What sports can fill the niche for women's sports anime?

[judasmartel]

Originally Posted by darkchibi07

If we're talking about eye-candy aesthetics, it still really, REALLY baffles me why hadn't any of the anime producers done a girls' gymnastics series yet? The fanservice lends itself so easily with the sport, and you can easily get character designs that's otaku-friendly by being slender sexy cute (like ponkan8 or BUNBUN for example) to go with it.

There are simply a lot of female gymnasts in anime that a girls gymnastics' series isn't really required or in demand at all. Besides, gymnastics is generally regarded as a woman's sport, so portrayals of athletes in a girls' gymnastics series would be stereotypically "slender sexy cute" anyway. The only I can see it being successful is if they go international, along with other nations that regularly dominate the event like China, the US, and occassionally Russia IIRC.

Back to hockey, Aina (Sena?) Takeuchi is cute but she's on the chubby side, but if you age down the female hockey players to say, Under-17, then add maybe one or two otaku-friendly eye-candy players on the hero team who are at least slightly below average in skill, you're already set for a girls' hockey anime.

[darkchibi07]

Originally Posted by judasmartel

There are simply a lot of female gymnasts in anime that a girls gymnastics' series isn't really required or in demand at all. Besides, gymnastics is generally regarded as a woman's sport, so portrayals of athletes in a girls' gymnastics series would be stereotypically "slender sexy cute" anyway. The only I can see it being successful is if they go international, along with other nations that regularly dominate the event like China, the US, and occassionally Russia IIRC.

That's story potential right there. Make it a story of the underdog Japanese female gymnasts that will later triumph internationally.

[judasmartel]

Originally Posted by darkchibi07

That's story potential right there. Make it a story of the underdog Japanese female gymnasts that will later triumph internationally.

Are there a lot of titles that has Chinese characters from the mainland in it unlike those from say, Hong Kong (Meiling and Syaoran from CCS) or Taiwan (Cui Yifei from Luv-Muv Alternative)? I usually assume that Chinese characters in anime are from the mainland unless it is specified otherwise, which is usually the case for a lot of anime I have watched. Maybe Japanese authors are not keen in offending the mainland Chinese government in any way or something?

[KiraYamatoFan]

Originally Posted by judasmartel

Back to hockey, Aina (Sena?) Takeuchi is cute but she's on the chubby side, but if you age down the female hockey players to say, Under-17, then add maybe one or two otaku-friendly eye-candy players on the hero team who are at least slightly below average in skill, you're already set for a girls' hockey anime.

Unfortunately, Aina Takeuchi was not dressed for the match today. She either was a healthy scratch or injured. To be honest, Calgary have a very good team although the Montreal Canadiennes currently lead the standings in the CWHL as of now. I read that Nachi Fujimoto made the Canadiennes' training camp a few months ago before she got traded to Boston in September.

I think there are plenty of ways you can make a girls' hockey anime. As you said, a couple of players can be real eye-candy. The way less skillful players would play the game is to grind the opposition's defenders until the latter are tired and make mistakes. Furthermore, those "grinders" can often play mind games by chirping at the opposition. That would be fun if the sexiest girls are also the ones who get under the skin of their opponents.

[Flower]

In terms of gymnastics being brought up, there apparently was an older anime about acrobatics.

Here is a link about a few women's sports anime that have been produced, including the above mentioned one: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/the-...-12-10/.109726

[judasmartel]

Originally Posted by Flower

In terms of gymnastics being brought up, there apparently was an older anime about acrobatics.

Here is a link about a few women's sports anime that have been produced, including the above mentioned one: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/the-...-12-10/.109726

Almost all of these titles are pretty old, so in a sense, women's sports anime has always been a niche, if not a fad, for quite a long time. It only so happened that the fad with men's sports anime has revived, albeit they also used tropes that pander to the LGBT community in addition to the usual shounen tropes that exist in the genre to expand their audience.

