The Demon Ball
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THE DEMON especially sports and martial arts manga, until in the action and morality of the martial arts. BALL: but also loving sons, protective brothers, and SPORTS MANGA, VISUAL DYNAMISM, earnest upholders of justice, sometimes spending as many panels parrying punks with judo tosses and karate chops or solving crimes as they do AND THE MAKYŪ are described as “hot-blooded” (nekketsu) on Ryan Holmberg their covers and title pages, a descriptor used It was not until the end of the decade, however, and fantasies of the ball itself while being thrown When reading about Japanese sports manga— hypermasculinity, self-abnegating masochism, and from the same “hot-blooded” crucible that of which there are countless, and their variety bloodsport action of manga under the sway of birthed supokon seven or eight years later. legion—the term you come across most often is supokon. In some cases, even “kamikaze baseball”— or “kamikaze volleyball,” or “kamikaze soccer,” as something like “sports spirit” or “sports grit.” and so on—would be appropriate. The genre can It is a name used for sports manga featuring be, as you will see below, truly over-the-top. recognize two additional developments within Kaizuka Hiroshi, (1958-63) (May 31, 1965), cover featuring Kazumine Daiji and Fukumoto Kazuya, (1963-65) Chiba Tetsuya and Fukumoto Kazuya, (1961-62) sadistic training regimes, iron friendships forged in the crucible of cutthroat competition, young Though a household word in its home country, Inoue Kazuo, Bat Kid (1948-49) . It stars a pitcher for champions who would rather perish than let “supokon” is familiar to few manga and anime and projectiles that move impossibly, invisibly fast credited with shifting the default star character who would go on to draw the cult boxing manga in that sense, is often inherently nationalistic. down their families, coaches, or teammates, by virtue of years-long ascetic training, supernatural in baseball manga from batters to pitchers. The (Chikai is ripped and raging bodies, and bombastic “spirit,” are also doppelgangers of the eye. powers, and magic-like tricks. There are humorous eponymous “windy pitcher” of the title is Kuriyama launches balls through boards like projected important beyond its foundational position within Chikai stars Ninomiya Hikari, a young pitcher game play. It is not uncommon that athletes in impossible pitch, hit, kick, smash, or spike that baseball manga starring ninja, samurai, and folk karate chops, and sends the catcher hurtling the history of baseball manga. Within that genre, (an homage to Fukui’s Igaguri) means Chestnut into the backstop with his fastballs, leaving his it is lauded for its naturalistic rendering of bodies play again. Sometimes they even die there. its receiver, grinds down its sender, and around with baseball manga. 1 The term itself dates to most famously Terada Hiroo’s Mountain Chestnut Boy. His nickname, Kurikuri, hand throbbing and bloody. The “black secret in motion and its sensitive articulation of the main knuckleball whose speed and spin creates a mini which much of the narrative and visual drama of is the onomatopoeia for spinning. Kaizuka’s characters’ internal feelings and interpersonal whirlwind behind the ball, causing it to pause As an ethos, supokon has its roots in the Meji many ball sports manga, and especially baseball baseball was introduced to Japan, as a catchall many scenes of impossible pitches with crazy so fast that it splits to appear as multiple balls, relationships—features that weren’t unknown in manga, are constructed, even from before the name for off-speed pitches, from curveballs to popularized by the manga of Shirato Sanpei in names and animated by racing, curving, spinning, the rear one casting a shadow on the leading downward or upward depending on the direction supokon era. As far as ball sports are concerned, breaking balls and knuckleballs. In manga, it and exploding FX are clearly indebted to the one, turning it black, drawing the batter’s eye, of the rotation. Though its physics are fantastic, physical and moral character training of boys in the ultimate goal of the notorious blood, sweat, usually refers to radical, fantasy variants of these suspense-driven breakdowns and impossible and making him swing at a phantom. While the (girls’) manga, where gracefully delineated poses Chiba depicts Ninomiya’s pitch conservatively: preparation for their military service as adults. It and tears of supokon is to transform the body pitches. Caricatures, short strips, and side episodes are more and personal intimacy are central. This realism simple motion lines, tame motion sounds, and a corresponds to the idea (oft-repeated in exoticizing