Captain Tsubasa

Tsubasa Oozora is an 11-year-old elementary school student who is deeply in love with football and dreams of one day winning the FIFA World Cup for Japan. He lives together with his mother in Japan, while his father is a seafaring captain who travels around the world. Tsubasa is known as the Soccer no Moshigo which translates as "heaven-sent child of football". When he was almost a year old, he was almost run over by a rushing bus while playing with a ball.

However, Tsubasa held the ball in front of him which served as a cushion for most of the impact. The force of the bump blew him away, but he was able to right himself with the ball. Hence, Tsubasa's motto of "The ball is my friend". Ever since he was little, he always went out with a ball.

Yoichi Takahashi was delighted by association football after seeing the 1978 FIFA World Cup. The matches, players, and fans' love towards the sport inspired him to write a manga about football. Another relevant aspect on this decision was the fact that Takahashi liked football more than baseball because he considered the players to have more freedom during matches. Despite football not being popular in Japan, Takahashi aimed to depict it through his manga and to reach the general public.

Because of the non-popularity of the subject, getting the approval to write the manga by its publisher, Shueisha, took between 2 and 3 years, which was also difficult since it was his first manga. Rather than using professional players, the manga author instead used children as protagonists, hoping readers would identify themselves with the cast. Nevertheless, Takahashi already had in mind that through the series the main characters would grow up and become professionals.

The manga series had a circulation of 70 million volumes within Japan by 2008, 82 million copies worldwide by 2018, and had over 90 million copies in circulation worldwide by 2023. In 2001, the anime series was ranked 49th in Animage's "Top 100" anime productions list. The anime adaptation has also been very popular in Japan. In 2005, Japanese television network TV Asahi conducted a "Top 100" online web poll and nationwide survey: Captain Tsubasa placed 41st in the online poll and thirtieth in the survey.

In 2006, TV Asahi conducted another online poll for the top one hundred anime and Captain Tsubasa placed 16th on "The Celebrity List". The third television series was also highly popular in 2002, earning high ratings.