Dil’s Favorite Wholesome Sports Anime Moments (2020 Update)
One of my all-time favorite articles I ever wrote was my list of favorite sports anime moments that were oozing with wholesome feelings. Rather than copy and paste three-year-old thoughts and call it done, I decided to revisit this list. I trimmed some, added others, and kept my old writing here too. To keep things from looking confusing, I’ll just outright say which anime I added to the list. I almost doubled this list by adding Megalo Box, Haikyuu!, and Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid. I also revised my thoughts on Kanon and Angel Beats. The only thing I can add from my old intro is that I am well aware that half of my list consists of anime adaptations of works done by Key. LOOK. I love a good sports moment in anime that were already there to make you cry. Just because they are not the moments from actual sports anime does not mean they can’t be amazing sports moments.
With that said, in no particular order:
Megalo Box- Joe Does Not Throw the Match
The wild, futuristic boxing anime Megalo Box is a cult classic that has had rejuvenation in 2020 with it getting a dub and released on Netflix. The story of “Gearless Joe” fighting his way all the way to the top is a bit cliché, but the journey is fun, nonetheless. The biggest conflict of the anime involves Joe and his manager, Nanbu, being forced to throw a match in the tournament. This is the price for the strings mob boss Fujimaki pulled to get them there in the first place. Nanbu tells Joe they have no choice but to throw the match, which rocks the team to their core.
After getting his ass beat for most of the fight, Joe decides to do something remarkable and flirt with death. After all the threats, Nanbu believes in his boxer and takes the price of his vision to support Joe’s dream. There are quite a few inspirational moments in this anime, but I find this one to be the most moving. A man obsessed with greed and himself finally does something selfless to support the fire of a “stray dog” in the ring. It makes those triumphant comeback swings Joe throws much more satisfying.
Little Busters! — The Baseball Game You Were Expecting (Literally the Entire Time)
The first season of Little Busters! and, in some respects, the sequel season, Refrain, was centered around the premise of a gang of misfits joining together to form a baseball team. It is kind of anything but a baseball anime, but there certainly is plenty of baseball practice going on. Have you ever wondered what it would be like if a four foot something Russian-Japanese girl was the best outfielder? Perhaps you wanted to see kendo players crush homers with one hand (given how the guy ended up having to use one hand instead of two, anything is possible). Whatever the situation was, there had to be some payoff to the ahem plot of playing baseball. Most baseball games in anime usually end with a team of a teenage girls, someone’s sister, a mom/aunt/teacher/adult woman who totally is saucing, and the protagonist somehow destroying the team of actual adult baseball players. In this series, however, the score was not the same. The game was long, hard fought, and the Little Busters were destroyed by the team of baseball players. In the end, however, they were all exhausted and learned the real lesson was to be found in the experiences they had to come together…
…just kidding, you already know what happens. The team composed of teenagers who don’t have an ounce of athletic ability in their bodies steamroll some random baseball players who probably deserve to never play the sport again after this beatdown. It is really fun and has a fantastic song playing while the girl who was recruited out in the courtyard playing with stray cats throws fastballs that would make Max Scherzer look like a pansy.
Haikyuu! — Tsukishima Finds His Moment
There were two options that came to mind for Haikyuu! and they were much closer than I could ever express. Seeing as how one choice, the big rally at the end of a particular match, is hard to dive into without spoilers, I will go for a character moment that captures the spirit of sports. The stoic Kei Tsukishima does not get much of a rise out of playing volleyball, despite being arguably one of the best players on his team. When the spotlight is on him in a crucial match, he does not see any reason why that should change now.
Against his reasoning, he gets more and more into the match as he duels with the opposing team. After making a huge play, the story cuts to a training camp where another athlete tells him that there will be a moment where he falls in love with the sport. With perfect direction, there is a hard cut to Tsukishima shouting in excitement, pumped up over his play. Sports are a passionate thing- I think it is difficult to explain that to someone who has not experienced a moment that captivated them in their activity. This anime gets about as close as you can in expressing that passion without experiencing it yourself.
