Serious sports anime is a bit of a boy’s club, and it’s easy to see why when you do find the occasional anime with a female lead. It’s, uh, less about the sport and more about the sporting body, you know what I mean? However, whether you are legitimately looking for sports anime with a female protagonist or looking for sporting bodies like some kind of degenerate, finding those female-led sports anime series can be a task. But luckily, we are problem solvers.
Best Sports Anime With a Female Lead
Hanebado
Easily what is probably the most well-known female-led sports anime, Hanebado caught attention initially because it is an anime about playing badminton. People were intrigued. However, it has all the intensity of any good sports anime and treats the sport more seriously than anyone probably would. It also did not hurt that the protagonist is stacked and her bosom moves as though unburdened by a bra. It’s not outwardly ecchi, but the treats are there for those looking for them.
Aim for Ace
There are a small handful of older sports anime series with female protagonists, but many are forgettable and hard to track down to boot. Aim for Ace, however, is memorable and worth hunting down. It is what one might call a classic and has famously inspired a few other non-sports anime series in the past.
Bamboo Blade
Regardless of gender, kendo anime series are kind of rare, but I imagine people lose interest in it when they discover that kendo isn’t just slapping people around with wooden swords. While it approaches the sport pretty seriously, Bamboo Blade does tend to put more focus on its characters.
Chihayafuru
Perhaps a card game can’t necessarily be called a sport, but Chihayafuru goes about it every bit like a sports anime. However, because it does have a female protagonist, it also develops into a bit of a love triangle situation, but it still allows the sport to shine.
Kandagawa Jet Girls
Kandagawa Jet Girls is both a series to highlight the adrenaline-piquing pleasures of jet ski racing, and an absolute excuse to dress its all-female cast in tight wet suits and beachwear. It is ecchi, but actually quite the nice sports anime with the admittedly generic plot about not having a racing club, so the main character started one. The major benefit of it being ecchi is that the series overall looks really nice as well.
Keijo
This is why we can’t have nice things like serious female-led sports anime. This is one for the degenerates in which the made up sport is about girls knocking each other around with their butts and busts. That being said, it knows the audience it wanted, but it actually put a lot of effort into its made up sport.
Tamayomi
While there are some questionably ecchi series on here, if you replaced every character with a boy in Tamayomi, you’d still have the same exact anime series with an admittedly odd but not distracting thigh focus. So it is nice that Tamayomi took your standard baseball plot, but didn’t use your standard baseball boys.
Good Bye, Cramer
This is a soccer anime that really tries to do sports anime, but with a more dramatic spin. While it stumbles sometimes, you do get a real sense of the players coming together as a team over the course of the anime. The primary issue with the series is that it tends to focus on the wrong things for a sports anime. You know, too much characterization, not enough actual sport.
Cinderella Nine
In Cinderella Nine, because it is based off a game, you – the viewer – are technically the main character. You take up the role as manager of a girl’s baseball team after an injury ended your own dreams. From there, you essentially just watch the girls aim for the top. It is for sure a cute girls doing cute things anime, and very little else.
Taisho Baseball Girls
As far as serious female-led sports anime series go, this one, though older, is very likely one of the best. It focuses on a lot of female-related problems in sports for both the era and you’ll note that some of them have not completely been erased from the modern day either.
Harukana Receive
It’s… Beach volleyball. I don’t really have to say more. It has a very standard sports anime plot about a girl who is traumatized by the sport eventually overcoming it, but it knows you likely don’t care about that. There are a lot of great characters in this one truthfully, and it looks lovely, but most people who watch it do so for the swimwear.
Sport Climbing Girls
This series serves as an interesting introduction to climbing as a sport, but mostly it is just watching cute girls solve climbing puzzles. It is not the most narrative driven sports anime, nor is it the most ecchi thing either. It is good for the sports anime fan that would like to watch something while just hanging out though.
How Heavy are the Dumbbells You Lift?
There are several exercise-centered anime series, but none of them are on this list save for this one that actually has a plot. How Heavy are the Dumbbells You Lift is, very obviously, a show about going to the gym and moving your body. It doesn’t quite get into professional weightlifting, but it is a good comedy show and does introduce actual information.
Girls Und Panzer
I put Keijo on here, mind as well this one too. Unlike Keijo, Girls Und Panzer isn’t lewd, but it does feature the made up sport of tank teams battling other tank teams in World War II era tanks. Cute girls. Doing cute things. In war machinery.
Scorching Ping Pong Girls
This series, as a sports anime, was actually pretty interesting. All the girls on the team have a specific talent for something in their sport, but they are not good at utilizing it until a transfer student whips them into shape. Usually underdogs are less prodigal. All that being said, this is often more of just a comedy show because of the characters and their quirks.
Uma Musume
Another odd, but applicable one. Uma Musume takes place in a world where great racehorses can reincarnate into horse girls who then run track competitively. Maybe it was made for a small handful of racehorse otaku, but more likely it was made for people who enjoy cute girls with animal ears. Regardless, it does place significant focus on the racing and features many of your typical sports anime plot points.
Teekyuu
Though a long-time Teekyuu fan, I debated on whether it belongs here. It is a series technically about the tennis club at a school. It has a main female cast. But, they don’t really play much of a sport. It is more a cute girl doing cute and occasionally insane things anime series.
Do you have any moire good female-led sports anime series? Let fans know in the comments section below.
