Japanese Baseball and Anime

Some classic baseball themed anime and manga.

Kyojin no Hoshi (巨人の星）"Star Giant"(?)
Ichiro's father sometimes gets compared to the animated father in the way they trained their sons. Set in the 1960-70s NPB (after the rigorous training made him a pro) as he stars for the Giants, naturally.

Dokaben（ドカベン）
Set in high school (Koushien), then NPB with a cast of main and popular characters.

Touch (タッチ）
Also set in high school (Koushien) during the 1980s, but there's a hefty love romance portion to this manga/anime.

How about the Swallows use of Manga on their electronic scoreboard to introduce the home team? Also the small four panel manga used to comment on players and teams in the sports dailies? (What happened to the one in Daily Sports? I miss it.)

"Kyojin no Hoshi" actually means "Giant's star."

It's Adachi Mitsuru, too, but you should definitely mention H2: Kimi to Itahibi if you're talking about Koshien. I'm really not into manga/anime, but the dorama of it was absolutely spectacular, with some fantastic use of special effects and great casting. The story's about a high school that goes from not even having a baseball club to winning Koshien.

Dokaben had a Pro Yakyu series which I read a little bit of a while ago, and that definitely had real-life NPB players in it, mostly portrayed in amusing ways from what I recall.

There have been a lot of great sports doramas in the last few years though, like Attack No. 1 (volleyball), Pride (ice hockey), Water Boys (synchronized swimming), Ace wo Nerae (tennis), and the currently airing Regatta. Then there's all the baseball ones like Wonderful Life, H2, Kisarazu Cat's Eye, etc.

And I guess a weird cross-reference would be Hichori Morimoto of the Nippon Ham Fighters dressing up as some alien thing from Dragonball Z [Picolo] at this year's All-Star game.

Wow! Thanks everyone, you've certainly been a big help!

Deanna, I wanted to ask you where I could find more information on "Pride," the ice hockey manga you mentioned. That will go over well since I will be hosting my panel in Canada.

Can any one remember any specific point in any manga or anime that has any reference to any NPB teams other then the Giants or Tigers?

If anyone wants to see an entire world based on the Hanshin Tigers, check out "Tsubasa Chronicle" by Clamp. The first 5 or so chapters are about their adventure in the "Henshin Republic."

I have no idea if the "Pride" dorama was based off a manga or not. Uh, here's a dorama wiki page about it - amusingly, it stars Takuya Kimura of SMAP, not to be confused with Takuya Kimura of the Yomiuri Giants.

Another funny crossover I just thought of was the dorama version of "You're Under Arrest!" from a few years ago, which had Kazushige Nagashima (former Swallows/Giants player and son of Giants great Shigeo Nagashima) in a leading role, and Giants Yoshinobu Takahashi and Daisuke Motoki even had a cameo in one episode. Their car breaks down and the policewomen helps them fix it, then says they'll be rooting for the Giants ... if they give them free tickets!

And uhhhh, I may be misremembering, but I'm pretty sure all of the main characters in the "Dokaben" manga get drafted onto Pacific League teams in the Pro Yakyu series of it. Yamada was on Seibu, the big guy was on the Hawks, the little guy was on the Blue Wave, and the pitcher was on Lotte.

I can give you almost all information of "H2" and "Touch," since I own those manga and had been reading them over and over many times. Heck, I even have the complete box score for a few matches in "H2" (was kinda bored that day, so ... It took like 30 minutes to make it. >__>).

IMO the "H2" manga is way better than the drama since the drama had to keep it around 12 episodes, so many of the details were cut out - and they somewhat changed a bit to make it easier for viewers to understand.

There's also an anime called "Miracle Giants Doumu" which is about a kid joining the slumping Giants and takes them back to the top with his makyu [magic ball] pitches. He wore the jersey number 1/2 because he was thought to be only "half a man." This anime is very off the mark from reality because Doumu is able to throw pitches that create black holes and stuff. And his main rivals all have weird batting stances, haha.

Another baseball manga that is more recent is "Mr. Full Swing." The story basically starts off about the high school team of former NPB legend Muranaka Hironori (if you can guess, it's a ripoff of Nakamura Norihiro - since he's the author's favorite baseball player). Once again it's a manga about Koshien - and the reviving of a high school baseball team to the glory days that they enjoyed when Muranaka was in school.

Thanks a lot everyone. I really appreciate it. I will be looking into finding materials for all of your suggestions.

I will be starting on it shortly and I will post the work in progress on here so everyone can take a look, critique and suggest.

This may not be exactly what you're looking for, but there was a baseball episode in "Samurai Champloo," where the main characters, 2 samurai types and a young girl, play against a visiting team from the U.S. Kind of avant-garde as the anime was set in around mid-19th century Japan. The fact that 2 samurai participate in the game also is kind of interesting in light of the idea that the traditional Japanese attitude toward baseball is that it embodies many of the characteristics of a samurai warrior.