Clannad- Your Girl Calls Kyou Fujibayashi “Daddy” Too
I COMPLETELY FORGOT THAT I WROTE THIS. I will still keep my first thoughts on the Clannad 3 on 3 basketball game despite doing a frame by frame breakdown earlier this year.
I wrote about this one already when I was listing off anime characters LeBron James would want on his anime team. We’ve been over how absurd the premise of a drama club having to play for survival against a basketball team (who I can only assume wants to take over the small club room so that they can throw ragers in there with cheap beer) is. This pits Tomoya (who I always get confused with the other character in this series who has an almost identical name in Tomoyo) in a desperate battle with his past to call up what little basketball ability he has left. Never mind that I can assure you still that the last shot in the game will never, ever, ever happen even in a local YMCA pick-up game, this is a really awesome episode that is often forgotten about when people look back on the series. We learn so much about Nagisa and Tomoya, which pays off in the long game. There are the seeds planted for the drama between the young man and his father, and maybe most importantly, we learn that Fujibayashi Kyou is the greatest three point shooter since Ray Allen (yeah, the guy who wrote a hate article about the Golden State Warriors on an anime website left Curry out of that title, go figure!).
Watch this game, really. Let me break this down for you: this must be the worst high school team of all time because even though they play their freshmen at first, their actual starters come in for what I’m assuming is the last five to seven minutes of the game. What 3 on 3 game is playing on a timer? I do not know. Let’s keep going with it. I got some flak from people for putting Kyou in the list last time (some of the…ruder people said that I was catering to a waifu, which is absurd), but the final score was 27–26. On screen, she shoots 5–5 from three, meaning she scored at least 15 points. Between the two other players, there are roughly five or six shots that go in. Maybe these guys they’re playing here don’t know anything about defense, or maybe they deliberately didn’t show Kyou moving so you didn’t see her travel on every shot, but numbers don’t lie: she hit 100% of her shots and scored over 55% of her team’s points. She really should have played ball overseas instead of becoming a preschool teacher, because there would have been bank in the future for her.
Really though, as improbable as this whole game is, is there a better feeling than an underdog rallying and beating the giant? As much fun as I have messing around about the details of it, it is just fiction and is there to be heartwarming.
Death Note- The Tennis Match
Just kidding.
Kuroko’s Basketball- Iron Heart Kiyoshi Wills Out the W
Knee injuries suck. I mean they really, really, really, suck. Nothing made me wince worse than watching the abuse Kiyoshi Teppei goes through during the title run his school goes on in Kuroko’s Basketball. Playing against a team that makes the New Orleans Saints’ BountyGate look like child’s play, Kiyoshi is taken out the season before the show starts and suffers injuries to his knee(s). Evidently this is so brutal that they have to cart him off the court to have surgery that next day. I don’t know how big Japanese basketball players are, but in this world, they are built like NBA players and people are getting life-altering injuries from normal games.
When he gets his chance to step up as a leader against the same team he played the previous year, things get tough fast. Doing a bunch of gritty things every coach loves to see in basketball like setting screens for his teammates and taking hits from cheap plays, the guy got banged up bad. It got so bad he was bleeding like he was in an MMA fight and had to go to the locker room. After doing the “I’ll never talk to you again if you don’t let me go” routine, he goes back in and gives one of the best speeches in sports anime history. It was so motivating, I actually have a poster of the speech. There weren’t any clips of it left on YouTube, but trust me it is worth watching if you ever get the chance, it goes:
“If their hearts get fragile, I’ll become their support. If they’re threatened, I’ll become their shield. I’ll sacrifice myself any day to protect everyone. That is why I came back!”
Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid- Kanna’s Big Race
Another anime moment that deserves its own article, and a runaway candidate for BIG DAD ENERGY, the little dragon Kanna’s track and field day at school makes this revised list easily. Throughout the anime, we see the dragons try to integrate themselves into normal human life. Kanna, the youngest of these dragons, attends kindergarten and lives with the titular Miss Kobayashi. Her school is having a big track and field day, and all the children are inviting their parents to come see them compete.
Excited to have her new family there, Kanna asks Kobayashi if she can make it to the event. Her new guardian hesitates as she shares that her work is keeping her late for a huge deadline. Kanna disappointedly sulks and retreats to her room for the majority of the next week. Determined to make it, Kobayashi burns midnight oil to get the day off for the event. When she surprises Kanna, the way the little dragon girl lights up just melts my heart.
Oh yeah, Kanna burns those fools like she was vintage Deion Sanders, too.
https://youtu.be/GNYM90azWm0?t=408 (in case the embed doesn’t work for whatever reason)
Kanon (2006)- Nayuki Gets the Push from Yuichi to Win
Alright, so this is a super underrated moment as most people forget about it altogether. When Yuichi’s cousin Nayuki goes for gold at their school’s big running event (it is called “track and field” but the runners are obviously doing cross country stuff, so it is baffling to me…guess it is a relay on the street???), everyone attends to cheer her on. The fastest on her team and running on the last leg of the race, Nayuki gets the relay super late (they claim it is seventh, but that is absurd) and just trucks through everyone in the middle of the field (look at her go, her animation is double speed of a run cycle than the others). Yuichi decides to steal a bike from his buddy Greg Ayres and takes off to keep up with the speedster.
Just when she starts to fall short of breath and motivation, Yuichi shouts out to Nayuki with support alongside of her the whole last stretch. This pushes her enough to finish strong and make up for more space than LeBron did in the Finals that one year.
I had to revisit this part of the article because, bar none, this remains one of the most underrated sports moments. As a runner, I cannot think of anything more moving than having someone cheer you on both in spirit and physically there alongside of you. I still put my hands on my face during this moment because it remains the sweetest thing and I yearn for moments like these in both entertainment and real life. I attached the clip at the beginning of this section for my readers, but my listeners will hear it right after this. There may be…other reasons I love this scene you may notice. Anyways.
FINALLY, UNAVOIDABLE SPOILERS BELOW FOR…
Angel Beats- THE SUNDOWN BASEBALL SCENE.
Sometimes all we need is an excuse to have a moment. If Key is good at anything, it is using sports as an excuse to make you cry.
In Angel Beats, Yuzuru tries to help Yui fulfill all of her wishes she had in her life. The fun little bundle of energy Yui has one last wish, however, that she confesses at sundown at the baseball field. She wishes she could get married. Unsure how to respond, Yuzuru struggles. Just then, classmate Hinata shouts out to Yui
“Well I’ll marry you! I’ll marry you. I mean it, I’m serious Yui. No matter what you were like or what you had done in your previous life, I’d still marry you today. No matter what kind of terrible physical handicap you had.”
Yui tries to cut him off by saying “You know I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t stand…”
Hinata shouts out “I said no matter the handicap! Even if you couldn’t stand and walk, even if you couldn’t have kids…even so, I’d still marry you. I WOULD! I want to be with you forever and ever! The Yui I met here wasn’t a fake. You’re Yui. No matter where we met, I would have fallen in love with you. Even if it is a one and six billion chance we would meet, even if you were already paralyzed when we met, I’d marry you. And I’d make you the happiest woman alive.”
He lays out a hypothetical where the two of them would meet from him accidently breaking her window with a baseball. They talk about spending time together and him helping her mom take care of her. As if this wasn’t enough to kill me, it goes for the kill-shot in a way only a Key story can- there is a montage of them meeting just that way and spending time together. I only cried three times writing this, it’s okay (don’t ask how many times I had to stop narrating).
What are some of your favorite sports moments in anime?