The only decent women's sports anime at the moment is Keijo, which is not even about an official Olympic sport (seems to me like a cross between sumo, judo, and Olympic wrestling) and was only able to compete with the likes of KnB (men's basketball), Haikyuu (men's volleyball), and Yuri on Ice (men's figure skating) through sheer amounts of fanservice (well-toned teenage female bodies, huge boobs and butts, you name it).

Other titles like Girls Und Panzer, which like Keijo, is not about an official Olympic sport (maybe the E-Sports scene can use a tank war game?); and Saki and Shakunetsu, both of which are basically Riichi (Japanese Mah Jong) and Table Tennis, respectively, with over-the-top superpowers. Saki has it even worse as both Riichi and Mah Jong are very much luck-based games, so it's actually very rare, if not impossible, to get the exact same hands as featured in the series on a regular basis, much more so to get a score of +/- 0 every time in a real Riichi match.

[Kinematics]

For soccer, there's a current running manga, "Mai Ball", which very much looks like it has an anime adaptation in mind. Given its current length, I'd probably expect an announcement for the end of next year.

[judasmartel]

Originally Posted by Kinematics

For soccer, there's a current running manga, "Mai Ball", which very much looks like it has an anime adaptation in mind. Given its current length, I'd probably expect an announcement for the end of next year.

Interesting. Came out in 2012, just a year after Japan won the FIFA Women's World Cup in 2011 and two years before the Japanese women's youth team won the Under-17 edition in 2014, although they failed to defend their title against eventual champions North Korea this year. In addition, forward Fuka Nagano is a very good combination of beauty and skill; she won the Golden Ball award this year and she is pretty much the only one on the 2016 team that also played on the 2014 championship team.

Yet who knows? Maybe they can use an anime adaptation of Mai Ball to advertise the Japanese national soccer teams for the 2018 FIFA Men's World Cup, the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup, and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Spoiler for Fuka Nagano, beauty and skill in Japanese women's football:

Apparently, Mai Ball has quite the following in Europe, particularly Germany and France. Picking this up to see if this could make for a really good women's sports anime. Here's to hoping its anime adaptation becomes the best women's sports anime of this generation.

P.S. Even more interesting is that the main female lead can be marketed as the Moe Moe version of Ronaldo and Messi, depending on her current skill level and the quality of the hero team and their opponents.

P.P.S. Maybe one thing that gives this manga a minus is the unrealistic body measurements. Seriously, 99cm bust on a 163cm female athlete? Even the most attractive athletes in the world aren't that disproportionate let alone that huge. Busts that big are better suited on 6ft+ female athletes than 5ft ones.

P.P.P.S Sweet Jesus, NTR incoming. I should really make a thread about Mai Ball.

[kitten320]

There are more but not many:

Bamboo Blade - female Kendo
Area no Kishi - while it is mainly men football, it still has a female MC who is a talented football player and we get to see her play in several female based matches. There are even side episodes centred around female teams and players.
Chihayafuru - gender is irrelevant in Karuta.
Cross Game - showed tiny bit of female baseball but sadly female lead wasn't really interested.
Shion no Ou - female Shougi
Suzuka - male runner and female high jumper

Depressing but that's how it is in real life as well. Turn female sport on and 99% of people in the room will go "What kind of shit is that? It's not sport. Females can't do sport, turn it off. Oh wait, they are wearing shorts and swimsuits, keep it on!"

As a result most female based sports are fan service heavy aka Keijo. Why else would men watch it? And females don't watch sport unless they can drool over hot guys, right, right?!

Before change in anime happens, it needs to happen in real life first.


The thing I do not understand in anime is that why is judo always made fun of? It's Japanese national sport that they are really good at and yet every single anime out there makes judoka look dumb as a rock. I can only think of like 1 or 2 shows where judo wasn't completely destroyed. Why such hate towards their own, popular sport?

