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Description of an infamious episode of the late 1960s adaptaion of Star of the Giants, the first sports manga anime adaption, from Anime: A History by Jonithan Clements. The entire episode consists of one pitch and one hit:quote:[The episode] builds the tension on the pitcher’s mound, as the pitcher draws back his arm and throws the ball. Exploiting the potentially infinite camera positions available to animators, the script zooms in and out of multiple perspectives — the inner monologue of the pitcher himself and the calculating throughs of the batter he faces; the commentary of the excitable journalists in the outside-broadcast booth; viewers at home yelling at the television; fans in the bleachers; team members on both sides; the pitchers father and dewey-eyed love interest. Coupled with shots of the arena, sudden zooms and splitscreen effects, flashbacks and voiceovers, the sequence occupies the entire first half of the episode, cutting to the commercial break just as the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand. After the commercials, the episode continues with a similar hyperreal deformation of time, pursuing the ball’s trajectory towards the batter, the bat’s connection with the ball, and the frenzy of action among both teams as the batter hits a homerun. There’s a huge amount of sports manga adaptions coming out this season, so I’ve rounded them up in this thread for you! Haikyu!!  Sport: Volleyball Description: Shorty with mad jumps (Shōyō Hinata) is enamored enough with vollyball to somehow keep alive a middle school boys volleyball team where he is the only permanent member. In high school he ends up on a team with his rival, a setter with a bad attitude nicknamed “The King of the Court” (Tobio Kageyama). Burning Spirit: MAX Gay: 5 out of 5 doujinshi More notes: It’s by Production I.G., and like their other sports anime it’s rather pretty. And this time it isn't boring as hell Watch it on Crunchyroll Baby Steps  Sport: Tennis Description: Honor student with helarious hair Eiichirō Maruo checks out tennis club as a way to get more exercise, becomes friends with Natsu Takasaki: a girl (!!??) who’s trying to become a professional player. Dork level: 5 out of 5 Desk-kuns. Ei-chan’s superpower is taking freakishly detailed notes, which he applies to tennis. Gay: With male and female leads, this looks like the least gay sports anime since Chihayafuru. Watch it on Crunchyroll Rowdy Sumo Wrestler Matsutaro  Sport: Sumo wrestling Description: Matsutarō Sakaguchi is gross, an idiot, and a giant rear end in a top hat. In the first episode he bullies test answers in the middle of a test and literally steals candy from a baby, and like I’m leaving off the stuff he does that’s even less likable. We haven't gotten to actual sumo wrestling yet but if he continues to be so amazingly pathetic this might be the best thing. Watch it on Crunchyroll Two other shows already have their own threads: Ping Pong  Thread here! Non english speaking countries can grab it on Crunchyroll. Americans can grab it from Funimation. Yowapeda (Yowamushi Pedal)  Here's the thread. This one started in the fall, and it's continuing into this spring. Watch it on Crunchyroll devtesla fucked around with this message at 16:28 on Apr 13, 2014 |
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Apr 7, 2014 19:21
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Oh, and that book I pulled the quote from, Anime: A History by Jonithan Clements, is really great and you should check it out!
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Apr 7, 2014 19:24
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I like the mangas for Haikyuu!! and Baby Steps, so I'm glad that the anime adaptions are good so far. Hopefully it doesn't turn into a case like Eyeshield 21 with its terrible show version. Can't get enough of that shounen spirit!
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Apr 7, 2014 20:37
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Speaking of Pin-Pong the ANN article has the first ep airing Thursday at 12:50 PM ET. Maybe they don't feel like making a page until the last minute, for whatever reason.
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Apr 7, 2014 20:50
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ViggyNash posted:Speaking of Pin-Pong the ANN article has the first ep airing Thursday at 12:50 PM ET. Maybe they don't feel like making a page until the last minute, for whatever reason. Funimation tends to leave that stuff until a day or 2 until the simulcast starts.
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Apr 7, 2014 22:02
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Haikyu!! seems really good, glad I decided to watch it. Reminds me why I like these "Burning Spirit" kinds of sports anime, I think I'll give Yowapeda a shot too.
