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In the last issue, I wrote a story about the Dasong blog. At the end of the article, “Bantou Shuo” mentioned “The Flame of Youth”(“Volleyball Women”), caused a wave of “memory killing” in the background.
Several readers also raised questions, similar to:
Yes, I can also add “Baseball Hero”, “Little Bean Boxing Champion”, “Ping Pong”, “Gossman”, “Heizi’s Basketball”, “Initial D”, “Volleyball Captain”… etc., almost involved Various sports fields.
Everyone thinks that there are many sports animations in Japan and their influence is great. Why?
Today, try to talk about this topic.
1
To answer this question, we must first understand the strong foundation behind the prosperity of Japanese sports animation:
Japan has always been the world’s top animation power.
I once saw a statistic. It said that 65% of all anime broadcasts in the world are from Japan. In Europe, this proportion is as high as 80%.
A picture circulated on the Internet containing many Japanese anime characters is not clear enough, sorry. How many can you recognize?
It is not an exaggeration to write a doctoral dissertation on why Japan can become a major animation country, so it is impossible to discuss it here. The reason for mentioning this is to make it clear:
It is precisely because Japan is a strong animation country that it gives us the impression that their “sports animation” is so strong.
Japan has an extremely rich variety of animations, and there are so many categories, there can be as many as dozens:
For example, there are war, adventure, fighting, magic, history, pets, youth, life, suspense reasoning, etc. And this is just a big category. There are many sub-categories under each category. For example, war has science fiction, cold weapon, and robot, which is one of the icons of Japanese animation culture.(Mobile Suit Gundam, Macross are all of this type), adventure has super powers, mythology, youth has love, campus, and down there are beautiful boys, beautiful Girl class and so on more detailed branches.
The “Fortune Star Boy” (by Takahashi Rumiko) that I liked very much in my childhood seems to be very difficult to classify. Points come and go, and the final score may be In the “funny” category?
Sports is only a small branch in Japanese animation, but because the base of Japanese animation works is too large, a batch of excellent works will naturally emerge.
For example, like there are foreign countriesPeople say: Why can Chinese cuisine make spicy dishes so rich and delicious?
Actually, the taste of “spicy” is only one branch of many Chinese cuisines, but because Chinese cuisine is too extensive and profound, whether it is “sour”, “sweet”, “ma”, “spicy” or “steamed” or “simmered” “,” “Fried”, “Stewed”, can give you a long list of representative dishes, even a simple noodle can give you a list of dozens of methods and eating methods from all over the country, you want to find Who makes sense?
Therefore, the huge base of the entire animation industry is a basic condition for the prosperity of Japanese sports animation.
2
The second condition is to read for all ages.
This is actually an inevitable result of Japan as a powerhouse of animation: animation has long been no longer regarded as a “children only thing.”
Tezuka Osamu, the master of Japanese animation, once divided the development of modern Japanese manga into six stages:
The first stage is the “Toy Age”, mainly for the ten years after World War II. Comics in Japan are only props for children’s entertainment;
The second stage is “Clear the Era”. The status of comics is lowered and is regarded as vulgar and shallow reading;
The third stage is the “Dim Sum Era”. Parents and teachers are beginning to be a little more enlightened, and they are reluctant to allow their children to read a little comic without hindering learning;
The fourth stage is the “staple era”. Parents began to watch anime with their children. Among them, the TV animation “Astro Boy” in 1963 played a very important role. The author It is Osamu Tezuka;
The fifth stage is the “Air Age”, probably in the 7th and 80s of the last century, comics have become an integral part of the lives of Japanese teenagers;
The sixth stage is the “Era of Marks”. Animation works and related nouns have become a symbol of communication between young people, and a symbol of adults confirming their memories.
I once photographed a Japanese old man on the streets of Akihabara, Tokyo, Japan. He just bought a manga from a comic book store and couldn’t help but sit I watched on the sidewalk, and laughed while watching.
It is precisely because Japanese people are still willing to watch anime in their youth and even adulthood, so the category of sports animation will have a place.
3
The two points mentioned above are actually the universal foundation brought by Japan as a powerhouse of animation.
In other words, if it is not for sports animation, other such as adventure animation, detective and reasoning animation, almost all types of animation, benefit from this fertile soil.
Does Japanese sports animation have its own unique living soil?
