The Best Sports Series Ever

One Outs is about baseball and that is not in itself new after all there are many series about baseball especially since the sport is hugely popular in Japan. However, One Outs adds mind games and gambling to it. 

Tokuchi Toua, is a gambler pitcher that earns his due by defeating any batter that dares to challenge him. A professional baseball known for his batting prowess looks down on the use of baseball to make 'dirty' money so he challenges Toua. His arrogance means he is taken by surprised by and begins second guessing himself after being unable to bat the ball, in part this is because Toua is able to bring out doubts within people through his pitch control and his ability to gauge exactly how to surprise and confuse his opponents.

Toua, is eventually recruited to this player'S professional baseball team. Toua sees this as a chance to earn money and negotiates a performance based contract based on the numbers of outs he can achieve with the chairmen of the team, whilst any run he gives means he falls into debt.

So, Toua strives to take the team forward to the title just because he wants to make the most money possible whilst at the same time destroying the chairmen that does not care for the team and tries to make the team lose in any way possible. It is an interesting change of pace to normal sports series because it has this mind game and gambling edge and there is a lot of cheating within the sport and its super fun to see Toua against all odds winning. 

Touch is also a baseball series but its the complete opposite of One Outs, It is a more romance focused story with a high school setting. This is one of the most popular sports series mange ever in Japan and its anime was a huge hit with audiences in Japan back in the 80s. Its first opening is still a classic that japanese people love to sing when they go to Karaoke. 

Why did it reach this status? well, its a incredibly enjoyable story of two twins, Kazuya is the ace of the baseball club whilst the other, Tatsuya spends his time fooling around. Tatsuya is happy this way but their childhood friend, Akane, is not happy to see him just wasting time. She wants him to try to play baseball again and she gets on his case until he decides to start doing sports again... not baseball though.

I do not want to spoil but this is a opening to an wonderful story about brothers rivalry and romance. Its ability to deal with dramatic moments but still keep the overall more comedic and relaxed tone is what Touch excels at, and how it captivated audiences back when in first aired. Many works have tried to emulate it with similar brothers rivalry stories which only highlights the large influence this work still has. 

Next we have Ping Pong the Animation, a more recent work but one that really stood out with its artstyle. This work was directed by Masaaki Yuusa, one the best anime director at the moment and definitely of all time as well. For Ping Pong, he tried to replicate the manga's original manga artstyle and it was a perfect adaptation in this sense. One reason for this was because Taiyu Matsumoto's art has quirks that make it unique and the story and the character are attached to this style. It would feel peculiar for it to be taken out and put in another more polished style. 

This visual choice is important because the series is made around it, the music is used to match it and the composition of the series to highlights it. The story of a two distinct friends and their different ways of enjoying ping ping highlight their personalities as well. 

This is a story that is driven by these two characters alongside a few others that form a great cast of sportsmen, they all serve to show a different side to how people can view sports. This ability to portray sports through various lenses is why this series is one of the best sports series ever since that is hardly ever explored in many sports manga. Sports are more than simply competition and each individual can experience and feel what sports mean to them differently. 

A classic series, Hajime no Ippo is a hit boxing series. Ippo works with his mom in their own fishery, his poor background and the smell of fish makes him the target of bullies. One day he is helped by Takamura, a boxer that trains at the local gym and Ippo is drawn into trying boxing. He tries it and seeks to grow strong but its not really just so he can fight back against his bullies but because he falls in love with boxing and wants to improve himself though it.

Ippo is one of the biggest sports manga series and its because of the underdog feel that Ippo emanates. This comes out of his background and his humble nature which makes him a rather lovable character and seeing him succeeding alongside his friends and mentors is very enjoyable.

Alongside this is the series wacky comedy. Takamura and his mentors are all wacky characters and with Ippo naiveté, he is always drawn by them into doing foolish things. So there is a lot to enjoy here, the comedy is great and the fights are really fun to watch or read.

Slam Dunk is similar to Ippo, but the complete opposite. Sakamichi is an yankee who is always picking fights and he always wins them but what he does not win is in romance. His run of rejections leads him to a girl that he falls for. This girl happens to love basketball and she approached him because of his height to recruit him for the basketball club.. 

Sakamichi wanting to impress the girls tries his hand at basketball but he knows nothing about it and fails completely at anything besides overpowering his opponents. This story is about how Sakamichi like Ippo becomes better at the sport and grows even thought in Sakamichi case the initial motivation was more for comedic affect.

Slam Dunk is a classic work that has many fans everywhere, because Sakamichi is a great character for comedy and he often is silly and stupid but he trains seriously and gives it his all in matches even if to begin with he is clumsy and easily angered. Anyway its a great comedy sports series with a very entertaining main character which made it one of best selling manga ever.