{"id":411,"date":"2013-11-13T17:15:16","date_gmt":"2013-11-13T22:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/?p=411"},"modified":"2013-11-13T17:15:16","modified_gmt":"2013-11-13T22:15:16","slug":"a-tale-of-two-series-the-good-and-bad-of-sports-anime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/a-tale-of-two-series-the-good-and-bad-of-sports-anime\/","title":{"rendered":"A Tale Of Two Series: The Good And Bad Of Sports Anime"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the start of the fall season, I decided to try out a pair of sports anime series: Ace of Diamond<\/i> and Yowamushi Pedal<\/i>.\u00a0 Six weeks later, I\u2019m thoroughly enjoying one of them, while the other has fallen off my radar completely.\u00a0 Since both follow a fairly typical genre structure, why the vast difference in my lasting interest?\u00a0 As it turns out, the answer reveals quite a lot about what makes a piece of sports fiction good or bad.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start off with the series I dropped.\u00a0 Ace of Diamond<\/i> follows a Japanese high school baseball team that\u2019s trying to win the national championship.\u00a0 There\u2019s nothing surprising here, since the goal of most fictional sports teams is to win The Big Game\/Tournament.\u00a0 The problem lies in the characters and their circumstances.\u00a0 The show is set at a high school that\u2019s famous for its awesome baseball team, and the characters were scouted from around the country for their incredible skills.\u00a0 Guys who were the stars of their middle school teams are second-string players at this school, and there\u2019s no doubt that they\u2019ll be a force to reckoned with in the various tournaments they enter.\u00a0 This huge collection of skill and resources turns out to be the show\u2019s downfall.<\/p>\n

\"ace\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Fastball or rocket launcher? You decide.<\/em><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the problem: if I wanted to watch a show where a well-funded team of all-star players wins the national championship, I\u2019d turn on ESPN and watch a real game.\u00a0 Unlike genres with magicians or giant robots, sports anime is forced to compete directly with its own subject matter.\u00a0 If it\u2019s close competition I\u2019m interested in, I\u2019ll watch the actual sport on TV.\u00a0 If I\u2019m in it for a character study of a charismatic athlete, I\u2019ll watch a documentary.\u00a0 Ace of Diamond<\/i> dooms itself by sticking too close to reality, and that strict adherence means there\u2019s no reason to watch it instead of the real thing.\u00a0 The show has other flaws, but this is the real nail in the coffin.\u00a0 Non-fiction is full of macho jocks being good at sports, so why would I care about a made-up version of the same thing?<\/p>\n

In stark contrast, we have Yowamushi Pedal<\/i>, which the fandom hive-mind has apparently shortened to Yowapeda<\/i>.\u00a0 It keeps the high school setting, but switches baseball out in favor of bicycle racing and shrinks the team from eleventy billion to just over half a dozen.\u00a0 Instead of an obnoxious idiot with dreams of being an ace pitcher, the main character is a shy guy with glasses who\u2019s unintentionally built up his endurance by constantly biking to Akihabara to buy anime merchandise.\u00a0 While Ace of Diamond<\/i> is full of ambitious characters trying to one-up each other, Yowapeda<\/i> focuses on having its cast grow and develop as a team.\u00a0 Most importantly, these guys are nowhere close to being the favorites in any competition they enter.<\/p>\n

\"yowapeda\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Winners wear purple pants.<\/em><\/p>\n

The underdog nature of Yowapeda<\/i>\u2019s \u201chero team\u201d taps into the power of the sports genre when it\u2019s done well.\u00a0 Because the show doesn\u2019t have to be factual, it can tell us a story that would never happen in real life.\u00a0 The ragtag band of oddballs with unusual talents can take on the elite teams in the sport and actually win.\u00a0 If they work together and put in enough blood, sweat, and tears, they can overcome their opponents\u2019 massive advantages.\u00a0 It\u2019s the kind of story that can only happen in fiction, and it\u2019s the only way for a sports anime to justify its existence.\u00a0 When it\u2019s easy to watch the real thing, a TV series has to give us something completely imaginary.\u00a0 With its quirky set of heroes, that\u2019s just what Yowamushi Pedal<\/i> manages to do.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kawaii Overthink is written by Paul Jensen. You can follow his ramblings about anime on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>.<\/address>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the start of the fall season, I decided to try out a pair of sports anime series: Ace of Diamond and Yowamushi Pedal.\u00a0 Six weeks later, I\u2019m thoroughly enjoying one of them, while the other has fallen off my radar completely.\u00a0 Since both follow a fairly typical genre structure, why the vast difference in [Read more…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":416,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411\/revisions\/416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}