Star of the Giants

Hyuma Hoshi is a promising young baseball player who dreams of becoming a top star like his father before him. When he joins the famous Giants team, his father and friends all do their utmost to make sure he achieves his full potential of becoming the star of the Giants. Based on the 1966 Shonen Magazine manga by Noboru Kawasaki and Ikki Kajiwara, SotG was the first sports anime, the direct ancestor of the rest of the genre, including Kawasaki's later Animal 1, as well as the girls' variants Aim for the Ace, Attack Number One, and their many imitators. In bringing a sports plot to a medium previously dominated by juvenile adventure and sci-fi, it paved the way for other aspects of manga's diversity to cross over into animation. During the course of the original TV run, several reedits were screened in theaters as part of vacation anime festivals. The first, SotG (1969), was billed as the only chance for many viewers to see their favorite show in color-black-and-white TV sets being more common at the time. Other movie edits included SotG: Big League (1970, Dai League Ball), and the final game against the Yakult Swallows, SotG: Confrontation at Shinjuku (1970, Shinjuku no Taiketsu). Though SotG was popular in Japan, the mundane nature of its struggles, albeit leavened with some far-fetched training techniques lifted from martial arts, left it unlikely to be exported to the West. Hyuma's only appearance in the English-language was in the 30-minute TV special Star of the Giants vs. the Mighty Atom (1969), a friendly match between the Giants and the characters from Astro Boy, which reached the U.S. as part of the latter series-renamed Astro Boy vs. the Giants. The series was followed by Samurai Giants, adapted from another Kawasaki manga, and by a later, much less successful sequel. New [Shin] SotG (1977) is set five years after the original and was broadcast at a time when the Yomiuri Giants were facing anime competition from the Tokyo Mets (see Song of the Baseball Enthusiast) and the Seibu Lions (see Go for It, Tabuchi). The final 23 episodes, rebranded as New SotG II (1979), deviated most from the original manga, introducing new regular characters, dumping Hyuma's girlfriend, and even killing off his father in the final episode, much to the original creators' annoyance.

The story was rereleased as a 13-episode series in October 2002, which used both footage from the original and newly animated scenes in order to retell the story from the point of view of supporting character Mitsuru Hanagata.

Season/Ep#	Name
1 - 182	Episode #182	0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
1 - 181	Episode #181	0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
1 - 180	Episode #180	0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
1 - 179	Episode #179	0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
1 - 178	Episode #178	0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
1 - 177	Episode #177	0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
1 - 176	Episode #176	0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
1 - 175	Episode #175	0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
1 - 174	Episode #174	0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
1 - 173	Episode #173	0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
1 - 172	Episode #172	0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
1 - 171	Episode #171	0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
1 - 170	Episode #170	0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
1 - 169	Episode #169	0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
1 - 168	Episode #168	0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
1 - 167	Episode #167	0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
1 - 166	Episode #166	0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
1 - 165	Episode #165	0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
1 - 164	Episode #164	0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
1 - 163	Episode #163	0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5

Name	Star of the Giants
Name:
Romaji:	Kyojin no Hoshi
Publisher	?
Start Year	1968
Genres	Add a new genre
Themes	Add a new theme
Aliases

Star of the Giants

Original US Poster Art

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