Gaming and Sports Anime And Manga

An anime or manga in which, rather than fighting, the characters play a game or sport. Said game or sport will be Serious Business sometimes resulting in physically unwarranted pain, injury or death. Frequently leads to a Tournament Arc. Sometimes overlaps with Mons.

Not to be confused with RPG Anime.


 * Ahiru No Sora is about basketball.
 * Aim for The Ace is about tennis players, about thirty years earlier than Prince of Tennis.
 * Akagi, which is a manga about Mahjong.
 * All Rounder Meguru
 * Area no Kishi (Knights Of The Area): The story of a high school football club manager who seeks to overcome his fear of inadequacy to once again play the sport he loves.
 * Arrow Emblem: Grand Prix no Taka
 * Ashita no Joe Its most recent incarnation is a live action film, with the popular Idol Singer Tomohisa "Yamapi" Yamashita playing Joe.
 * Attacker You!, known as Jeanne et Serge in France: An influencial Volleyball manga, it inspired lots of girls into playing volley-ball in both Japan and France at the time the manga was published and the anime aired.
 * Attack Number One is the first televised female sports anime ever, about volleyball.
 * Ayanes High Kick follows a would-be professional wrestler and her debut in the world of competitive kick-boxing.
 * Baby Steps is the tale of a nerdy high-school student who trains to become a tennis player both to prove to himself that he can, and to get closer to the girl that has caught his eye.
 * Baki the Grappler is about martial arts.
 * Bamboo Blade, which is about kendo.
 * Basquash is about basketball. In 30-foot tall giant robots! It also may be about the jiggle factor.
 * Battle B-daman
 * Beyblade, which is about spinning top battling. Yeah.
 * Captain Tsubasa is centered around soccer.
 * The Cherry Project: By Sailor Moon author Naoko Takeuchi, about ice skating.
 * Chihayafuru is about karuta, which is basically a card game but the Japanese refer to it as "competitive sport on a tatami."
 * Cross Game is about baseball
 * Danball Senki is about children (and adults) duelling with each other via futuristic gunpla called LBX. It overlaps somewhat with Humongous Mecha genre but the LBX are still essentially toys.
 * Dear Boys
 * Dokaben
 * Duel Masters, something of an Affectionate Parody of Gaming and Sports Anime And Manga, revolves around the titular card game.
 * Eyeshield 21 is about American football.
 * Future GPX Cyber Formula is about auto racing, particularly formula racing, in which race cars are equipped in AI computers.
 * Ganbarist Shun is about a boy training to be an Olympic medalist in gymnastics.
 * Giant Killing
 * Hajime no Ippo is about Boxing, thus overlapping with Fighting Series - but with a heavy focus on training and rules, it's more about the sport than anything else.
 * Hikari No Densetsu. A Shoujo manga by Izumi Asou, whose main character Hikari Kamijou is a Plucky Girl who wants to be a gymnastics idol. Serialized in Margaret in the late 80's.
 * Hikaru no Go is centered around the traditional Japanese board game of Go.
 * Hungry Heart Wild Striker
 * IGPX Immortal Grand Prix
 * Inazuma Eleven is about fantastical football complete with special moves.
 * Initial D: to be a master in illegal racing.
 * Kaiji, which is about gambling. However, the gambles tend to be games that you wouldn't normally associate with gambling, such as playing rock-paper-scissors.
 * Katsu
 * Kenko Zenrakei Suieibu Umisho, which is about swimming... and Fan Service.
 * Kyojin No Hoshi (Star of the Giants) Not the first baseball manga ever, but the one everyone remembers (and copied/borrowed from).
 * Legendz revolves around a Pokémon-esque monster fighting video game. The focus of the series is more on the monsters themselves, but most people in the series (at first) only know about the game and not that the creatures are real.
 * Major follows a young baseball prodigy from his days in Little League to the professional leagues.
 * Mega Man NT Warrior has Megaman.EXE and his friends destroying viruses on the net. 'Jack in, Megaman. Execute!'
 * This one is more of a half example. While Navis can (and often are) used for the "Gaming" aspect of the thing (Net Battles), they are also used for system administration, security, business and just about everything in-between. Being a Gaming Anime, naturally, the Net Battling gets more focus.
 * Moero Top Striker, known in France as L'Ecole des Champions (The Champions' School)
 * Moshidora A girl buys Drucker's Management and uses it's strategies to apply to baseball.
 * Ookiku Furikabutte (Big Windup!)
 * The Prince of Tennis is about, well, tennis players.
 * Princess Nine focuses on an all-girls baseball team attempting to win the (formerly male-only) national high school-level baseball championship.
 * Rainbow Nisha Rokubou no Shichinin: Both Anchan and Mario dream of being boxers. Mario's subplot after escaping the Boys Dormitory centers on him getting his debut match against an American boxer on a U.S. military base.
 * Rin! is about archery while also being a Boys Love manga.
 * Ring Ni Kakero: By Masami Kurumada from Saint Seiya fame.
 * Ro Kyu Bu
 * Rough
 * Saki is about Mahjong.
 * Seishun Hakusho by Kimiko Uehara, a shoujo manga from The Seventies in which a girl plays ice hockey and a boy is an ice skater.
 * Slam Dunk, which is about (of course) basketball.
 * Softenni
 * Speed Racer, the first racing anime to gain international fame, which has also spawned remakes and a live-action film.
 * Swan is about ballet.
 * Taishou Yakyuu Musume also deals with all-girls baseball, but this time taking place during the Taishō period (e.g. in 1920s Japan).
 * Touch
 * Yu-Gi-Oh. Initially, the manga featured several different games, but eventually settled into exclusive use of the trading card game, Duel Monsters.
 * The anime and manga versions of Oddly Named Sequel Yu-Gi-Oh GX -- at least, that's what they want you to think...
 * The second Oddly Named Sequel Yu-Gi-Oh 5 Ds.
 * And a third one, Yu-Gi-Oh Ze Xal.
 * Yawara is all about Judo.
 * Dorabase is, as the name suggests, baseball played by robot cats (referenced as Dora robots cats in the series).