The answer is: Yes!
You can recall the sports animations we watched by ourselves, whether it’s an animation or a real person, from “Volleyball Girls” to “Slam Dunk” to “Captain Tsubasa”, is there one thing in common:
The protagonists started to fight in the Japanese intercollegiate league.
Yes-Behind the prosperity of sports animation in Japan is the importance of sports in the Japanese education system.
After World War II, under the guidance of relevant policies and regulations, the participation rate of Japanese youth in extracurricular sports activities gradually increased. In terms of the total participation rate, according to a survey in 2006, 46% of Japanese teenagers aged 10 to 19 joined extracurricular sports organizations in 2005, and about 5.91 million teenagers aged 10 to 19 joined different youth sports organizations. Among. In terms of the specific participation rate, the proportion of students joining sports clubs increased from 36.6% in the 1960s to 77.4% in 2000; high schools have increased since the 1970s, and the rate has increased from 25.0 in 1970. % Increased to 54.2% in 2001.
Since many junior and senior students will withdraw from sports clubs this year, in fact, Japanese junior and second year and senior one and sophomore students have a higher percentage of joining sports clubs. Statistics show that 90% of Japanese junior and second grade students join sports clubs, and 70% of senior and sophomore students join sports clubs.
Japanese high school sports club “Kudo Club”
In Japanese schools, there are a dazzling array of sports clubs for students to choose from. Generally speaking, after school at 3:30 in the afternoon, it is the time for student club activities. Many students participate in sports clubs for the purpose of not only hobbies, but also physical fitness. Later, they will add morning exercises and even weekend training, because they want to win honors for the school, and even realize their self-worth, or even enter a career. The team prepares.
After this, Japan still has a set of things that we admire: their “sports and education integration” is not just for each school to “work down”, it has an extremely complete and mature inter-school league system. From summer to autumn, from local to national, it has matured for decades.
The opening ceremony of the Japanese high school baseball “Koshien”. “Koshien” is the annual high school baseball competition in Japan. More than 4,000 schools across Japan are conducting trials. In the end, 56 regional teams entered the “Hanshin Koshien” stadium in Hyogo Prefecture for the finals.Circle game. This event is a grand event in Japanese campus sports and the entire sports world every year.
Moreover, once it rises to the national level (in fact, there are also local levels), whether it’s baseball, football, basketball or rugby, table tennis or even kendo, There will be TV agencies to broadcast. In addition to individual events, there will also be a summer meeting of college comprehensive sports meetings like the “National University Games”.
You may ask, will anyone watch this kind of student sports games or TV broadcasts?
Of course someone looks!
Take an example: In the 100th All Japan High School Summer Baseball League in 2018, the little-known Akita County Golden Foot Farm High School baseball team reached the finals, making a sensation in Akita Prefecture and the whole of Japan.
The people of Akita Prefecture, including viewers from all over the country, have voluntarily donated to this “grassroots” high school team (the final donation amount is 190 million yen), Golden Foot After the agricultural semifinals, the air tickets from Akita to Osaka on the day of the finals and the temporary additional flights were all sold out. Fans from all over the country also flocked to Jiaziyuan, lining up tents to buy tickets for the finals.
Ace pitcher of the Golden Foot Farmers, Teru Hoshida Yoshida, His father was a member of the Golden Foot Agricultural School baseball team when he was studying, and he inherited his father’s ambition. At that time, many people said that the “youth and blood” in anime had come to reality.
On the day of the finals, the stadium was overwhelming, and Japan was paying attention. Although the Golden Foot Nong team lost to the powerful Osaka Tongyin team, the players won the respect of everyone and they became the heroes of their hometown.
The team that loses in the “Koshien” every year, the team members will bring a handful of soil from the “Koshien” back to their hometown, because it is very difficult to reach the finals of the “Koshien”, they have to do it for themselves The youth left a memory.
A baseball game of high school students will attract such a high level of attention across the country, which is impossible in China.
Someone might say that baseball is the number one sport in Japan, is it particularly popular?
Andachong’s “Baseball Hero” once set off a huge baseball whirlwind across Japan, making countless Japanese teenagers fascinated by the sport of baseball.
