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The Dawn of the Sports Boys: Captain Tsubasa

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Tsubasa, the spiky-haired hero of Captain Tsubasa, delivering a powerful midair kick to a soccer ball that looks more like he's launching a laser beam from his foot.

As an anime and manga fan, I enjoy checking out the big fan favorites of yesteryear. It helps broaden my perspective on these artforms, and gives me an opportunity to form my own opinions on a work and not rely solely on the views of others. And who knows—maybe I’ll get a new favorite. In this spirit, I recently familiarized myself with a manga that is not only beloved worldwide for its portrayal of soccer but also the father of the modern shounen “team sports boys” format. Before Blue Lock, Yowamushi Pedal, Haikyu!, Prince of Tennis, and Slam Dunk, there was 1981’s Captain Tsubasa by Takahashi Yoichi.

Regarding reading older major titles, Shounen Jump has been a consistent resource of works for me to tap, such as Saint Seiya and Hunter x Hunter. But while these titles are huge in their own right, Captain Tsubasa’s influence is really something special.

In Japan, Captain Tsubasa helped propel the popularity of soccer nationwide, even being published in a time when “World Cup” wasn’t even a commonly known phrase. Abroad, it gained popularity anywhere soccer was. On my most recent trip to Japan, I watched an episode of Why Did You Come to Japan?, a well-known program that interviews foreigners who are in Japan. This particular episode followed a German fan who made a pilgrimage just out of love for the series, during which he got to visit the real inspiration for the school in the series, among other things. There’s also a famous story about the occupation of Iraq by the US military, where water trucks were covered with images from Captain Tsubasa to show that they were friendly vehicles.

Creating love for soccer at home and garnering praise internationally for its portrayal of the sport are parts of the legacy of Captain Tsubasa. But it was also important in another area that has become a prominent part of anime and manga culture: doujinshi. In my review of the giant robot anime God Mars (also from 1981), I described it as one two series fundamental to the establishment of the fujoshi fandom as we know it today—the other was Captain Tsubasa. Having read the entirety of the first manga series, I now feel that I understand exactly why this story of young soccer athletes achieved the hat trick of domestic influence, international acceptance, and subculture proliferation.

Let’s talk about the actual story: Captain Tsubasa kicks off with a hell of an introduction to its main character, Ozora Tsubasa. As a small child, Tsubasa is literally saved from a truck by a soccer ball (avoiding the isekai protagonist fate, in the modern parlance), and his life is forever changed. The boy falls in love with the sport, treating the ball like an extension of his body. And as Tsubasa grows from impetuous kid to adult with soccer in his heart (though I only read up to the point where he finishes middle school), he influences every other player he meets, be they friendly or adversarial or both.

Those looking at Captain Tsubasa, especially from a modern perspective, might be surprised by its aesthetic, expecting a title known for its various fandoms to either have characters who look impossibly cool or incredibly beautiful. Instead, Takahashi’s designs feature ridiculously long and stilt-like legs, squashed craniums, and bird-like eye placement that makes it seem as if the characters can see in two different directions at once. How could this possibly be the series that helped spark soccer fandom and spawned shounen sports BL shipping? Yet, despite the odd look of the characters themselves, two things become clear even from the very beginning. 

First, the manga is fantastic at depicting action and tension. When portraying things like passing, dribbling, and goal attempts, the art is very clear and easy to follow while still creating excitement. When the athletes use their ridiculous signature moves (that aren’t meant to be supernatural but still play fast and loose with the laws of physics), there’s a satisfying sense of weight and emotion. The paneling frequently takes advantage of the double page spread to portray very wide shots, especially when points are being scored. It almost feels as if Takahashi made some kind of pact that made him a genius at depicting characters in action in exchange for being bad at drawing them standing still. 

A bunch of manga characters who are elementary school boys in soccer uniforms. Most of the kids look to be realistically young, but the one in front is weirdly lanky and muscular.
Kojiro as a gigantic grade schooler

They’re also all weirdly mature-looking. Some 10-year-olds look like they’re 16, while some 14-year-olds look like they’re 30—something we see in later titles like Prince of Tennis.

Second, many of the tropes of the shounen sports boys genre—namely having a wide-ranging cast of passionate guys engaging in intense forms of camaraderie and rivalry—are on full display here. Wakabayashi Genzo the goalkeeper starts off as Tsubasa’s first antagonist while later developing a nagging ankle injury that stymies him at dramatic moments. Misaki Taro is a student from out of town who becomes Tsubasa’s most reliable partner on offense, but who can only play for their school for a year before his family has to move away. Ace striker Hyuga Kojiro sees Tsubasa as the man he must take down, and his violent, win-at-all-costs mentality comes from a heartfelt desire to support his family. Wakashimazu Ken is a reliable goalkeeper for Kojiro who utilizes his karate background to defy what should be possible in soccer. Matsuyama Hikaru emphasizes teamwork above all else as the captain of his team. Misogi Jun is a handsome and noble all-around genius who would be the greatest youth player in Japan if not for his congenital heart disease that limits his playtime. And there are other characters.

