Why do you think there's a lack of sports cartoons?

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post 09

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If you look at Japan, you'll notice that they have a decent selection of sports-themed cartoons. For baseball, there's Major!. For tennis, you've got The Prince of Tennis. For American football, you've got Eyeshield 21. For boxing, there's Hajime no Ippo. For soccer, there's Inazuma 11. The list goes on and on.

Yet, in the West, sports cartoons are pretty much non-existent.

So why do you think Western animators tend to shy away from doing sports-themed TV shows? Do they think the interest isn't there? Do they think they wouldn't be interesting? Would you like to see more sports cartoons in the West?
 
I never understood shows and movies about sports. Isn't the point of watching sports the unpredictability of it?


In a show or movie, you feel the main team/character is probably going to win, so you don't feel satisfied when they do. Of course, sometimes they pull a fast one and make the main team/character lose, but then you have an awkward ending.

I'm not saying it can't be done, but it's hard. If anything, I think it's better to have it as an aspect of a character's life that works itself into the plot, but isn't the main focus.
 
^This kind of attitude is probably why.

Watching a sport anime isn't, and shouldn't, be like watching real sport on TV.

Sports anime aren't so much about winning as they are about the STRUGGLE. The characters, not the game, are central to the story. If the game was that important you wouldn't see elipses in sport anime when the meaningful plays are done and would see the entire match.

I don't give a rat's behind about football or watching any sport on TV... but I LOVE Eyeshield 21 because I care about the characters. I care about their ambitions, their dreams, their problems. You end up even caring for their opponent like the White Knights or the Wild Gunmen or the Aliens.

Also even if you know the Deimon Devil Bats are usually going to win (they did lose to Ojo and Seibu once each so failiure isn't unheard of) I think its still extremely satisfying to see HOW they win. That last play against the Shinryuji Naga? My god! Heck every play is framed like a battle in a shonen anime, using many of the stylistic tropes so all touchdowns feel satisfying.

I've recently started to read the old Captain Tsubasa manga, the manga is pretty much responsible for the popularity of soccer in Japan, and its also pretty good. Pretty hot-blooded too :D


So yeah I'd like to see more sports cartoon but only if they really get the reason why sports anime are succesful. Galaktik Football was somewhat dissapointing... it didn't have that interesting a cast.
 
I'm not too big a fan of sports, but a well-done sports cartoon could catch my eye. Either about a traveling team trying to be the best, or maybe just a short 13 episode series that takes place all around one game. The first few episodes could be them introducing everyone, training, and setting up their own personal problems which mix with the game (rivalries, relationships, etc) then the later half could be the game, with the final episode being post-game wrap up with the characters. In general I think the west could use more variety in general when it comes to cartoons, and there's a lot of different ways you could make a cartoon just about sports alone.
 
I don't know. But I do know no sports interest me aside from Baseball which even then I don't want to see a whole cartoon about it. I couldn't stand Rocket power because of the bmx and sports aspect of it which really turned me off the show because I don't like doing it and I definitely don't like watching. Now I will watch a sports cartoon if it focuses on the character outside of the sport and make it a small known item. But those other anime sports shows just seem gimmicky.
 
It reminds me in the late 1980s, there was a French-Canadian tv series named "Lance et Compte" (He Shoots he scores) about hockey players, who focused on the struggles then the characters like Pierre Lambert, Marc Gagnon, Jacques Mercier faced. The series was very successeful in Quebec.

Sometimes, I wish to see an anime who feature hockey players but since ice hockey isn't popular in Japan...:sweat:

Old guy mentionned a short sports toon named ProStars who featured Gretzky, Joe Jackson, Michael Jordan but I also remember an older cartoon done by Filmation named Sport Billy who teach us about sportsmanship in various sports. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport_Billy
 
Other than that, can anyone name any sports series from the West? The only ones I can come up with are racing shows (Wacky Races, Hot Wheels, etc.) and the movie Space Jam. Other than that...I'm drawing a blank.



Well, the same could be said for a lot of genres, really. We still watch superhero shows even though we know that the good guy's going to win, and we still watch adventure shows even though we know that the main character is going to achieve whatever goal he or she set out for at the beginning.

It's more about the ride than the destination.
 