There are factors in this respect, but I myself have watched a video of the final (indoor) of the Kanto Football League finals of Japanese elementary school students. The two teams in the finals were two fifth-grade teams. The stadium was full of spectators and equipped with TV broadcast and commentary. The two adult commentators were very engaged in analyzing the game, which was impressive.
A scene of a Japanese high school football match. In the final of the 2019 Japan High School Football Championship, Aomori Yamada defeated Circulation Economy Taibai 3-1. The number of spectators on the day of the final was 54,194-readers who know the football leagues of various countries should know how shocking this number is.
So, at this point, everyone should be able to understand:
Why Japanese sports animation can firmly occupy a place among many anime themes?
A very important reason is that it depicts the campus life that many Japanese have experienced since childhood. Everyone grew up like this, with a sense of intimacy and substitution.
Sports has long been an integral part of their growth experience.
4
Of course, there is another factor in the popularity of sports animations, and this type of comics naturally has the following factors:
Youth, blood, burning!
In Japan, most parents support their children to watch more sports anime, because this allows them to learn a positive attitude towards life, have the courage to face setbacks and difficulties, and know how to unite and fight.
The impact of sports on Japanese youths is not just about the shaping of the Three Views, but has truly changed Japanese competitive sports.
In the 2002 World Cup in Korea and Japan, the Japanese men’s football team reached the top 16 in history. Some media conducted a survey on the Japanese national men’s football team. A total of 16 people in the team said that they grew up watching Yoichi Takahashi’s “Captain Tsubasa” and determined to become a football player to help the Japanese team win the World Cup.
In the 2018 World Cup in Russia, the Japanese team lost to Belgium 2-3 in the 16-to-8 match. After the match, the Japanese fans in the stands A huge portrait of the “Big Sky Wing” was drawn to encourage football players in the country.
It’s not just Japanese football players. If you are familiar with football, you should know these stars in the photo below. They are all influenced by Captain Tsubasa. The Argentine star Aguero even directly gave himself a nickname “Da Kongyi”.
In the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games, I directly asked Kosuke Takeuchi of Japan’s No. 10 men’s basketball team at the press conference after the Japanese men’s basketball game: “You usually watch “Slam Dunk”(“Slam Dunk”)?” He smiled and replied: “Our team has one man, and we often show it out!” In fact, the Japan Basketball Association also specially gave “Basketball Master” author Inoue Takehiko awarded the “Special Contribution Award”.
“Slam Dunk” not only affected generations of Japanese teenagers, but also had a huge influence in China, becoming the initial motivation for countless Chinese teenagers to enter the basketball court
Japanese manga “Light Chess” (translated as “The Soul of Chess” in China, the chess move that Li Shishi defeated Alphago was called the “God Hand” , The source is this manga) In Japan, there is a wave of people learning Go, and Japan has increased the population of Go by 4 million.
Of course, there are also those that are not originally sports animation, but are integrated with sports-the Tokyo Olympic Games used the image of “Dragon Ball” Monkey King to gather vitality bullets.
Japanese animation not only encourages generations of Japanese teenagers spiritually, but also promotes the continuous improvement of their campus sports system to achieve a true “integration of sports and education”, which is a continuous stream of professional sports teams in Japan. Convey talents.
At least personally, as a former sports worker, I really envy it.
5
Finally, say a few digressions.
In the previous article, a reader posted a message, to the effect that if there was such a coach to train the Chinese men’s football team.
The problem is really not that easy to solve.
I replied to him: The rise of Chinese men’s football is not just a matter of the Sports Bureau and the Football Association. It may also require the participation of the Education Bureau.
Among the three major goals, football is the project that requires the most time and patience, and also the most systematic cultivation-it needs a soil that continuously supplies nutrients. Chinese football lags behind Japanese football, not because there is a good coach (Chinese men’s football also has many good coaches). There are many reasons. One of the most important points is that Japan has formed a complete training and transportation chain in the entire campus football system.
Of course, to talk about this issue, I can write another article, stop here.
In general, I feel that in recent years, Chinese parents are gradually realizing the importance of sports to the growth of their children.
At the same time, I also hope that the rapidly progressing Guoman Manga will have further exploration and improvement in “sports animation”, and launch more good works, so as to make our next generation more active in sports. Good promotion and promotion.
Youth and passion should be what we should have when we were youngMemories?
This article is from WeChat official account: said bread (ID: mantoutalk) , of: bread master