If you were to ask who is Tsubasa’s greatest rival/partner, there really is no clear answer, making the series ripe for explorations of the imagination of various kinds. All the ingredients are there, whether one is reading for the competitive soccer or the bromances, and it’s doubly powerful when you realize how these very characters fueled their archetypal descendents in the following decades. 

It’s also worth noting that all the female characters are the kinds of managers and sideline supporters typical of sports boys series, except that this was an era when they were clearly intended to be romantic partners down the line instead of mainly audience-perspective characters. For example, Tsubasa’s main love interest, Nakazawa Sanae, starts off as a tomboyish ouendan-style cheer squad leader but becomes more “feminine” over time. I actually got a little miffed that the story couldn’t even keep that fun aspect of Sanae’s character. It’s no wonder why the female fans gravitated towards guy-guy pairings, regardless of their inclinations towards BL in the first place.

Two spiky-haired teenage manga boys (who look unusually tall and mature) trying to kick a ball at the same time in midair, which makes them look like they're clashing as martial artists.

But when Captain Tsubasa is at full strength, the excitement jumps off the page. The matches start off as exaggerated depictions of actual soccer before transforming into something that looks more like a battle manga at times. Many scenes feature opposing players clashing in mid-air like they’re Fist of the North Star characters who happen to have a soccer ball between them, and while it does start to feel ridiculous, I can’t deny the infectious energy. Though its tropes are old hat in the realm of sports boys at this point, the series holds up very well. There’s so much manly passion in this manga that it’s no wonder it formed so many different fandoms and even played a part in making soccer a national sport in Japan. 

Personally speaking, the ball is not my friend, but maybe Captain Tsubasa is now.

A Rival of Her Own: Odagiri Manabu vs. Amamiya Maya in Shoujo Fight

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Shortly after I reviewed the first 16 volumes of the manga Shoujo Fight (or Shojo Fight), Volume 17 was released in English. I normally wouldn’t write about the same series after just one volume, but the introduction of an antagonistic character named Amamiya Maya has set off a compelling rivalry. However, rather than with the protagonist, Oishi Neri, the rivalry is between Amamiya and Neri’s best friend, Odagiri Manabu.

Many sports manga revel in the relationships between side characters, Shoujo Fight included, but up until recently, Manabu’s have been more about developing friendships—and one romance. This has all changed with the appearance of Amamiya, and what makes this particular rivalry stick out in my mind is the way it brings out a fiery side of Manabu that is also true to her otherwise gentle demeanor.

Amamiya is the captain of another volleyball team, but she also went to the same elementary school as Neri and Manabu. She’s essentially a narcissistic sociopath with a knack for social engineering, and she uses this skill to both manipulate her unwitting allies and extort her enemies. As young children, Manabu was on the receiving end of Amamiya’s exploitative actions while also being resistant to them—her caring and genuine heart the total opposite of Amamiya’s. In current times, Manabu is shown to instinctively recognize Amamiya’s tactics, and she bristles at the way the latter controls her teammates. Amamiya also has an obsession with mirroring Neri that contrasts Manabu’s own complementary bond with Neri, setting them up as “equals” of sorts. 

As of Volume 17, Amamiya’s facade is starting to slip, but it’s notable that this isn’t solely because of Manabu’s actions. Other characters, including older ones with more life experience, are starting to call out Amamiya’s actions and behavior, and the cumulative effect between them and Manabu might be the key to breaking the sociopath’s hold on her teammates. I’m eagerly anticipating Volume 18 to see how this all turns out.

Rise of the Dojo Dojikko: Mabataki Yori Hayaku!!

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“Schoolgirls engaging in team tournaments” is a fairly specific yet common premise in manga that I really enjoy. Whether it’s a beloved series like Bamboo Blade or underdogs canceled early like Haru Polish and Hana Kaku, I’m always up for stories in this vein. On top of that, I’ve also found a casual interest in reading up on and researching martial arts in recent years. So when I saw Mabataki Yori Hayaku!! (Faster than a Blink!!), a manga about a girls’ sport karate club with cute art and solid action, it immediately felt like something right up my alley.

Kohanai Himari, a perpetually clumsy girl with a caring heart, is inspired to join her school’s karate club after a girl retrieves Hima’s umbrella from a guy who swiped it on a rainy day. Everyone—including Himari herself— thinks she’s a hopeless case, but the club’s veterans notice that there might be more to Himari than meets the eye. While she’s lacking in athleticism, knowledge, and experience, Himari has unusually sharp and perceptive vision—an X-factor that might turn her untapped potential into something more.  

