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Fernando Torres has said more than once that he started playing because of a Japanese cartoon. In Spain it was called Oliver y Benji; in Japan it is Captain Tsubasa, a manga Yoichi Takahashi began in Weekly Shonen Jump in 1981. At the time, Japan had no professional league and its men's team had never played at a World Cup. The J.League kicked off in 1993, and Japan reached its first World Cup in 1998. In November 2018 Torres met Takahashi in person and thanked him on social media for the dream.
The soccer anime that came after Tsubasa follow the way Japanese players actually come up, and that system has a split American readers may not expect. A talented fifteen-year-old can join a high school club and chase the national high school championship, broadcast across Japan over the New Year holiday, or join the youth academy of a J.League club instead.
Aoashi and Blue Lock lead the list because they are the two I have watched to the end, and because they sit on opposite sides of that split: Aoashi inside a J.League academy, Blue Lock in a building where the federation has locked up 300 strikers and thrown the whole system out. The other eight I have not seen, so their entries say what each show is built around and where it streams.
The 10 Picks at a Glance
| Title | Format | Length | MBTI | Where they play |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aoashi | Anime series | 24 episodes (Season 1); Season 2 began October 2026 | ESTP | A J.League club's youth academy |
| Blue Lock | Anime series | 38 episodes (2 seasons) | ENTJ | A national program for 300 strikers |
| Blue Lock: Episode Nagi | Anime film | 91 min | INTP | Blue Lock, from the lazy genius's side |
| Captain Tsubasa | Anime series | 91 episodes (2 seasons) | ENFJ | From grade school to Junior Youth |
| Shoot! Goal to the Future | Anime series | 13 episodes | ESFJ | A high school team in Shizuoka |
| Farewell, My Dear Cramer | Anime series | 13 episodes | ISTP | A girls' high school team in Saitama |
| Farewell, My Dear Cramer: First Touch | Anime film | 104 min | INFP | One girl on a junior high boys' team |
| Galaxy Kickoff!! | Anime series | 39 episodes | ENFP | An elementary school team rebuilt |
| Inazuma Eleven | Anime series | 127 episodes | ESFP | A junior high club facing closure |
| Inazuma Eleven: Ares | Anime series | 26 episodes | ENFP | Island kids take over Raimon |
Seven of the ten are on Crunchyroll. The two Inazuma Eleven series are the exception: no US subscription carries them, but a library card gets you the first one free. Each title links to its entry.
1. Aoashi
| Format | Genre | Length | Emotional tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime series | Sports, Drama | 24 episodes (Season 1); Season 2 began October 2026 | Hype, Moving |
Ashito Aoi is a fifteen-year-old striker from a small town in Ehime, on the island of Shikoku, with a temper and a strange gift: he can picture the whole field at once. A coach from Tokyo City Esperion, a fictional top-flight club, sees him play and invites him to try out for the club's youth team in Tokyo.
From Yugo Kobayashi's manga, which ran in Big Comic Spirits from 2015 to 2025. Production I.G made the first season for NHK in 2022; TMS Entertainment took over for the second, which began airing in Japan on October 4, 2026.
The Road That Skips High School Soccer
Japanese editors noticed in 2015 that no manga had seriously covered J.League youth academies, the path that runs parallel to high school club soccer, and Aoashi was built to fill that gap. Ashito turns down the high school route to try it, and he arrives knowing far less than the kids who grew up inside the system.
I watched the first season expecting a striker's story. Then the coach moves Ashito to fullback, and for several episodes he is lost, angry and visibly bad at it. That stretch is the reason I trust this show: it treats learning where to stand as harder than learning to shoot.
| Service (US) | Status |
|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Streaming |
| Netflix | Not available |
| Hulu | Not available |
| Amazon Prime Video | Add-on |
| HBO Max | Not available |
| Disney+ | Not available |
| Apple TV+ | Not available |
Season 1 is on Crunchyroll in the US, and Crunchyroll is also streaming Season 2. Prime Video has it only through the Crunchyroll channel, a paid add-on.
2. Blue Lock
| Format | Genre | Length | Emotional tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime series | Sports, Thriller | 38 episodes (2 seasons) | Hype, Tense |
After Japan goes out of the 2018 World Cup in the round of 16, the national federation in the story hands a strange coach named Jinpachi Ego a radical project: lock 300 high school forwards in one facility and make them compete until a single, completely selfish striker is left. Anyone eliminated can never play for Japan again. Yoichi Isagi, a forward who passed when he should have shot in his last high school match, is one of the 300.
From the manga by Muneyuki Kaneshiro and Yusuke Nomura in Weekly Shonen Magazine. Eight Bit produced the first season in 2022 and a second, VS. U-20 JAPAN, in 2024.
It Aired During Qatar
The first episode aired in Japan on October 9, 2022. About six weeks later, Japan beat Germany 2-1 at the Qatar World Cup, then beat Spain by the same score. A show built on the idea that Japan needed a striker with an ego was on TV every weekend while the real team was pulling off the biggest upsets in its history. In Japan, the timing was impossible to separate from the show.
