Forum - View topicWhy are many *sports* anime vastly over-rated?
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Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1773 Location: South America |
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That post made my day. You are the man! Me and some friends played baseball in highschool to try something different. It's a very weird game, but I noticed that skills in football/soccer was strongly correlated on how well they played it. So it's a "normal" sport that people good at sports perform better at it. But it is really hard to understand if you never played it before. |
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MaxSouth
Posts: 1363 |
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@RestLessone, Gina Szanboti
As Jose Cruz just explained, baseball is very weird game. It is things that players do are not quite intuitive, and the rules are very peculiar. Most of other popular games have physical activity that clearly directed for your team and against your opponents, based on territories they have. This is natural way to do games since ancient times as games initially appeared not (only) as fun play, but as practice of fights for a territory or for protection of it. This is the reason why baseball is poorly understood in countries that do not play it (unlike American football, which is understandable well despite the fact most of the world does not know what it is). You can not see how things you do make intuitive sense, you only do it because of rules. Thus this game is a level more artificial than most of other popular games. What I am saying is that more usual game would better setting for Cross Game anime and widen its audience. Last edited by MaxSouth on Sun Mar 29, 2015 9:23 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9832 Location: Virginia |
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Max South wrote:
No, just no. Taken to its logical conclusion, this would mean all sports anime involving a team sport would have to be about soccer as this seems to be the most universal. This would make it very niche in the US as we are the only country not heavily involved in the sport, but we don't buy sports anime anyway.  I should also point out that Cross Game is based on a manga about baseball. To change the sport would make it an entirely different anime.
The Japanese make anime for the Japanese market. Because of that it has a different feel from all the stuff I was used to animated or live action. That was part of what attracted me to anime. Others have said much the same thing. Attempting to make anime specifically for a global or universal market would probably ruin it. The Japanese love baseball. They make anime about baseball not because it is played in the US but because it is played and followed in Japan. If you want your entertainment to be "universal", you probably should look outside anime. |
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MaxSouth
Posts: 1363 |
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If Cross Game is based on manga, then what I am talking about is about manga (as primary source).
Author has chosen not universally understood sport that limits project's appeal. Unlike Hikaru's Go, which, as "sport", obviously almost does not have physical manifestation, in Cross Game viewers dot no expect to be spared of significant time of project being devoted to play of game that requires showing player doing something that they (viewers) do no understand. But, of course, specifically for local market and as import into USA this project works well. However, since the point of this project, as Key wrote, is not the baseball at all, it is just a background, there is no rational reason why the drama had to be based on such limited setting in the first place. There is significant number of baseball anime (including currently ongoing) that actually about baseball, and obviously I would not suggest changing setting there. Those are purely for baseball fans, not for drama fans. My hesitation about Cross Game was and is that it has to be great story, and baseball thing only tampers with it for me and by far the most of the world. |
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 9832 Location: Virginia |
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You are missing my point.
The manga author understands and likes baseball. His audience likes and understands baseball. He was and is writing for a Japanese audience not a world audience. If the Japanese audience doesn't like his story it doesn't matter if the rest of the world would or would not like it as the series would have been cancelled. The majority of anime is made for the Japanese market. Actually a lot of it is made for a very small sub market. If it doesn't sell to that market it doesn't get made. If the rest of the world likes it and buys it that is fine, extra money if always helpful. If the rest of the world doesn't like it they still have the original audience that it was made for. Further, drama has to be set somewhere, in some context. Even if you are writing pure soap opera it has to be somewhere/some time with an underlying story. Once this is established it automatically limits the audience. Cross Game is set in Japan, in high school and about baseball. If you don't care for that find a setting you do like. One of the strengths of anime is that there is an almost infinite variety. However if you limit your setting too much you may end up watching the same five shows over and over again. You should be open to shows you don't automatically understand. |
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MaxSouth
Posts: 1363 |
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I do not doubt that author understands and likes baseball. However, as people wrote, it is not necessary for his story at all. Author understands and likes baseball, but his story is not about baseball (unlike other baseball anime). I highly doubt that baseball is the only sport that he understands and likes, so for purpose of delivering his story for wider audience he could have chosen different sport or not a sport at all.
But you are right that from time to time you might want to go outside of your comfort zone. This is why I did not write I blacklisted Cross Game; I wrote I am hesitant about it. I am especially lured by Key's professional opinion as he has watched gazillion of anime so he can compare. (Additionally, I respect that opinion since unlike myself, he often times watches projects that he does not like at all, where I am more free in that. I would literally (well, almost) die if I was told to watch many of anime he had to go through.) Last edited by MaxSouth on Sun Mar 29, 2015 11:05 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Touma
 Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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@MaxSouth
Having an anime or manga be popular outside of Japan would definitely be desirable, but having it be popular in Japan is a necessity. It doesn't matter if the rest of the world would love it, if the fans in Japan do not like it it will not survive long enough for the rest of the world to see it. Of course a sports anime does not have to be about baseball to be popular in Japan. What would be a better choice for a sport? What is popular in Japan and would also be more popular in the rest of the world than baseball? One possibility that I can think of is soccer/football. The ANN encyclopedia has 23 anime series with a soccer theme. I have not seen any of them. Whistle is the only one that I remember hearing of before. Were any of them really popular, anywhere? If you could change the sport in Cross Game what would you make it? What would be more universally accessible than baseball? EDIT: It just occurred to me that swimming would probably be universally accessible. I have never seen Free because the characters doing the swimming seem to be all male, which does not appeal to me, but the show does seem to be popular. I wonder why there is not more anime about swimming? |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11335 |
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If you have to look at it in terms of warfare or territory for it to be intuitive, then try this: The pitcher shoots his cannon at the batter who is protecting his home base, and hits the ball back out into enemy territory (the catcher is just a practical position to avoid shagging balls all day, and to attack the runner should he try to return home). While the enemy is busy recovering the ball, the batter penetrates enemy territory trying to reach the first of several outposts (the bases) where he will be safe as long as he remains there. These are too small for more than one person though, so he has to go deeper into enemy territory should his teammate hit the next ball. If he can successfully raid the enemy's territory and return home, his team scores. If three of his teammates are captured outside the safe outposts (or fail to distract the enemy by hitting the ball at them in the first place), the sides switch (because that takes less playing space than having both sides have separate territories at the same time). Where football and soccer and the like are essentially battles fought on a single front, baseball is more like a war that can be fought on several fronts at once. How's that? 
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