As the 2009 IIHF World Hockey championships begin in Switzerland, I find myself sitting here wondering “Hey, there’s all kinds of anime out there. Why isn’t there a hockey* anime?”
*hockey, refers to ice hockey, not the inferior version.
Here are 5 reasons:
5. Hockey is not popular. Living in Asia, the biggest sports around here are soccer (football), basketball and baseball.While I don’t have first hand experience of living in Japan, I hear its still a niche sport over there.
4. Its not cold enough. For obvious reasons, sports that require below freezing temperature are not very common at all.
3. Teams in the Japan Hockey League had absolutely horrible logos. I mean the the Kukudo Ice Hockey Team had an effing rabbit on their logo. I’m sure that says “Grr we are fearsome” in more ways than one. This was fixed (sorta) when the JHL became the Asia Hockey League.
2. Maybe the Japanese are too polite for hockey. I can’t really see the Japanese people doing this but who knows….
1. Japanese hockey player, own goal. He celebrates!
Japan’s Men’s National team are currently ranked 22nd in the IIHF world standings. While it’s still quite a ways from the top, they are actually the highest ranked Asian team on that list. So where do they go from here? Building up interest in hockey is important. It generates fans (revenue) and also gets people into the game at younger ages (lots of young people playing the game means a bigger talent pool to draw from, etc).
On a related note, I happen to stumble onto Gravity’s (of Ragnarok Online fame) BodyCheck Online, a hockey MMORPG. Apparently you can level up and get better stats as well as get equipment upgrades and stuff too. WHERE DO I SIGN UP LOL.
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THAT RABBIT IS THE MOST FEARSOME LOGO EVER.
Also, there is an ice hockey manga, but it’s terribly old.
I think no one shared the author’s ice hockey idea, so he turned it into anything but. Now he’s moved on the despairing teachers or something.
Whats the name of this hockey manga? :O
I’d watch an ice hockey anime just to see what kind of over the top ridiculous moves they can come up with to score goals. I also wouldn’t mind seeing line brawls or bench clearing brawl fights end up like shounen fighting shows. Seriously. It’d be incredibly stupid, but it’d make my day/week/year, depending on how awesome it is.
Field hockey = skirts. Anime potential therein lies.
I was actually going to write something about the lack of hockey anime a while back, but I figured in the end it probably just came down to hockey being to awesome for Manga/Anime. Plus there’s no way to legitimize it without having a good old Canadian boy show up as the final rival and crush the hopes and dreams of the hapless Japanese hero with a glass shattering body check.
There is an ice hockey live-action J-Drama named _Pride_, at least, so the sport is represented in Japanese entertainment. It’s a pretty good show, too; there’s certain elements from samurai films that I can recognize in how many of the scenes are shot, and it’s not too often I’ll see ice hockey combined with music from Queen.
Also, the Asian hockey teams do have brawls: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuOBz5udLfY
Damn, I need to get back out on the ice rink. I’m nearing 30, and I still want to bust some heads (though it’s more likely my head’s the one that’s going to get busted…).
Oh, the epic opening to Pride: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMULt5wHMok
:)
@impartiallybiased > lol yeah they would be totally awesome, but nothing beats “Flying V!” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WZ0uRJOatQ
@baka-raptor > too bad field hockey still sucks :(
@Kaioshin Sama > back when i played NHL’97, my friend and I would use team Japan to face every world team in the game. The only team we never beat was Team Canada (we went 0-5 or something).
@Nick > Pride OP (0:44 mark), is that dude wearing a Cujo mask!?!?! LOL
I was thinking about this a few days ago while watching the NHL playoffs and didn’t come across this post until tonight. I think the concept could work as long as teamwork, toughness, skill shots/saves, and tournaments are involved. In fact, I quickly found through some Internet research three hockey manga that aren’t My Heavenly Hockey Club.
I think C.I. might have been talking about Go!! Southern Ice Hockey Club (行け!!南国アイスホッケー部), which ran in Shonen Sunday from 1991 to 1996 and was by Kōji Kumeta, who later authored Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. There was also a shonen manga called Go Ahead by Daisuke Higuchi (more famous for Whistle!) that went for 4 volumes from 2005-06 and a short-lived one that ran in Shonen Weekly Magazine last year called Strong Arm Break (鉄腕ブレイク).
@calaggie > It could definitely work. I mean they have anime about bread making, perfume, microbes, go, chess … pretty much anything you can think of. Yet no hockey anime :( Makes me sad.
“Go Ahead” is a hockey manga you can find online @ MangaFox.
I was wondering the same, except about golf. The thing is, there is every reason in the world for golf anime to exist. Japanese people play it, they have a high level tour and some players are well known internationally. It’s great theater, and I totally can imagine GONZO coming up with great CG filled shonen crap (the best kind duh). But yeah I’d totally watch a decently done Hockey anime. I’m not huge into sports anime because I find the variety we have available unsatisfying.
[...] few months ago, my fellow Dasaku tenant Cokematic wrote about why there are no hockey anime, and one of his most convincing points (besides the Kukudo rabbits) is that Japanese people simply [...]