10 Best Anime Fans Will Never Believe Are About Sports

Summary Sports anime can focus on activities that aren’t traditionally considered sports, like Karuta and Shogi, but still highlight competition and sports-style structures.
Salaryman’s Club is a youth-blasted badminton anime set in the corporate world, showing the protagonist’s struggle to balance his dreams and his realities.
Prince of Stride is a unique sports anime that combines the explosiveness of sprinting with the dexterity of obstacle course running, resembling modern-day parkour.
The best sports anime that fans will never believe are about sports focus on activities ranging from tabletop games to poetry, with athletic elements slipping seamlessly into the background. Despite this, the anime with seemingly inconsequential sports focuses will start to show its competitive colors once the main characters delve deeper into the essence of the respective sports.
The question of what makes a sports anime a sports anime is rather ambiguous. There are a plethora of series about mainstream sports, such as basketball, soccer, tennis, and even boxing. But with the release of series such as Chihayafuru and March Comes in Like a Lion, anime about Karuta and Shogi, respectively, the line becomes less clear. Although these games are not traditionally labeled as sports, the series are undoubtedly sports anime purely due to the elevated competitive framing and the sports-style structures such as team play and tournament arcs.
Related 10 Best Sports Anime of All Time Sports anime are some of the most compelling in the medium, but only a few are great enough to be called the best (and have major impacts on sports).
10 Salaryman’s Club Meditates on Work-Life Balance
Original series directed by Yamuchi Aimi
Release Year: 2022 Episodes: 12 Where to Stream: Crunchyroll, Amazon Prime Video
Salaryman’s Club, or Ryman’s Club for short, is an anime produced by Liden Films, and is nothing like what its title implies, as it’s a youth-blasted sports anime taking place in the heart of corporate Japan. The series follows badminton genius, Shiratori Mikoto, as he wades through the waters of salaryman life, an occupation that his dreams of playing badminton professionally forced him to take on.
Mikoto joins the Sunlight Beverage corporate badminton team, but unlike how it sounds, there are competitions held on a professional level, and the anime implies that working as a corporate peon during the day and practicing for cross-company sponsored tournaments by night is the only way to make a living as a professional badminton player. From personal growth to teammate bonding, Mikoto enters a fresh world of balancing his dreams and his realities.
WATCH ON Crunchyroll
9 Prince of Stride Has School-Sanctioned Parkour
Based on the manga by Sogabe Shuji and Arai Teruko
Release Year: 2016 Episodes: 12 Where to Stream: Crunchyroll, Funimation, Tubi
Prince of Stride: Alternative is a short sports anime series produced by studio Madhouse, known for hit series such as Death Note, Hunter x Hunter, and the most recent Frieren. Compared to these big-name series, Prince of Stride rather takes a quiet, but action-packed backseat, but sports anime fans looking for something fresh will inevitably find this series.
Prince of Stride is an anime focusing on the sport of “stride”, an extreme sport that combines the explosiveness of sprinting with the dexterity of obstacle course running, much resembling modern-day parkour, but with relay elements. Despite the potential dangers of such a sport, there is a club at Honan High School, and many other schools in the anime. Following Sakarai Nana and his teammates, as they try to rejuvenate the stride club, the anime also combines the established sports anime structure with this unique athletic activity.
WATCH ON Crunchyroll
8 Bamboo Blade Is a Reminder of Japanese Traditional Martial Arts
Based on the manga by Totsuka Matsuhiro and Igarashi Aguri
Release Year: 2007 Episodes: 26 Where to Stream: Crunchyroll, Funimation, Amazon Prime Video
Bamboo Blade is a classic sports anime of the mid 2000s produced by Studio AIC Asta, that perfectly blends school elements with comedy, slice of life, and traditional Japanese martial arts. The series focuses on the Muroe High School girls’ kendo team, with the coach’s ambition to defeat the girls’ kendo team coached by his senior serving as the focal point.
Although martial arts anime have been done before in the supernatural sense, such as with series like Dragon Ball Z, the scenes of the modern-day practice of Budou (traditional Japanese martial arts) such as Aikido, Judo, and Kendo are rare. Bamboo Blade takes the realism of kendo and crafts a wonderful story of competitiveness and detailed exposure of the once-again-rising sport.WATCH ON Crunchyroll
7 Saki Brings Mahjong to Young Audiences
Based on the manga by Kobayashi Ritz
Release Year: 2009 Episodes: 25 Where to Stream: Crunchyroll, Amazon Prime Video
Saki is a slice-of-life sports anime produced by Gonzo and Picture Magic that flips the notion of the game of mahjong, bringing the game often associated with gatherings of the elderly in bar saloons or family reunions to the hot-blooded youth of Kiyosumi High School and main character Miyanaga Saki.
The series gives detailed accounts of mahjong strategy that goes beyond the game of matching it is usually viewed as. Furthermore, it opens the world of competitive mahjong on a high school level, connecting deeply with young anime fans and inspiring new waves of future mahjong masters through Saki’s low-key adaptation, which is a sports anime disguised as a high school shojo.
WATCH ON Crunchyroll
6 The King’s Avatar Established Esports In Anime
Based on the novel by Butterfly Blue
Release Year: 2017 Episodes: 12 Where to Stream: Viki
The King’s Avatar, also known as Quanzhi Gaoshou, is one of the first Chinese anime, or donghua. Produced by B.CMAY PICTURES, a studio that is also known for producing the popular series, The Founder of Diabolism, The King’s Avatar is a series that pushes the limits of the professional gaming world, as it follows main character Ye Xiu through his days playing the battle RPG called Glory.
