitchers and catchers, the two became partners on the road to growth.
Compared with other sports anime, this "Wild Ball Boy" is more like a fresh growth story, the overall painting style is light, the plot is soothing, like a literary and artistic work, it is more inclined to show getting along and growing up, and it is a unique baseball animation.
"Big Rice Bucket" – Shinji Mizushima
Shinji Mizushima is known as the first person in the field of baseball comics, and since 1969, he has created more than forty baseball comics back and forth, and the number is amazing. This "Big Rice Bucket" is the representative work of Water Island. It tells the story of the male protagonist Yamada Taro, who was born in poverty and looked fat and round, and stepped onto the road of baseball step by step by relying on his optimistic and competitive attitude.
In fact, when Mizushima was creating, he had a lot of references to his life experience, Mizushima always wanted to play baseball at a famous baseball school when he was a student, but because of his family's poverty, he failed to realize it, and he later expressed this strong desire in his works, in fact, in Japan, there are many people like this baseball dream, and because of this, baseball comics have such a sense of resonance.
Baseball As the national ball of Japan, many boys have had dreams of baseball since elementary school, and Koshien's goal has almost run through their entire adolescence. In that summer, whether you win or lose, the experience of "participating in the summer Koshien" is enough to become a precious memory for a lifetime. At the most shining age, fighting for honor, friendship, and simple love, even if you are not a keen follower of baseball, you can't help but be impressed by the enthusiasm of the boys.
Of course, not only the participating players, not only the boys, every student in the team's school is in contact with Koshien - the support team, the blowing department, the logistics support, and even the audience cheering and shouting in the audience are all participants in this youth, which is why Koshien can evoke resonance.
Boys will hardly have the opportunity to devote themselves to it for a long time after they become adults. Every young and fearless soul and every smile and tearful look is the most charming charm of Koshien and the brightest secret in the hearts of these teenagers.