Sports anime is considered the most approachable genre for those unfamiliar with anime because sports are a widely popular hobby. Even for those that don’t play sports, the activity is an easily grasped stage for the character stories that are often the very highlight of sports anime.
That said, if you do happen to play sports, the “super-powered” trope in sports anime can be a little grating. It doesn’t matter how hard you train or how much you play, you will never have ability like the superpowers shown off in some sports anime.
If you enjoy your sports anime, but want to see skill built on the back of hard work and techniques steeped in realism, then give these realistic sports anime recommendations a try.
Best Realistic Sports Anime
Baby Steps
Baby Steps is considered one of the most realistic sports anime even though it follows a character literally starting from nothing. In fact, it can be said the most unrealistic thing about the series is how fast he gains skill, but lingering on the newbie struggle wouldn’t be as compelling of a story.
Baby Steps follows an honor student looking for some exercise, trying a free trial at a tennis club, and becoming interested in tennis after watching a more motivated girl play.
As the main character is a perfectionist and was previously dedicated to only studying, he is unused to doing things simply because he enjoys them. Tennis doesn’t serve a purpose for him, but you still watch him fall in love with it.
That said, he is an academic, and not an athlete. He not only needs to learn the basic techniques at the sport, but also has to train his body. He isn’t immediately standing with the top players, but Baby Steps really covers that small steps he takes to get there.
Ping Pong The Animation
You could say that it is the ultra-realistic art style of Maasaki Yuasa that makes Ping Pong the Animation more realistic than some of its other sports anime peers, and there is some truth to that. However, the sport of table tennis, like the sport often is in many sports anime, is a delivery device for the character stories. The sport itself is made interesting by the cinematography at play and the players themselves. There is no super-powered shots, and yet the sport isn’t boring to watch like table tennis in real life.
It is likely a combination of the art style, the characters, and the relatable problems they are working through that ground Ping Pong, but it is just as respectable that it allowed itself to be a very human story and not give into the temptation of grander action.
Yuri on Ice
Yuri on Ice doesn’t follow scrappy high school underdogs in a sport, but does something a little more rare – it follows a professional athlete. The series follows a figure skater that, after a devastating loss, let his anxiety get the better of him. Riddled with anxiety and reaching an age where his body will no longer perform at peak, you follow what could be his very last shot as he trains under the mentorship of a high level professional figure skater that he deeply admires.
The series is as much about training physical ability as it is about rehabilitating the character mentally. He goes home and chubs up a bit from stress eating, but he is still a professional athlete. He knows how to get back in shape, and he knows what to do to hone his skills. However, it is the guidance of his coach that helps him get there. That said, the biggest obstacle in his path is really in his mind, and that is what Yuri on Ice emphasizes.
The Gymnastics Samurai
The Gymnastics Samurai sits in a very similar vein to Yuri On Ice where it follows an already professional athlete on the downswing of his of his career. He’s giving it one last go for his daughter despite an injury that should have retired him.
This isn’t about unrealistically pushing through an injury, though. He explores a treatment for it that allows him a little more time, but it wasn’t a cure. The series widely focuses on the training he has to put himself through to even graze the top again, and really does focus on the limits of his age and physical ability. However, in doing that, it allows you, the audience, to feel the real passion that pushes him in his sport.
Big Windup
Baseball sports anime in particular lives in a strange spot where a lot of series seem like they are “super-powered” sports anime because they often really embellish how the sport is played or follow high level prodigies for a more interesting and fiery passionate experience. You have shows like Ace of Diamond or Major, both of which are pretty realistic sports anime in all truth, but they follows such high levels of talents and up the intensity so high that they really don’t feel like it at times.
Big Windup is different. It follows pretty average players that still keep those big Koshien baseball dreams. You watch the characters come together as a team, work through their own anxieties, and train their own abilities. Some are good players, some are average, and all of them end up benefiting from good coaching in a non-toxic environment.
While a realistic baseball anime, perhaps the most realistic part of the series is how even his positive teammates seem annoyed by how much of a quivering mass of anxiety the main character is at first. Even then, they still help him work through it because his hard work shows.
Hajime no Ippo
Although there are a few absurd moments in Hajime no Ippo, like that one time Takamura boxed a wild bear in the mountains, the series is actually a very technical sports series when it comes to boxing. The characters train and rely on real boxing techniques.
There is no super moves like you might expect. Instead, you get cross counters, jabs, hooks, and the occasional dramatic uppercut. Each fight calls for a new strategy and it is often formulated on the fly from the fundamental boxing techniques that the characters train at.
That said, Hajime no Ippo is one of those sports anime that does like to accentuate certain things for effect, like adding after images to show speed or using particular angles to make a hit appear to hit very hard.
Ashita no Joe
Because of their very similar plot, Ashita no Joe is often confused for Hajime no Ippo. However, you could say that because it doesn’t feature ridiculous things like boxing a bear, it is an even more realistic sports anime.
While Ashita no Joe also puts a big emphasis on the technical skills of boxing, it goes a step further to explore the toll that boxing, in particular, has on athletes. They may love the sport, but after a certain point, it takes a large toll on the body.