[judasmartel]

Originally Posted by kitten320

There are more but not many:

Bamboo Blade - female Kendo
Area no Kishi - while it is mainly men football, it still has a female MC who is a talented football player and we get to see her play in several female based matches. There are even side episodes centred around female teams and players.
Chihayafuru - gender is irrelevant in Karuta.
Cross Game - showed tiny bit of female baseball but sadly female lead wasn't really interested.
Shion no Ou - female Shougi
Suzuka - male runner and female high jumper

Depressing but that's how it is in real life as well. Turn female sport on and 99% of people in the room will go "What kind of shit is that? It's not sport. Females can't do sport, turn it off. Oh wait, they are wearing shorts and swimsuits, keep it on!"

As a result most female based sports are fan service heavy aka Keijo. Why else would men watch it? And females don't watch sport unless they can drool over hot guys, right, right?!

Before change in anime happens, it needs to happen in real life first.

The thing I do not understand in anime is that why is judo always made fun of? It's Japanese national sport that they are really good at and yet every single anime out there makes judoka look dumb as a rock. I can only think of like 1 or 2 shows where judo wasn't completely destroyed. Why such hate towards their own, popular sport?

Well, male sports fans just can't get their egos in check. The idea that women can actually play sports at a similar level to men, let alone BEAT THEM in sports, is madness to these kinds of fans.

Also, women's sports sadly gets sexualized so much that it's impossible to sell your sport unless you have a skilled eye-candy playing it, and even then people still talk shit about that particular player like, "she has no skill like her opponents, and she only got through the competition with just her beauty alone."

Women's lawn tennis, in particular, is so bad with this that when Canadian player Eugenie Bouchard won a high-profile match (can't remember what it was), the media actually told her to "do a curl", which she reluctantly complied. But when your best tennis players these days are the Williams siblings Serena and Venus who are black and the infamous Lingerie American Football League flopped so hard, you know you can't market women's sports with just beauty alone, skill is still more important, it's just easier to market your women's sport to a much wider audience when your best player is also an eye-candy. That is why Anna Kournikova is a godsend to women's tennis in her time. So beautiful it's easy to sexualize her, yet so skilled she can play just as well as the men.

I know, women's sports should be marketed in a way that encourages little girls to do sports, that they can be feminine and sporty at the same time but as the male-dominated macho culture that says you can only be feminine and not sporty is so intense even to this day, marketing women's sports still sucks balls, so they gotta do what they have to.

About judo being made fun of, well, judo is a sport based on throws and grapples, thus lots of potential for weird body contact, much more so in the women's division. As for judo protagonists being dumb as rocks, well, most anime MC's are dumb as rocks, anyways, and IDK about you, but Yawara doesn't strike me as awfully dumb, she's more like an average girl who isn't particularly bright nor dumb but does judo so well.

IDK about judo being the national sport in Japan, but it's usually karate that comes into people's minds rather than judo.

[PhoenixRising]

I guessing that if they were to make a sports anime for girls, it'd be either:

• Gymnastics - Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne did show a couple of episodes about a Gymnastics competition because Maron, the lead character, was on the team. So I wouldn't be opposed to one.
• Ice Skating - I watched a bit of Ginban Kaleidoscope and I liked it, so maybe another one.
• Hockey - Female Hockey is pretty popular where I come from in Australia, so maybe they might make an anime on that.
• Netball
• Soccer
• Kendo - I've watched Bamboo Blade before and I really liked it.
• Archery - I'm kind of interested in seeing maybe an archery anime because they use it a lot in anime high schools settings e.g. Fate/Stay Night, but they've never made a serious anime about it. So I kinda like to see one.

*I'm not too sure about Female Tennis because I remember that when I was watching Prince of Tennis, I was more interested in the boys teams rather than what the girls team were doing.

[judasmartel]

Originally Posted by PhoenixRising

Hockey

Hmm, I am thinking Ice Hockey, but the uniforms make it kind of hard to sell to otakus, it's baggy af and it covers the players from head to toe. We were discussing before that it would be interesting if the main eye-candies of the hero team are the primary defenders whose job is basically trolling the offense so that they make careless mistakes. It would be awesome if the sexiest members of the hero team are also the ones that get into their opponents' skin the most often.