and soul of the athlete into a machine capable of in serialized manga featuring baseball date back cinematic breakdowns of gekiga (literally “dramatic is skilled at judo and his teammates sometimes extreme than those in , they are is reinforced by featuring actual professional bit of vibratory linework and elliptical distortion to accounts of Japanese sports philosophy) that spirit achieving or countering demonry in the ball. As pictures”), a visually oriented style of comics that wield bats like bokken (wooden practice swords), also given careful (if nonsensical and bogglingly Japanese baseball players as main characters in let you know the ball is moving in an exceptional and dedication mean more than inborn talent the US-led Occupation, multi-page comics and originated in mystery and violent gangland action so many of his rivals have names derived from complicated) explanations, in the vein of Shirato’s the story, namely shortstop Nagashima Shigeo, in achieving excellence. As a genre in manga, designed to defeat evil rivals to a form of serials focusing on baseball proliferated almost comics for late teens and young adults within the homerun king Oh Sadaharu, and coach and later on—a knuckleball that seemingly splits magic capable of making dreams come true: immediately after the war, the most beloved being kashihon (rental book) market in Osaka, versus the them Miyamoto Musashi, Tange Zazen, and also more naturalistic and the FX and breakdowns former slugger Kawakami Tetsuharu, all of the making it to the pros, besting the pros, besting Inoue Kazuo’s wholesome (Batto kun, more “cartoony” modes preferred by mainstream more dramatic and cinematic, presaging the larger, stronger foreign players. It is also around magazine publishers in Tokyo. Broadly speaking, is simply called the “dropcurve” (), synthesis of the bombastically fantastic and in baseball manga before (there are also many zigzagging motion and that the actual ball can be associated originally with writer Kajiwara Ikki, who the mad, magical, unhittable, unreturnable, everyday happenings, small achievements on the if supokon can be characterized as judo and his rivals’ pitching and batting tricks have hyper-visual with the palpably corporeal that short biographical manga about star players), channeled said Imperial Age philosophies and a names matching their swordsmen namesakes, only with Chikai is the young fan fantasy of being personal preference for martial sports into scripts variously with hyper speed lines, freeze frames, ball—with the two sides smashing together like the Unsheathing Throw () and the able to play against and even defeat the pros for manga and illustrated stories about boxing, stroboscopic layering, extreme deformation, they are usually just small circles with conservative into a mixed sports and martial arts free-for-all Sparrow-Dropper Swing (). comicalizations of and other tokusatsu depicted as somehow believable and achievable. wrestling, and judo, as well as team ball sports, and markers of splitting, cloning, and invisibility— wakes trailing them. Swings are simple swooshing whenever realism withdraws as a balancing force. that it disappears on its way to the plate and is that some of the wildest visual experiments in arcs, hits believably wooden cracks, and missed The popularity of led to numerous other magic at the heart of the everyday, it radiates with learned from a bearded hermit who trains in a and “samurai baseball” have been sidelined for the Kaizuka Hiroshi’s Before , Fukumoto the promise to make the impossible possible, cave in the mountains. Though series like The Orientalist exaggerations they are when speaking becomes the point at which visuality itself, the further than they ever could in reality, but they ( scripted another baseball manga for which means not just ascending to the pros, chose to go the other way about baseball as it has actually been played in acts of seeing and representing, is challenged: rarely assume a dynamic life of their own or Book and its successor (the precursor writer Fukumoto Kazuya’s Chiba Tetsuya’s (Wish but further, as in Chikai Japan, they remain workable descriptions for the sharpening it, transcending it, or even destroying existentially change the players around them. to ) is regarded by many to ( Ryan Holmberg Ryan (1968-70) Victory! for V underarm, has so little momentum that when a a when that momentum little so has underarm, Secret Black The in evident already are traits visual (1966-71) Giants the of Star Ikki, Kajiwara and Noboru Kawasaki Noboru, who had previously drawn samurai, samurai, drawn previously had who Noboru, low to the ground). His third, pitched slow and and slow pitched third, His ground). the to low artist Kawasaki Kawasaki artist Giants