Stars Align
Stars Align is one of those “sports anime that isn’t really about the sport” sort of series that you see often in this genre. It is very much about the characters and their many, surprisingly complex, young people problems like abuse, various parental relationship problems, and gender/sexuality issues. All of that is framed by characters playing soft tennis, which is tennis with a softer ball.
It has some of those standard sports anime things, like training and playing matches. However, it is very clear that this is all just kind of setting up for the next character story to be explored.
You watch Stars Align for the character stories. The sport is just the stage for them, and as such, the sport doesn’t need to be super compelling or over-the-top.
Ginga e Kickoff
It is pretty universally agreed that Ginga e Kickoff is a hidden gem of the sports genre, and one people often pass up because it follows elementary school characters. However, this isn’t just the brain-dead tale of friendship and teamwork overcoming all that you see often with younger characters. It captures problems unique to growing up in its character stories.
It explores the anxiety of soon going off to different middle schools away from your friends. It explores an unexpected growth spurt and your body becoming clumsy as it adjusts to it. As it follows a mixed gender team, it even explores the gender discrimination that the female players face even at such a young age.
While it is those unique character explorations of the young cast that make Ginga e Kickoff good, it also resists the temptation to become an Inuzuma Eleven where all the very young kids play soccer like DBZ characters. Instead, the character stories are explored through the training they go through as a team, allowing you to watch them grow as people and players.
Slam Dunk
If you were looking for a realistic basketball anime without the over-the-top superhuman abilities found in Kuroko’s Basketball, Slam Dunk is your best option.
While Slam Dunk is of an older age, it keeps itself grounded in its story and grounded in its abilities. Furthermore, many of the playing styles in the series are based on the playing styles of NBA players of the early 90s, though most have fun comparing them to modern players. While the characters still have to work to hone their skills, it would be an insult to the NBA players to just give them super powers on the court that would completely eclipse the abilities of the professionals their play styles were based on.
Capeta
Racing anime usually lives in the realms of realistic in theory, but not in portrayal. You watch characters take corners too fast and with no consequences just because it looks cool. However, as Capeta isn’t about going 100 miles per hour through downtown Tokyo, but rather is about racing go-karts, it lowers down the speed and brings up the realism.
However, one of the most realistic things about Capeta is accurately showcasing how expensive it can be to do certain sports. Go-karts aren’t cheap, especially not good ones, and hardware is a big limitation in racing.
Run With The Wind
You have to work a bit harder to make an anime about running interesting, and an easy way to do that would have been to add some excitement with a few superhuman sports superpowers like Birdie Golf did with golf. However, Run With The Wind made itself interesting instead with well done character stories about an underdog team of runners.
When you have underdogs, there are two paths – one supreme athlete saves the team or they struggle together. Run With The Wind is the latter, though technically both. The main character was an elite runner, the rest of his team is rather weak runners, but they are training for a relay race. One runner can’t save a whole race, so it really focuses in on the training and the growth they make.
There’s no over-exaggeration to the running here. They run like normal athletes, and it looks and feels just like real running. The most unrealistic thing about the anime is how you train characters like a heavy smoker who just quit and a gangly otaku to run a 20 kilometer leg of a relay race in under a year, but it never sugar coats their physical struggles.
Cross Game, Touch, H2, Mix
Why lump all these together? They are all Mitsuru Adachi sports manga anime adaptations, and like Hiro Mashima of Fairy Tail fame just wants to tell roughly the same story in all his manga, Mitsuru Adachi also likes to tell incredibly similar baseball stories.
All four of these anime series detail the struggles of high school baseball teams aiming for Nationals, as baseball anime does. However, what you can universally expect is for each series to be more about character stories than the struggle in the sport.
They all want to win, most are good plays, some even have prodigal talent, but the fact that each anime is just as much about the character’s growth as a person as it is about their growth as a player keeps it grounded. You can’t overcome personal problems with a fast pitch, after all. That’s how you go to jail.
Tsurune
Tsurune is a series about Kyudo, or Japanese-style archery. You can see an obvious path where you can make archery really dramatic and over-the-top like is often done with obscure sports, but Tsurune chooses a different path. It chooses the Run With The Wind path where the story is more about the characters than the sport. The sport is there, but you are invested in the character struggles and the paths they are taking to overcome them.
While there are no ridiculous shots in this anime, it does well to make what is kind of a boring sport seem like an art form. The sound of the bow, the framing of the shots, and the scenery all contribute to Tsurune being such a treasure to watch.
Giant Killing
You could say that almost all sports anime focus on the players, but coaching is a necessary key to success as well. I’d say that Giant Killing is a sports anime more about coaching than playing the sport.
Giant Killing follows a new coach to a pro-Soccer team on the verge of disbandment. The team suffers from a number of problems, and none of them necessarily skill-related. They have bad communication, they have clashing personalities, and they rely on one player more than any team should in a non-super-powered team sport sports anime.
However, proper coaching allows any players natural and practice-honed talents to flourish – That is what you see in Giant Killing. It follows an underdog team that gets the proper coaching they desperately needed in order to go slay those big giants in the league.
Do you have more realistic sports anime recommendations that fans might enjoy? Let them know in the comments section below.