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Apr 8, 2014 00:47
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Haikyu is great, and I think volleyball really lends itself to manga/anime since it has relatively short but frantic bursts of action and everyone on the team has set roles.
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Apr 8, 2014 12:02
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I can't believe Haikyuu was the show that did this to me but after watching it and getting extremely Chihayafuru/Oofuri vibes I immediately went to the store and dropped about $10 dollars to get about 6 volumes and read them all. While I don't have the same commitment or stakes in Haikyuu that I do in Ping Pong or Mushishi it's definitely the surprise of the season for me. I wasn't expecting it to be good, I'm not super into Sports Anime (Other than the aforementioned) but this hooked me instantly. It helps that it's well animated and the voice acting is good! I am super into it, and I really like the characters. Definitely one of the few things to actually watch this season.
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Apr 12, 2014 17:42
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I apologize if this doesnt belong in the thread because its not from this season, but does anyone watch Ace of the Diamond around here? Now I admit I love baseball, but I pretty much hate sports themed tv shows/movies. I dont know what it is but I watched the first episode because I had nothing better to do and found myself enjoying it quite a bit.
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Apr 12, 2014 21:16
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It's from the same season as Yowamushi Pedal so I think it counts! I've seen about 8 episodes and I liked it. I mainly fell behind because there were plenty of other shows airing that I liked more, but it's something I mean to catch up on some day. I can't think of many sports anime/manga where the main character is already talented enough to be scouted by one of the top schools, that's for sure. It's an interesting way to go instead of the usual scrappy underdog sort of story.
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Apr 12, 2014 21:20
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Ace of Diamond is pretty decent. The main character is the typical shounen super-sincere talented idiot. His raw ability got him scouted, but he knows virtually nothing about baseball because he was just playing for fun with his friends in a terrible team. I like that, even though it is mainly about the pitchers and catchers, it does not completely ignore the other players. Unlike some other shounen shows, I never felt like I wanted it to hurry up. It does not feel like it drags during the inevitable training camp, and it takes like 20 episodes to get into the beginning of the tournament. Those episodes build the characters and establish the team dynamic.
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Apr 12, 2014 22:12
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Haikyu is moving at a respectable pace and it is still impressing me with its overall sense of visual metaphor and animation direction. On top of that, every member of the team is perfectly cast. I don't have much to say that wouldn't devolve into babble so I'm just gonna say I'm glad they're moving this quickly and are maintaining the bar of quality.
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Apr 13, 2014 15:45
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DurosKlav posted:I apologize if this doesnt belong in the thread because its not from this season, but does anyone watch Ace of the Diamond around here? Thanks for bringing it up actually. The only reason it isn't in the OP is that I haven't seen it, and I haven't seen it cause I was kind of under the impression that it was boring? I'll check it out though. laplace posted:Haikyu is moving at a respectable pace and it is still impressing me with its overall sense of visual metaphor and animation direction. On top of that, every member of the team is perfectly cast. I like that literally the first practice and a few things after that counts as moving quickly. Sports anime!
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Apr 13, 2014 16:24
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Seconding Haikyu being fantastic. Great writing, great animation, great cast. e: I didn't think there was anything wrong with the pacing personally. ViggyNash fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Apr 13, 2014 |
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Apr 13, 2014 19:12
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ViggyNash posted:Seconding Haikyu being fantastic. Great writing, great animation, great cast. It is great but I was annoyed by the pace. Maybe a side-effect of an action-packed pilot.
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Apr 13, 2014 21:08
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I realized while watching the second episode that the female lead in Baby Steps is basically a jock who bullies notes out of a dork before bullying her way into his heart 💕. The second ep of Rowdy Sumo Wrestler Matsutaro was pretty average until the last scene, where the main character finally gets clocked in the face. XboxPants posted:It is great but I was annoyed by the pace. Maybe a side-effect of an action-packed pilot. I joked about Haikyu!!'s pace, but there was more than enough going on in that episode even though it wasn't over that long of a time frame. A bunch of characters got good introductions, the dialog was snappy and filled the whole half hour, and the stakes of the next episode were set. It's not economic storytelling by any means but there were no unearned stretches of nothing or repetition for the sake of filler. And there were a bunch of people getting hit in the face with a volleyball, that counts for a lot.