I’ve read four volumes so far, and one thing I really like about Mabataki Yori Hayaku is how slowly and gradually Himari improves, and how she isn’t just an overnight sensation. Not only are there girls physically more capable than she is, most are also more practiced and dedicated. She still feels very much like the underdog in all situations, and not the shounen hero kind who will pull out their secret technique and turn it all around. But the manga shows how her initial hesitant steps into the world of karate get larger and larger—as her enthusiasm grows, the confidence shows in her body.

The other characters also range from endearing to entertaining to compelling, whether it’s clubmates or rivals. The club president is a surprisingly rough-and-tumble sort who loves karate but has family issues with her sister. Another girl in the club, the razor-toothed and twin-tailed Izawa Sora, has both experience and a disdain for those who don’t take karate seriously, a feeling that we eventually learn hits all too close to home. A couple of characters from other schools see Himari’s latent potential, and they want to bring it out. No one seems boring so far, though one girl is the requisite “explain for the newbies” character, and there are times (especially when their hair is down) that it can become difficult to distinguish between characters. However, the characters are still generally expressive and memorable.

The artwork itself also goes a long way in conveying that character charm, especially when it comes to the portrayal of karate itself. There’s a dramatic sense of action that exaggerates just enough without feeling like it’s parodying sport karate, which is about landing light hits in a points-based system, unlike full-contact karate. The author, Funatsu Kazuki, actually has more experience drawing horny titles, though that largely doesn’t factor into the art in Mabataki Yori Hayaku!!—kind of tough when literally every girl is in a baggy gi. That said, the thirst does occasionally shine through, especially in the high kicks.

As for the decision to use sport karate instead of full-contact, it reminds me of the criticism sport karate can get for not being like a “real fight.” But this is actually depicted as an appealing quality, and it’s one of the reasons gentle Himari decides to take up karate in the first place. This is a series about competition, but no one wants to prove they’d win on the streets. 

Whether Himari grows into a champion or not, following her journey is entertaining and uplifting. Now, if only this series doesn’t end too early. 

Swish! Swoosh! Basketball Isn’t Just for Guys Anymore: B-Ball Goddess

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The digital manga service Manga Box can be something of a game of Russian Roulette in terms of quality. Certain titles, such as Girl and Car on the Beat, I’ve found to be extremely entertaining, while others much less so. Lately, I’ve found one reason to keep coming back, and that’s B-Ball Goddess.

bballgoddess-02

Known in Japanese as Basuke no Megami-sama, this manga follows a girl named Nimi Miyuki, who moves from Tokyo to Shimane Prefecture after a confession goes embarrassingly south. In Shimane, she meets the local basketball ace, Sakomizu Shou, who convinces Miyuki to join the women’s basketball team at their school. Though Miyuki is seemingly without talent, Shou is convinced that she has what it takes.

Manga about basketball is hardly new, and manga about girls playing sports even less so. However, B-Ball Goddess combines a really good understanding of how to portray cute girls with a strong sense of physicality and the excitement of a basketball game, all without resorting to especially gratuitous fanservice (most of the time) or shounen manga-esque displays of basketball super powers. For me, it’s quite telling that, in conversations with writer, comics critic, and long-time basketball fan David Brothers, he found Kuroko’s Basketball to be somewhat unbearable, but B-Ball Goddess to be solid and fun. I’m not sure if that means that all basketball fans would enjoy B-Ball Goddess, but I think that’s about as good an endorsement as it gets, short of an actual NBA player praising it.

bballgoddess-01

One of the more prominent aspects of the manga is the Umpaku dialect found in Shimane and its surrounding regions, of which the most common is Izumo-ben. While Miyuki and most other girls in the series speak using standard Japanese, older characters and Shou herself utilizes the dialect.  Of course, this being a manga that’s translated into English and all, a decision must be made as to whether the English should portray this difference or ignore it entirely. No choice is inherently correct, but I do have to wonder how the translator for B-Ball Goddess decided upon their solution.

As far as I can tell, the Umpaku dialect has been replaced by a thick Irish or possibly Scottish dialect, and while this works okay for the most part, at times Shou is almost impossible to understand. Unlike in the original Japanese where kanji can help readers understand what’s really being said, English has no such luxury in general. Thankfully, for particularly obtuse terms translation notes are usually provided, though it’s not Japanese to English but rather English to English.

You can read the first chapter of B-Ball Goddess online, and the Manga Box app is free on both Android and iOS.

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What If There Was a Bodybuilding Manga?

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Artist: Haepo Heidi

After having watched the famous bodybuilding documentary Pumping Iron (1977) featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno, I think that bodybuilding might not be such a bad premise for an anime or manga series.

