All the Sports Anime You Can Shake a Stick at in 2023

IT’S SPORTSBALL TIME.

SPORTS. Some people love them. Some people love to watch them. Some people love to hate them. Some people love to make their kids play them in order to vicariously live out their high school glory days one last time. Some people only watch them when Rihanna is there. Some people who play them are jocks, others are nerds.

And some people only care about sports when it’s animated—or specifically when it’s anime.

If you fall into the last category, you’re not alone. Why watch real people get all gross and sweaty playing sports when you can watch beautiful fictional people do it while looking flawless the whole time. That, my friends, is what the couch-contact sport of watching sports anime is all about. And we’ve got a whole new season coming down the pipe in 2023. Let’s take a look, shall we?

Tsurune: The Linking Shot season 2

ARCHERY! One of the oldest sports in the world! But it wasn’t always a sport! It was originally invented as a more convenient way to kill things. Why run up to someone and stab them when you can do it from 100 yards away? That’s just common sense! Tsurune: The Linking Shot is about an archer named Minato Narumiya who quit archery in middle school after an … incident. Incidents happen often when you’re shooting sticks with knives attached to them! However, a chance encounter in high school inspires Minato to pick up the ol’ bow and start shooting things again! Tsurune season 2 is dropping soon, so that gives you some time to check out season 1, if you haven’t already. Just don’t shoot your eyes out!

Ippon Again!

JUDO! Another one of the oldest sports in existence that was also once designed to kill people! While judo isn’t necessarily lethal, martial arts by definition were invented to stomp mf’ers into the dust in the days of yore. Ippon Again! is about a young girl named Michi Sonoda who got stomped herself during an embarrassing defeat in the final round of a high school judo tournament. She walked away from the sport for good—until the girl who beat Michi shows up at her high school with the intent to form a judo club. Game on.

Birdie Wing: Golf Girls’ Story season 2

How do you make golf interesting? By making beautiful people people play it. In Birdie Wing: Golf Girls’ Story, underground golfer Eve has been making fat stacks beating chumps in tournaments, but when she goes up against pro golf prodigy Aoi Amawashi, Eve is left with nothing but the bitter taste of defeat in her mouth. The two then team up and become partners to compete in tournaments!

Mix: Meisei Story season 2

Now we’re getting to the good stuff. Mix: Meisei Story is about America’s favorite pastime: orchestrating coups in South Ameri—I mean, baseball! Toma and Soichiro Tachibana are two baseball prodigies, with Toma being one of the greatest young pitchers ever to throw a ball at a dude with a stick. The pair attend the historically famous Meisei High School, which once made it to Japan’s legendary Koshien stadium with the help of wunderkind pitcher Tatsuya Uesugi. The Meisei team has never been able to repeat such a triumph, but Toma and Soichiro intend to change that.

Uma Musume: Pretty Derby – Road to the Top

Do you like horse girls?

I don’t mean rich girls from Texas or New England that have a borderline sexual obsession with the horses they ride. No, no, I mean the genuine article. A girl who’s half girl, half horse, all beautiful. Uma Musume: Pretty Derby is about a group of horse girls who race against each other to be the best. The series follows a horse girl named Special Week (unfortunately named after a real race horse) who goes to a prestigious horse girl academy in Tokyo in order to become the fastest horse girl in Japan.

MF Ghost

MF Ghost is about a near-future world where self-driving cars are everywhere. The whole world is lousy with ’em. But a racing circuit that uses old fashioned drivable cars is growing in popularity around the world! Kanata Livington enters one of the the races while looking for his long lost father, and his formidable driving skills soon make him the talk of the track.

(featured image: OLM)