Originally Posted by PhoenixRising

Netball

Well, it's basically basketball with a different set of equipment, it's not in the Olympics YET, AND Japan doesn't even feature much in it. But if they crank up the fanservice to the level of Keijo, I think it will sell.

I was thinking more of handball, but I guess it's more of Korea's thing than Japan, and Korea isn't doing so hot in the world stage these days after their awesome miracle run in the 2004 Olympic women's handball just when handball in Korea was at its lowest point.

Silly me.

Originally Posted by PhoenixRising

Soccer

I am currently following a women's soccer manga called Mai Ball which came out just a year after Japan won the FIFA Women's World Cup in 2011 and two years before they won the Under-17 edition in 2014. Japan made back-to-back World Cup Finals appearances in both the senior and U-17 divisions in 2015 and 2016, this time losing to the US and North Korea, respectively.

It's been a good read so far; be warned though, the start of the series is pure concentrated LEWD, but it gets better over time as the ecchi slowly disappears, it's pretty much gone by their first official match. The hero team in this one strongly reminds me of the Deimon Devil Bats: a team full of crazy misfits, typical all-offense hero team mentality, struggles hard against strong defensive teams, the only thing missing is that their captain isn't as crazy as Hiruma, but does have a lot of swag.

Originally Posted by PhoenixRising

Kendo
Archery

As Honoka and Umi from Love Live are practitioners of these sports, I think LL can use a sports spin-off for each of them to use the hype for the next Love Live to hype the 2020 Tokyo Olympics as well. Or you know, pick 9 female athletes as members of the protagonist group of the third generation of Love Live coming into 2020.

Originally Posted by PhoenixRising

I'm not too sure about Female Tennis because I remember that when I was watching Prince of Tennis, I was more interested in the boys teams rather than what the girls team were doing.

Well, that's fine. Women's tennis gets sexualized so bad, anyway, so any attempt at making a women's tennis anime might be seen as something done in bad taste.

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by judasmartel

I know, women's sports should be marketed in a way that encourages little girls to do sports, that they can be feminine and sporty at the same time but as the male-dominated macho culture that says you can only be feminine and not sporty is so intense even to this day, marketing women's sports still sucks balls, so they gotta do what they have to.

In the US girls and boys play youth soccer at nearly identical rates. The US professional women's team has been much more internationally successful than the men, winning three World Cups and four Olympic gold medals since 1991. Their success has brought many girls into the sport at young ages.

What I find especially puzzling is the sex-segregation that happens in games like karuta and Shougi. In Shion no Ou, Shion does play against male opponents, but only in a privately-organized tournament. Otherwise her ascent up the professional ranks pitted her against other women. Chihaya plays against men as part of team karuta, but her personal goal is to become the "Queen." The notion that she might aspire to become the Meijin seemingly never crosses her mind.

[KiraYamatoFan]

Originally Posted by judasmartel

Hmm, I am thinking Ice Hockey, but the uniforms make it kind of hard to sell to otakus, it's baggy af and it covers the players from head to toe. We were discussing before that it would be interesting if the main eye-candies of the hero team are the primary defenders whose job is basically trolling the offense so that they make careless mistakes. It would be awesome if the sexiest members of the hero team are also the ones that get into their opponents' skin the most often.

I think he meant field hockey in particular. In such case, it's not something that can't be done since I have seen my share of Japanese artwork of girls in outfits for field hockey.

[judasmartel]

Originally Posted by KiraYamatoFan

I think he meant field hockey in particular. In such case, it's not something that can't be done since I have seen my share of Japanese artwork of girls in outfits for field hockey.

Yep. Field hockey uniforms have LOTS of potential for fanservice. Problem is (sorry, I hate to nitpick, but eh...) Japan sucks at it. But who knows, Captain Tsubasa and Slam Dunk turned Japan from zero to hero in football and basketball, after all.

