While the excitement of sports and competitions is all the enticement that some need when choosing a new sports anime, the great thing about anime as a medium is that it can make the ordinary into something extraordinary very easily.
Sports anime often gets to enjoy that creative license because why make a sports anime about basketball when you could make a sports anime about basketball, but some players have super special abilities that make them god-tier?
While there are many sports anime series grounded in realism – like Hajime no Ippo or Giant Killing – and even a few that combine realism with almost unbelievable skill – like Haikyuu, these are anime recommendations for those who like sports anime that go big with superpower-like abilities.
Superpowered Sports Anime
Prince of Tennis
Prince of Tennis has long sat as king of the superpowered sports anime. This long-running tennis epic makes people jumping twelve feet in the air just to hit a serve seem like a regular and perfectly normal occurrence. However, it keeps the raising the bar with each match to keep the intensity up.
In a way, Prince of Tennis gets stuck in a common shounen action anime trope where the power scaling runs a little bit out of control as it constantly feels the need to outdo itself. You get to watch players smack tennis balls like they are meteors about to end a dinosaur’s whole career and watch players Flash Step like Byakuya across the court.
Of course, much of these super skills are merely accented by ridiculous visual metaphors – but Prince of Tennis is a superpowered sports anime that is still pretty detached from the reality of real tennis play.
Captain Tsubasa
If there is one other long-running series of superpowered sports play that could risk unseating the prince as king, it would be Captain Tsubasa.
This soccer-focused series did at least go to the Prince of Tennis school of soccer play by being about superpowered elementary school soccer players whose abilities become increasing detached from the real abilities of soccer players.
Captain Tsubasa is a pretty standard sports plot following kids aiming for the top, but you frequently get to watch the main character and his rivals do things like bend the rules of space and time to make shots or kick that ball so hard it sends the goalie flying like they were hit by a Super Saiyan.
Birdie Wing
For those who don’t play golf, the sport of golf is often summed up as “just hit the ball really, really hard,” and Birdie Wing is a golf anime that pretty much just works with that summary.
In truth, Birdie Wing isn’t just ridiculous because it follows two skilled female golfers with superpowered long shots, but it also works with the most hilariously detached from reality golf premise in the beginning as well.
It originally follows a young street tough who makes her money by competing in underground golf driving range competitions where she wins money and prestige by being able to hit the ball the furthest. It is presented to take place in a serious and dangerous criminal underworld, but they are really just smacking golf balls around like they would be doing at the country club.
Regardless, Birdie Wing sadly does leave this unhinged beginning behind and falls in back step with standard sports anime by moving its setting to a school that trains female golfers.
Kuroko’s Basketball
Slam Dunk may have revived interest in basketball in Japan, but Kuroko’s Basketball brought it to the non-sports fans. It seems the creator of this series looked at the golden age of basketball – whichever era basketball fans are claiming that is now – and hyper-intensified the abilities of those legendary players, then slapped some color-coding and long exposure tracing to the eyes to be more visually memorable.
Kuroko’s Basketball details a legendary team of superpowered middle school basketball geniuses, but it doesn’t actually follow that team. Instead, it takes place after they all graduate and go their separate ways in high school. The series follows the mysterious phantom sixth man whose superpower is going unnoticed on the court as he plays with a new, recently returned from abroad player determined to rise to be the best.
Over the course of the series, they play against Kuroko’s old superpowered teammates to conquer the ladder towards the inter-high championship.
Eyeshield 21
American football is about as popular in Japan as it is anywhere outside of America, but bless Eyeshield 21’s concussion-rattled heart for giving football fans a manga and anime series about it to enjoy.
As is common in sports anime, Eyeshield 21 is about a weak nerd being scouted by a footballer at his high school as he flees from bullies with his super skill – being really fast. While even those who know nothing about American football know that it is about two teams of padded jerseys going clack against each other as they try to move a ball, the key player in that equation is an agile running-back who avoids being tackled, runs really fast, and catches the ball when it comes his way.
As such, this agile small guy becomes a pillar on his team, but a small player in a sport of big guys means that there is always that next indomitable wall in his way, made even more challenging when they have their own set of unique abilities.
Inazuma Eleven
If part of the charm of superpowered sports anime for you is that they are ridiculous, but still remained sports anime, then Inazuma Eleven may not be for you because the series comes at the concept of soccer with all the vim and vigor of Dragonball Z.
The Inazuma Eleven series started as a video game, and not the copy and paste FIFA you may be used to. It essentially featured hot-blooded middle schoolers playing soccer, but with all the fantasy powers that JRPGs and anime fantasy can bring to bear.
As such, while you can enjoy some soccer on occasion, mostly people watch Inazuma Eleven to see the characters do things like summon fire tornadoes from the intensity of their shot or turn a soccer tackle into a blood sport.
Yowamushi Pedal
As cycling is not the most compelling of sports, cycling sports anime has two options that it can focus on. It can highlight the beautiful visuals on long, lonely road rides or it can give the competitors special skills and increasingly unique character designs. Yowamushi Pedal went with the latter.
Yowamushi Pedal follows a young otaku who bikes 90 kilometers per week on a standard bicycle just to go to Akihabara. As he’s been doing it for years, his steady uphill climb attracted the attention of a competitive cyclist who ends up pulling him into his school’s cycling club.
While Yowamushi Pedal does feed you real information on cycling, it keeps things interesting by giving most players a sort of distinct cycling style or super power. In truth, the superpowers in Yowamushi Pedal aren’t as detached from reality like Prince of Tennis or OP like in Kuroko’s Basketball, but they definitely do provide a “every player has their advantageous or challenging race” arc for the large cast.
Blue Lock
Blue Lock combines superpowered teenage soccer players with a healthy dollop of psychopathy for the game. While soccer is traditionally a team sport where you are only as good as your weakest member, Blue Lock twists up the formula by making it into a battle royale.
Yes, they still play soccer as a team in Blue Lock, but all these players are competing with each other to be the top player in the project and be recruited as the star striker on the Japanese national soccer team.
Essentially, they are doing a Kodoku, but with teenage soccer players.
Of course, as this is a chance of a lifetime for young players, everyone is hyper-competitive and Blue Lock only enhances that further by giving the major competitors ultra-intense abilities, like the main character’s ability to instinctive smell when another player is ready to make a goal shot or using the soccer version of Mangekyo Sharingan on the field.
Saki
While even the most ridiculous superpowered sports anime explains the sport they are actually displaying fairly well so even uninformed novices can get the basics, I hope you know the fundamentals of mahjong, because Saki isn’t here to explain it to you.
As a gambling game, you may think Saki will be about reading other players and laser-focusing their weaknesses, but no. Saki is essentially Kuroko’s Basketball, but mahjong.
It follows a girl who doesn’t like mahjong much getting pulled into the mahjong club by her friends and discovering that, no, she actually does like it a lot! Too much, maybe.
Instead of being about cute girls doing mahjong club things, each player has a special ability that they use when playing that the main character must overcome. I’m sure if I knew anything about mahjong, these abilities would be even more impressive.
Do you have more superpowered sports anime recommendations that fans might enjoy? Let them know in the comments section below.