The reason I came to this conclusion is that there is an important performative aspect to bodybuilding competitions, and I could see this being depicted in a manner similar to a series such as Ariyoshi Kyouko’s Swan, which is about ballet, or Miuchi Suzue’s acting-themed Glass Mask. The way that both the appearance of the body and the way that posing factors in as a way to highlight one’s strengths and obscure one’s weaknesses can provide ample material to dramatize matches and for an exposition-type character (e.g. Speedwagon in Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, Ryousuke in Initial D) to go into some extremely granular detail: “His arm is at 47 degrees instead of 44 degrees, causing it to look slightly bigger than it actually is!!!”

I think the real meat of a bodybuilding competition manga would be the freestyle pose-off, where bodybuilders try to make themselves look better and the other guys look worse by changing their poses in response to what the others are doing. There’s the psychology between the competitors and the psychology of how the judges are perceiving the interaction between them, and so it would perhaps be a nice way for a strategist type to psyche his opponents out. When Akagi with Muscles makes his opponent feel smaller, this could even be represented in the art by having a guy suddenly shrink down to half his actual size.

And if you want them to look freakishly muscular, just get Baki the Grappler artist Itagaki Keisuke to work his magic.

Extra points if this were a shoujo manga.

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Who Cares About Gold? “Free!”

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Free! and Free! Eternal Summer spoilers below.

Whenever Free! ends, it really knows how to communicate its core values, whether it’s the original series or Eternal Summer. Ostensibly about competitive swimming, these finales basically say that, unlike so many other sports anime and manga, that winning not only isn’t everything, but it isn’t even that important in the first place.

At the end of season 1, the character Rin joins his old friends for a relay at a high school competition, revitalizing the lifelong bond he’s had with them. They swim better than they ever have before and even win the race, but run into the issue that Rin is from a different school that’s also competing at the event. The team is disqualified, but what’s emphasized here is that getting first was not the point. Rather, what they have truly achieved is strengthening their relationships with each other.

In the final episode of season 2, the main cast reaches the nationals for relay, and during the race each character has a vision of the joy of swimming. The main character, Haruka, is the last member to race, and upon entering the water sees his teammates swimming alongside him. When he reaches the finish line, everyone cheers, and we’re greeted with images of the team smiling and hugging. By all narrative and film convention, it looks as if they had won the whole thing, but later we see that they only got 6th place. They weren’t celebrating their championsip, but their accomplishments as a group. Moreover, Haruka, who throughout Eternal Summer has felt pressure over the fact that becoming a professional swimmer means having to care about trophies and times, ultimately finds that, for him, winning is merely a way to swim more, a means to an end.

Free! is geared towards a female audience. Whether it’s the well-animated flexible and muscular swimmers’ bodies on the cast, gentle yet strong personalities, or their close and sometimes tumultuous bonds, this is an anime that provides visual fanservice in a way that not even series like The Prince of Tennis or Kuroko’s Basketball could offer. Those other series, still grounded in their shounen sports manga formulas, end up emphasizing winners and losers first and foremost, but Free! is all about the relationship known as friendship, reflecting a desire to get away from the stereotypically male desire of victory through competition.

This is not to say that manga for male audiences based in competition necessarily always emphasize winning (see the manga Touch!), nor that there is no such thing as a manga for a female audience that stresses the competitive environment (Chihayafuru). However, when looking more broadly, what I find is that series that try to draw in men and boys primarily will often use friendship and teamwork as a means to victory, while series that target women and girls will do the opposite and use competition as a means to friendship and teamwork.

Sometimes targeting a demographic isn’t wholly intentional, but this is how a fanbase is formed anyway, and other times it can be hard to tell which is which. It might even flip back and forth throughout a given series. Free! doesn’t have any of that ambiguity. It knows exactly what it wants, and in the end we have to wonder for ourselves if winning is that big of a deal.

July 8th Vertical Vednesday: Sports Manga

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Vertical Vednesday, courtesy of Vertical Inc and Ed Chavez, is back for another informative around. This time, the topic is a genre of manga that doesn’t achieve much success in America for a a number of reasons, Sports Manga.

Sports Manga has a very long history and some of the most beloved titles in Japan are sports-themed ones, such as Ashita no Joe, Touch, Attack No. 1, Ace o Nerae!!, Kyojin no Hoshi, and even Eyeshield 21. Also, given my previous experiences with Vertical Vednesdays, if you attend you’ll get the chance to chime in on what YOU think are the steps to getting Sports Manga accepted more readily in the US by both regular folks and manga readers.

Like last time, we’ll be meeting up at around 6 to 6:30 at Kinokuniya on 6th Ave between 41st and 40th in Manhattan, and then depending on the size of the group will either stay there or find another location nearby to sit.

Topics covered so far in previous Vertical Vednesdays are Seinen, Josei, and Yankii.