[PhoenixRising]

Originally Posted by KiraYamatoFan

I think he meant field hockey in particular. In such case, it's not something that can't be done since I have seen my share of Japanese artwork of girls in outfits for field hockey.

Sorry for giving wrong impression, I'm actually female. However, getting back on the subject, I was referring to both field and ice hockey. Although I admit I was thinking more along the lines of ice hockey, but a field hockey anime would be nice too.

[kitten320]

Originally Posted by judasmartel

About judo being made fun of, well, judo is a sport based on throws and grapples, thus lots of potential for weird body contact, much more so in the women's division. As for judo protagonists being dumb as rocks, well, most anime MC's are dumb as rocks, anyways, and IDK about you, but Yawara doesn't strike me as awfully dumb, she's more like an average girl who isn't particularly bright nor dumb but does judo so well.

IDK about judo being the national sport in Japan, but it's usually karate that comes into people's minds rather than judo.

Men and Female do not spar together in competition, they are in separate divisions like 99% of sport. So groping is not much of an issue unless they go down the Keijo road. There are clear grabs on clothing only, no body groping.

The things is, they are side characters. All sport clubs are portrayed as something cool and yet every judo representative is an idiot in anime.

Judo was created by Japanese, popular and highly dominated in Olympics. Pretty sure Japan secured a medal in every weight category be it men or female. They should take more pride in it.

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by kitten320

Men and Female do not spar together in competition, they are in separate divisions like 99% of sport. So groping is not much of an issue unless they go down the Keijo road. There are clear grabs on clothing only, no body groping.

In episode five of Kure-nai, Shinkarou and Yuuno spar together as they have done for years while Shin was living in their household. (Yuuno's father teaches a martial arts technique.) It's a pretty compelling sequence since we know that Yuuno has a romantic interest in Shinkarou. Most adolescent boys and girls are rarely so physically intimate if they are not in some type of romantic relationship, so watching them together in such close quarters adds a certain overlay of eroticism to what might otherwise be a fairly pedestrian scene.

[judasmartel]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

In the US girls and boys play youth soccer at nearly identical rates. The US professional women's team has been much more internationally successful than the men, winning three World Cups and four Olympic gold medals since 1991. Their success has brought many girls into the sport at young ages.

But what really gets me is that when a particular nation performs so well in both popularity and competitiveness in the world stage at the women's division of a particular sport but suck so hard at the men's division, that particular sport gets derided for being a "woman's sport" and any guy who taking it up is often derided as a homo who is too sissy to play the "manly sports", which just so happen to be the kind of sports where the men's division of that nation excels at the world stage, regardless of whether or not its women's division also excels in the sport as well.

I think the US has this phenomenon particularly bad, I have actually heard people dismiss soccer as a "girly" sport that disallows body contact compared to the "manly" American football which has A LOT of body contact involved. I think this sort of thing went on at least until the American GK Tim Howard made a World Cup record 16 saves in 2014. Since then, men's soccer has become more appreciated in the US than ever before. This event alone proved that Americans can actually enjoy a sport that for the longest time they have considered boring, mostly due to the low scores and the prevalence of scoreless draws. It's not the scoring itself that makes a sport exciting, it's the DECISIVE SCORING - the score that decides the entire game. Which is why close games are exciting while blowouts are not, and this is true for every single team sport in the world, not just the exciting ones like American sports.

[fukarming]

Ginban Kaleidoscope is quite realistic, relatively recent (after 2000) and I find that enjoyable and even search out the LN after watching the anime.

As someone said before Tennis and Volleyball were done in the 70s.

I know there are women sports manga on football and Lacrosse. I guess they are not popular enough to adapt into anime. I also recall reading a manga about female golf player (it is a fan service manga - apparently the female lead is a pro and its sponsor want her to wear super short skirt or something - again not very good)