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Apr 13, 2014 22:21
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Apr 13, 2014 22:32
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The Devil Tesla posted:I realized while watching the second episode that the female lead in Baby Steps is basically a jock who bullies notes out of a dork before bullying her way into his heart 💕. Yeah all that's definitely true. But she reminds me of Nishino from Ichigo 100% so she gets a free pass on everything from me.
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Apr 13, 2014 22:57
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Apr 13, 2014 23:55
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You're missing the best part of that scene. TENNIS SPERGIN' TIME.  DON'T DO THIS. Bad idea. More likely than not, you'll get hit in the face with the ball, or the kid's racket. Or both. And trust me, kids never swing soft. It's in their nature to whack every ball over the fence.  Heh, maybe in anime land. As far as I know, the ONLY Japanese tennis player I know who is any good is Kei Nishikori, the highest ranked Japanese player ever at 11, which is pretty drat good. Anyone in the top 10 has made history, 30 can be called successful, 100 can be called good, and everyone else is either just barely getting by either because they are varying levels of unlucky, or just suck rear end (relatively; they could still wipe the floor against 99% of the world). As of now, there are very few asian players, let alone Japanese, that are actually good. On the women's side, there's only Li Na (China) at 2 (she has a very interesting life story), and on the men's side there's Nishikori at 18 and Hen-Hsun Lu at 51 (Taiwan). Doubles doesn't fare much better with only a couple Indians and a Pakistani (very interesting relationship) on the men's side and a couple Chinese and a Taiwanese on the women's side. Tennis is pretty much dominated by Europeans, especially Russia. The US only has a couple good players and a few ok players, and Britain has all their hopes riding on the lonely Andy Murray, currently ranked 8. Serving: I couldn't get a good gif of it, but that speed is pretty absurd. Not that it can't be hit that fast (I probably could if I tried), but that's more of a pro player's default serve, not a high school player's practice serve. You're gonna break your shoulder practicing like that.  He found the sweet spot. Hitting the ball there is always a great feeling, mostly because there's very little shock/vibration when the ball hits there. Hitting the sweet spot maximizes the elastic energy of the strings, and the momentum of the racket, that goes into the ball. Otherwise you'll generally feel some amount of vibration and instability in the racket as you hit. The sweet spot is different for every racket and string setup. A larger racket with high tension strings will have a massive sweet spot, but a weak one. A smaller racket with lower tension strings is going to have a minuscule sweet spot, but if you hit it that ball will fly like it was fired out of a cannon. Differences in the sweet spot also affects spin in odd ways, and is usually what people mean when they talk about the "feel" of a racket. What kind of sweet spot you want depends on your play style and what feels good to you. Good form only amplify's that feeling, and that screenshot is pretty good form.  This is me trying to hit a backhand after 2 weeks of not playing. My hand goes all wonky and jittery when I try to parse hitting a backhand and I just end up doing lazy slices instead. ViggyNash fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Apr 14, 2014 |
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Apr 13, 2014 23:57
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I dunno I'm just playing tennis 
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Apr 14, 2014 00:02
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ViggyNash posted:
Uh, I know dick all about Tennis and don't feel like googling this, but perhaps she meant "pro within Japan" and not "pro Worldwide"? So that makes a little bit more sense if there is a pro circuit in Japan.
