Lessons from Sports Anime

Here are two things you need to know about me. First, I love anime. Second, I LOVE sports anime. For the past year, I’ve been intermittently and unironically Tweeting how the SFF Nebula-nominated author, Angela Liu got me back into distance running by suggesting I watch Run With The Wind (which you should watch too because it’s a wonderful show about teamwork and rediscovering your love for something you did as a kid, before competition made it unbearable). It’s also very gay (it’s canon, I checked). That anime got me to push my distance into the half-marathon range and then more, and some more.

You see, 99% of sports anime focuses on collaboration, cooperation, and the pure love of sport. One of the most common arcs for sports anime MCs is setting aside their pride to level up their game, develop a new skill, and commit to their team….but then there’s Blue Lock. Blue Lock, an anime about soccer, takes all the teamwork, cooperation, and humility and chucks it out the window. But soccer is a team sport, you say. Not in Blue Lock, it isn’t. Blue Lock pushes its players to be one thing and one thing only—a striker.

Let’s, for a second, set aside how culturally unique it is for a sports anime to emphasize the importance of ego (that’s a whole different post), and selfishly focus on three things what we, as writers, can learn from this over-the-top, egocentric anime about kicking balls into nets.

(as always, these are just my interpretations and opinions, so don’t take them too seriously)

1. Believe You Can Do It

What I love about Yoichi Isagi, the MC of Blue Lock, is that when the series starts, he’s not even aware of what his special skills are, if any. The boy is just determined to become the best striker. How? He has no idea, but one thing is certain, he’s not going to get eliminated without a fight. Surrounded by players that are more physically capable than him, more technically developed, and just plain better, Isagi is still convinced that he has what it takes to win Blue Lock.

That drive, the egocentric belief that he has what it takes is what gets Isagi his first goal. Instead of passing the ball to an arguably better player when the opportunity is there, Isagi takes the shot and scores. Note, that at no point does Isagi believe that he is the best player at Blue Lock. He is not totally delulu. No, but he has enough self-assurance to believe that he is good enough to stand a fighting chance.

So do your stories. They might not be the best stories (what does that mean anyway?), heck, they are probably not even the best stories you will write, but that doesn’t mean these stories don’t have legs. Sub the stories, sub the poems, query the book. Work hard at becoming the best version of yourself you can be, but don’t forget that you were good enough already to get where you are now.

2. Find Your Secret Weapon and Grow It

The whole first season of Blue Lock focuses on each character’s secret weapon and how they can best utilize it on the pitch. Some characters are super fast, others have an incredible direct shot, others are very physical. But identifying your secret weapon isn’t enough. Through the later episodes of the season, players in Bluelock must learn how to grow their secret weapon by playing it against, or complementary to, other players.

So, what are the secret weapons in writing?

Is it worldbuilding (not for me)? Is it characterization? Is it pacing? Is it the voice? There are specific aspects of writing that come easier to folks. Others we have to spend dark, winter nights toiling away at. And in theory, we need to get good at all of them. But we also know that isn’t true in practice. For example, The Three-Body Problem treats its cast as chess pieces who go on to exposit important plot information. But the concept goes so hard that we don’t care. We’re here for the physics and the alien invasion. The Locked Tomb Series is the opposite. The plot is often obstructed and confusing (at least for me), but we eat.those.books.up because the tone and the characterization are done so well.

But what both of these books do incredibly well is that they absorb their weaknesses into their strength. The Three-Body Problem has an incredible concept that gets played out in a world that has no room for compassion and empathy. One of our MCs survives the Cultural Revolution so it makes sense that in living with her trauma she is more emotionally detached than others. Similarly, The Locked Tomb often has unreliable narrators who are lying and scheming or they’re just Gideon and they simply do not care for the plot of the book they’re in.

What I’m learning only now is that I don’t need to max out each writing stat. Instead, I need to make each one work for me within the constraints of the narrative you’re weaving.

3. Discard What’s Not Working for You (even when it’s a part of you)

You cannot continue doing things as you always have and expect a different outcome. To avoid spoilers, at several points of the season, Isagi has the option to win by going up against a weaker player or challenging a stronger opponent with no guarantee that he will win. And every single time, this dude chooses the less comfortable, less certain, and more challenging option because he realizes that he will not improve if he stays the same.

For a hot minute, my fear of being judged and perceived stopped me from showing my work to others. My stories weren’t nearly as good as they could be with some extra eyes on them. I couldn’t keep writing in a vacuum and expect my work to get better. So, I started showing people my work. The process was uncomfortable, revealing, awful. And then slowly, week by week, story by story, it stopped being as awful. Sometimes I still get a bit prickly when a critique points out my weak spots that I thought I had fixed, but mostly I look forward to showing others some new thing I’ve drafted.

And now I have to adapt again! I have to take that part of me that is introverted and scared and socially anxious and kiss it goodbye. I have to reach out to bookstagrammers and reviewers (gasp!) which means even more being perceived. I have to promote the novella (gasp!) And I have to keep doing it over and over and over again. And it’s awful, still feels awful even though I’ve been doing it for two months. But if I keep my introverted self comfortable, nothing new and exciting will happen. So, I thank it, and I set it aside because it’s no longer serving me.

Because nothing will change if I’m not willing to change myself.

And now for some sport anime recs:

Best for putting on in the background: Kuroko no Basket

Best visuals: Tsurune

Most realistic: Run With the Wind

Highest fan service: Free!

Writing News:

I sold a story! Yay!

“One Becomes Two” about two scientists on the brink of divorce who are sent to Greenland to investigate a weird thing was sold to Augur! Coming in a future issue!

The Dragonfly Gambit is also now on KINDLE. You can download this angry novella straight to your e-reader any time!

The Dragonfly Gambit was reviewed by Nerds of a Feather Flock Together. It’s an awesome feeling when a reader gets what you were trying to do this hard. It made my whole month.

…and also it was added to the new Nebula Reading List!!

And, here I go sounding like a broken record again, if you enjoyed the novella (or hated it, or felt kinda meh about it), please consider rating/reviewing! ❤️ You will have my eternal gratitude!

And that’s it for now!

Thanks for sticking with this one to the very end 🙂 

Cheers!