Having aired in 2017, this series was fresh on all fronts, not only being one of the earliest donghua that rose to fame, but also exploring the brutality of the glorified professional gaming industry. The anime gives ample time to both riveting in-game battles as well as human relationships in reality, as the players get the narrative focus over their avatars.
WATCH ON Viki
5 Tsurune Is a Sports Anime With a Touch of KyoAni Magic
Based on the light novel by Ayano Kotoko and Morimoto Chinatsu
Release Year: 2018 Episodes: 26 Where to Stream: Crunchyroll, Amazon Prime Video, The Roku Channel
Tsurune: Kazemai High School Kyudo Club is a colorful display of Kyoto Animation’s artistic prowess that combines the studio’s unique touch with the elegant sport of Kyudo, a modern Japanese martial art based on archery. The story follows the kyudo team of Kazemai High School as they embark on their adventure towards a prefectural tournament full of surprises, mysteries, and rivalries.
The series’ title, Tsurune, is the Japanese word meaning the sound of the vibrations coming from a bowstring at the release of an arrow. The anime takes this idea and injects the notion of subtle observations of beauty into every action and scene that occurs during the main characters’ journey of personal development. All the while, the anime is disguised as a mellow, high school slice of life, as Tsurune displays the beauty of Japanese culture.
WATCH ON Crunchyroll
4 Tsuritama Is Character-Driven Sports Exploration
An original series directed by Nakamura Kenji
Release Year: 2012 Episodes: 13 Where to Stream: Crunchyroll
Tsuritama, a title that literally means “fishing ball,” is an anime unsurprisingly about fishing, but the interesting part is that the sport is not the anime’s original or even main focus, as Tsuritama is about much more than just fishing. This sports series is produced by A-1 Pictures, which is known for big series such as Your Lie in April and Kaguya-sama: Love is War, and similar to these series, Tsuritama utilizes a competitive focus activity to strengthen narrative progression.
For example, in Your Lie in April, classical music competitions are used as foils against characters’ internal battles, and in Kaguya-sama love itself is the medium of competition. Tsuritama uses fishing first as a hobby that connects a group of four boys, each with their own eccentricities, and then begins injecting aspects of competitive play through the passions of the fervent fisherman, Usami Natsuki.
WATCH ON Crunchyroll
3 Chihayafuru Thrives on the Intersection of Poetry and Sport
Based on the manga by Suetsugu Yuki
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Release Year: 2011 Episodes: 74 Where to Stream: Crunchyroll, Amazon Prime Video, The Roku Channel
Chihayafuru is a well-rounded anime touching on all aspects of romance, slice-of-life, drama, and sports. Produced by Madhouse, the series is a beautiful character-driven adaptation that does not disappoint, as protagonist Chihaya Ayase makes her rounds in both the professional and high school worlds of karuta, a card game of memory and reaction time based on ancient Japanese poetry.
Chihayafuru not only does an impeccable job of depicting the day-to-day of Japanese high school sports life, but it finds ample time to explore the allure of literature and poetry, often writing overarching metaphors that link episode themes to the essence of the poems that appear in the game of Karuta. The series even has time to write perfectly structured team sports tournament arcs filled with the ups and downs of the reality of competition. WATCH ON Crunchyroll
2 March Comes in Like a Lion Contextualizes Japanese Chess
Based on the manga by Umino Chica
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Release Year: 2016 Episodes: 44 Where to Stream: Crunchyroll, Funimation, Amazon Prime Video
March Comes in Like a Lion is a low-key sports anime that brings the sophistication of shogi, or Japanese Chess, to the angst of high school-aged identity discovery. Produced by Studio Shaft, also known for Puella Magi Madoka Magica and the Bakemonogatari series, March Comes in Like a Lion is an amalgamation of subtle Sakuga and deep character studies.
The story follows Kiriyama Rei, a genius shogi professional who is only in high school. However, despite his success, Rei deals with a handful of personal problems, from loneliness to loss of purpose, all the while meeting warm and caring characters such as the Kawamoto sisters, who treat Rei as if he were family. The anime still doesn’t forget to weave the grueling world of shogi into Rei’s emotional development, as he struggles with difficult rivals and complicated relationships.
WATCH ON Crunchyroll
1 Hikaru no Go Is a Spiritual Process
Based on the manga by Obata Takeshi and Hotta Yumi
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Release Year: 2001 Episodes: 75 Where to Stream: Hulu, Vudu
Hikaru no Go is an anime with a premise similar to March Comes in Like a Lion, but differs drastically in its portrayal as a sports anime. Produced by Studio Pierrot, which is well-known for shonen series such as Bleach, Naruto, and Black Clover, Hikaru no Go is a classic story focusing on the ancient game of go, a simplistically designed board game that is anything but simple in strategy.
The anime follows main character Hikaru, a young boy who begins the series in elementary school, as he awakens the ancient spirit of Fujiwara no Sai, an imperial tutor of go from the Heian period. As an expert of the game, Sai has every ability to push Hikaru to the top of the go world by his powers alone, but Hikaru eventually finds his own passion and embarks on a unique journey into the intricacies of go, with Sai advising him along the way towards greatness.
WATCH ON Hulu