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Apr 14, 2014 00:03
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The Black Stones posted:Uh, I know dick all about Tennis and don't feel like googling this, but perhaps she meant "pro within Japan" and not "pro Worldwide"? So that makes a little bit more sense if there is a pro circuit in Japan. When people say "pro tennis", you're talking about being part of the ATP (or the WTA, since she's a girl), which is a global organization that ranks players on a point system based on how they place in ATP recognized tournaments. For a lower level ATP player (somewhere in the hundreds in the rankngs), the majority of your income will be tournament winnings, which isn't as much as you think. But at the higher levels, 100 and up, companies will start to pay you sponsorship money to wear/play with their stuff, and the tournament prize pools will be a lot higher. The US Open currently has the highest prize at $2.6 Mil, which you can increase if you come first in the US Open Series, which is a series of slightly lower level tournaments across the country. My point is if you want to make a living playing tennis you can't stop at the national level. e: I mean there's always the option of becoming a certified coach if you think you can't make the big leagues (I assume there's some kind of certification for coaches in Japan), but I'm getting more of a "compete at a professional level" vibe from her. ViggyNash fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Apr 14, 2014 |
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Apr 14, 2014 00:16
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Is it possible she meant something like "got their foot in the door but ultimately had to find some other work?" As far as I know there's only one Japanese player in the series who's clearly a world talent and he's just starting out as a pro. It's a strange line since it's not like there's a stable of pros in the series.
jackofarcades fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Apr 14, 2014 |
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Apr 14, 2014 00:29
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ViggyNash, are you sure about your info? Wikipedia has info on lots of other Japanese pro players, even among the top 100. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Japanese_tennis_players Also consider that comment may have been "many of our students have turned pro over the past 20/30/50 years" or whatever.
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Apr 14, 2014 00:37
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XboxPants posted:ViggyNash, are you sure about your info? Wikipedia has info on lots of other Japanese pro players, even among the top 100. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Japanese_tennis_players There's a single Japanese male singles player currently in the top 100, and 3 Japanese females I've never heard of before currently in the top 100. I'm sure there have been more throughout history (Michael Chang (China) was a big name in the 90's), but Nishikori is one of the very few big asian names currently. As for the second part, assuming the club has been around for a few decades, then I suppose that was probably what she meant. Not sure why I didn't parse it as that.
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Apr 14, 2014 00:44
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ViggyNash posted:There's a single Japanese male singles player currently in the top 100, and 3 Japanese females I've never heard of before currently in the top 100. I'm sure there have been more throughout history (Michael Chang (China) was a big name in the 90's), but Nishikori is one of the very few big asian names currently. To be fair they don't really focus on the club as being some huge institution or anything and it kinda comes off more like a neighborhood tennis club. They don't really give the impression that it has been around for decades, though it's certainly possible. Is tennis the kind of thing where you might go pro for like a year or so, but you don't do that well and you're a nobody that no-one ever hears about, and then just wash out pretty quickly?
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Apr 14, 2014 01:00
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XboxPants posted:To be fair they don't really focus on the club as being some huge institution or anything and it kinda comes off more like a neighborhood tennis club. They don't really give the impression that it has been around for decades, though it's certainly possible. That probably happens all the time in the lower tiers, but considering that no one knew them in the first place they don't ever get mentioned. There are rankings for over 1500 people, on both the men's and women's side, not even counting doubles, but the only names people generally care about are in the top 150 or so for singles, and maybe the top 50 or so for doubles.
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Apr 14, 2014 01:12
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Hrm, as usual I can't stand the weekly wait, so I went ahead and checked out the Baby Steps manga. Ran out of material after 29 volumes, but it's remarkably good. Reminds me a lot of Hajime no Ippo, with the way it's centered around sports outside of school clubs, and has a focus on going professional. Doesn't hurt that the romance actually moves forward every now and then. I just suffered through 38 volumes of Area no Kishi, where it wouldn't move an inch. The direction, music and animation for the Haikyuu anime is so good I'll actually make an attempt at ignoring the manga for now. Perfect first episode, and still fun in the second. Great faces. Yowamushi Pedal's anime looked nice too, but as usual I simply couldn't wait. Decided to give it a break after 28 volumes or so, before it launches into another arc. Very enjoyable manga, particularly successful with introducing opponents in a sympathetic way. Rough art, though. I love sports manga.  Too bad there isn't an infinite amount of it out there.