And people in Japan can't...?

I don't see how there's anything wrong with wanting more variety in the types of cartoons that air on American television.
 
Sports cartoons work better with the general ethos that exists in shonen entertainment in Japan. The whole, striving, reaching, chasing a goal thing. The "I must be the best" attitude. In terms of sports in the US, the general message communicated to kids is that it's okay to not be the best as long as you have fun. It's hard to base a series on that.
 
Look. Japan and USA are very different on par with us in scales of entertainment. Also a cartoon in USA about sports would not be very cost effective. You can go get real people to do it man. If you made a cartoon about sports you gotta hire voice actors, storyboard artists, animation directors and probably even some Korean animation company to do it for you since America doesn't animate anything traditionally anymore. You can change the channel to football or get off your rump and go watch your kid go play soccer. Or better yet, play soccer?

What are you gonna do? A cartoon about sports is not a necessity where i live. I mean dang most people don't even get up except when they wanna go get another stupid Xbox 360 game.

America is fat. Fat doesn't wanna watch people exercise because it makes them sad that they are out of shape and not doing anything. *Looks in mirror* America wants to see tanks shooting football missles at nerds and women making fools out of themselves in beer.
 
Considering the Olympics are going on now, I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Scooby's All-Star Laff-a-Lympics. But of course the main attraction with that series was the big crossovers between HB's famous (and not so famous) characters. It's not often that Scooby, Yogi, and the numerous characters interacted with each other.
 
I just thought of another one; the Harlem Globetrotters cartoon.



You think so? Because the way I see it, Japanese cartoons emphasize never giving up and pushing on even when the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against you. That's not a message that's exclusively Japanese.



Those aren't problems unique to American animation. Japanese companies have the same hurdles to overcome.


I guess I should emphasize that the idea of this thread is to figure out why sports cartoons never really took off in the U.S. No one's really trying to produce sports cartoons, so they really haven't been given a chance to prove themselves, one way or the other. It's almost as if the idea of doing, say, a baseball-themed series or a tennis-themed series never occurred to animators in the West. And that intrigues me.
 
Another one that just came to mind was Pro-Stars, that short-lived series that starred Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, and Bo Jackson. I never really saw this show, but I do remember the collaboration by these sports stars. But like I said, it was a short-lived series and not that memorable.

There was also the Mr. T animated series from the 80's. While this was mainly a mystery show, this centered on Mr. T being the coach of an Olympic gymnastics team and they put their skills to the test when thwarting the bad guys.
 
Robochao you really don't get it. People in Japan can watch real sport too. *I* can watch real sport and yet I read Eyeshield 21 and Captain Tsubasa. Real sports are just a bunch of overpaid jocks doing their thing. I don't know these guys and don't really care about them one way or another. In sports anime they are CHARACTERS. I can get into Sena's head as he navigate the field or into the opposing quaterback when he realizes he's fallen for Hiruma's devilish stratagems.

The entertainment isn't at the same place at all. Its not the same experience.



He wasn't their coach. At least he didn't do much coaching if he was supposed to be. He wasn't even the bus driver! As much as one can tell he was just there to punch sharks and throw alligators.

And speaking of Winter Olympics...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FPLP_WMuFg

:p
 
I suppose. I just think American animation studios would be afraid that their message would get a bit garbled in the process. They might think kids would confuse the whole "I must be the best I can" with "I have to win". Of course, that's just a theory.

It's not that sports themed entertainment doesn't work at all. Look at all those Disney sports movies. The Mighty Ducks, The Big Green, Little Giants, Ice Princess, etc. Heck, half of their Disney Channel original movies seem to be about some sort of sport. It's just not something that worked its way into cartoons or comics.

Oh, and for the record guys, ProStars wasn't really a "sports cartoon" as much as it was a cartoon about professional athletes playing the role of superhero and using sports themed gadgets to help kids in trouble.
 
You know, that's a good question. Why isn't there more sport cartoons? The only one I can think of that was close was Rocket Power, though that was more being outside and being active than just sports.

If there were more sports cartoons, kids at a younger age may get interested in being more active. As someone who was very inactive(fat) as a kid, and is now more exercise oriented as an adult, I wish there was something like a Football or Basketball cartoon.
 
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