The Best Anime With Tournaments

For those of you bored by standard sporting events, the coolest tournaments in anime provide the entertainment you seek. Featuring everything from martial arts battles to bake-offs, the best anime with tournaments cover a huge range of competitions for every interest. Rather than focus solely on the match itself, anime tournament series offer a cinematic look at all facets of sport and rivalry, highlighting a contender's feelings as much as their actions on the playing field. The best anime featuring tournaments present competition as epic storylines, heroes struggling past rivals, obstacles, and self-esteem issues for the eventual goal of glory. What really makes these series stand out is their celebration of unity, as the team building aspect of a competition really shows how far character relationships have come, such as the “power of friendship."

Some of the coolest anime tournaments ever are arcs within a larger story line, like the grand magic games in Fairy Tail. Other series boast entire plots revolving around a tournament, like Shaman King. Whether it's a sporting event or a food war or a battle between sci-fi beasts, an anime tournament always feels like the right place and time for popcorn.