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Apr 15, 2014 22:56
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darkgray posted:Hrm, as usual I can't stand the weekly wait, so I went ahead and checked out the Baby Steps manga. Ran out of material after 29 volumes, but it's remarkably good. Reminds me a lot of Hajime no Ippo, with the way it's centered around sports outside of school clubs, and has a focus on going professional. Doesn't hurt that the romance actually moves forward every now and then. I just suffered through 38 volumes of Area no Kishi, where it wouldn't move an inch. I ended up reading all the translated stuff thats out there as well. Ended up doing that with Ace of the Diamond when that first started too.
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Apr 15, 2014 23:16
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I started watching Ace of the Diamond after it was mentioned here, and it's surprisingly good! I don't really know anything about baseball, but the presentation and nice animation made it easier for me to follow and enjoy. I was surprised I liked it considering that I couldn't get into Ookiku Furikabutte at all. Sure, the main guy is a hot-blooded shounen idiot, but I found it charming because he's optimistic and actually does a lot of training. It's refreshing to have a sports anime/manga MC not become immediately overpowered after one or two playing sessions. Another thing I liked is how the main rivalry isn't comprised of exaggerated hostility and malice like a lot of sports series; the characters actually somewhat respect each other for once. Also I just find the way the main character shouts "CHRIS-SENPAI  " hilarious so whatever, haters gonna hate
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Apr 19, 2014 05:21
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For those loving sports manga/anime I would recommend One Outs. It's Seinen so a little bit less about burning shounen spirit etc. but it's really good. Both the anime and manga are finished. The Anime covers about half of the manga. The series is about Toua Tokichi, a gambler who is really good at a game called One Outs and who then gets pulled into professional baseball by a pro he met during a gamble with his own unique contract.
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Apr 19, 2014 09:31
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One Outs is cool because it's by the Liar Game guy and is basically Akagi but with baseball.
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Apr 19, 2014 11:02
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For sports manga, I recommend Giant Killing. It is a more realistic look at the sport and also talks about fans, players, coaches, and the backroom staff. It is probably the best football/soccer manga out there.
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Apr 19, 2014 17:03
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psyer posted:For sports manga, I recommend Giant Killing. It is a more realistic look at the sport and also talks about fans, players, coaches, and the backroom staff. It is probably the best football/soccer manga out there. Is it readable if your soccer knowledge consists of "Bunch of guys that kick ball in goal." ?
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Apr 19, 2014 18:28
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I'm p sure that's literally all there is to know about soccer.
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Apr 19, 2014 18:30
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The Devil Tesla posted:I'm p sure that's literally all there is to know about soccer. I'm p sure that there are famous teams, organizations and events associated with the sport and some works are going to make the assumption that you know this sort of stuff so I figured I'd ask before diving in.
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Apr 19, 2014 18:40
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AVeryLargeRadish posted:I'm p sure that there are famous teams, organizations and events associated with the sport and some works are going to make the assumption that you know this sort of stuff so I figured I'd ask before diving in. Just from memory it seldom tends to stick on matches a lot and rather tells the story of the team off the pitch but for when they play it tends to explain things pretty nicely (I think it has explanations either in footnotes or for some other stuff in after chapter explanations). At least I can't remember anything that would hinder the enjoyment due to a knowledge barrier but then again I'm a football/soccer fan so it might not be obvious to me and you might want to get someone else' opinion.
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Apr 19, 2014 19:45
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Matsutaro is a weird show so far. The plot has been pretty dumb and visually it's fairly mediocre, but somehow there hasn't been anything about it that's made me want to stop watching it. I am sad that the trend of something terrible happening to Matsutaro at the end of every episode didn't continue, though.
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Apr 20, 2014 06:50
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Baby Steps is pretty cool, I absolutely love that it's just "really studious guy spergs out about every minute detail about tennis and Gets Good" combined with it being a sort of perpetual training arc that I so love from my burning spirit genre.CVE posted:For those loving sports manga/anime I would recommend One Outs. It's Seinen so a little bit less about burning shounen spirit etc. but it's really good. Both the anime and manga are finished. The Anime covers about half of the manga. This show is so good I can't believe it isn't something that more manga authors don't try to do. "Akagi but with baseball" is 100% correct and it's a blast to watch, I also love how the main character is designed and the way he stands out against all of the other actual baseball players.
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Apr 20, 2014 12:54
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