I have watched both seasons. Here is the honest part: the matches are closer to a battle anime than to real soccer, with each player's talent turned into something like a superpower. If that bothers you, start with Aoashi. If it does not, Season 2 is where the show is at its loudest.
| Service (US) | Status |
|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Streaming |
| Netflix | Streaming |
| Hulu | Not available |
| Amazon Prime Video | Add-on |
| HBO Max | Not available |
| Disney+ | Not available |
| Apple TV+ | Not available |
Both seasons are on Crunchyroll. Netflix added Season 1 in April 2026 and Season 2 in May 2026. Prime Video has it only through the Crunchyroll channel.
3. Blue Lock: Episode Nagi
| Format | Genre | Length | Emotional tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime film | Sports, Drama | 91 min | Hype |
Seishiro Nagi finds almost everything boring, including effort. His classmate Reo Mikage, the heir to a huge company, spots a freakish talent in him and drags him into soccer. Within months the two of them are invited to Blue Lock.
A 2024 film from the same studio and cast as the series, adapted from the spin-off manga that retells the story from Nagi's side.
Watch It After Season 1
This covers a lot of the same ground as the first season of the series, seen from a different player, which is why it belongs after Season 1 rather than before it. Nagi is a supporting player in the series; here he is the lead, and Isagi, the series' hero, is the one seen from outside.
The film was announced at the end of the first season's final episode and kept the same studio and voice cast, so it looks and sounds like the series.
| Service (US) | Status |
|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Not available |
| Netflix | Not available |
| Hulu | Not available |
| Amazon Prime Video | Add-on |
| HBO Max | Not available |
| Disney+ | Not available |
| Apple TV+ | Not available |
Crunchyroll streamed the film from October 2024, but as of this check it is listed only through the Crunchyroll channel inside Prime Video. You can also rent it on Prime Video or Apple TV.
4. Captain Tsubasa
| Format | Genre | Length | Emotional tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime series | Sports, Coming-of-age | 91 episodes (2 seasons) | Hype, Nostalgic |
Tsubasa Ozora is an eleven-year-old who treats the ball as his best friend. When he moves to a new town, he runs into Genzo Wakabayashi, a goalkeeper who has never let in a shot from outside the box, and a Brazilian former pro named Roberto Hongo who sees something in him.
A 2018 remake of Yoichi Takahashi's 1981 manga by David Production, followed in 2023 by a second season, the Junior Youth Arc, in which Tsubasa and his rivals play for Japan's under-15 team.
Before Japan Had a Pro League
When the manga started, a Japanese boy's dream of playing in Brazil or Europe sounded about as realistic as going to the moon, and the series reads differently once you know it was drawn as a wish rather than a report. It became one of the things that made kids want a league of their own.
Torres is the name everyone quotes, but the show's reach in Japan goes beyond players. Takahashi's home ward of Katsushika in Tokyo put up a bronze statue of Tsubasa in 2013, and before the 2018 World Cup an adidas campaign unfurled a giant Captain Tsubasa comic, made from fans' messages, in the stands at Japan's warm-up match against Paraguay in Austria. The 2018 anime keeps the original's enormous shots and the fields Japanese fans joke are several kilometers long.
| Service (US) | Status |
|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Streaming |
| Netflix | Streaming |
| Hulu | Not available |
| Amazon Prime Video | Streaming |
| HBO Max | Not available |
| Disney+ | Not available |
| Apple TV+ | Not available |
Netflix has both seasons. Crunchyroll and Prime Video list the 2018 season only. Pluto TV and The Roku Channel also show it free with ads.
5. Shoot! Goal to the Future
| Format | Genre | Length | Emotional tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime series | Sports, Drama | 13 episodes | Hype, Warm |
Kakegawa High School in Shizuoka used to have a strong soccer team, but it has fallen apart. Hideto Tsuji, one of its best players, has quit after his old teammates turned against him. Then the club gets a new coach: Atsushi Kamiya, a former Kakegawa captain who went on to play in Italy.
A new 2022 story built on Tsukasa Oshima's Shoot!, a manga that ran in Weekly Shonen Magazine from 1990 to 2003. It is a different series from the 1993 TV adaptation.
A School Team in Soccer Country
Shizuoka is home to two J.League clubs, Shimizu S-Pulse and Jubilo Iwata, and Kakegawa sits between them.
This is the high school road that Aoashi's hero turns down: a school club, a coach, a winter tournament. The official channel even released a special promo pairing Yoshiharu Kubo, the ace of the original manga, with Shinji Ono, a real Japan international who grew up in Shizuoka.
| Service (US) | Status |
|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Streaming |
| Netflix | Not available |
| Hulu | Not available |
| Amazon Prime Video | Add-on |
| HBO Max | Not available |
| Disney+ | Not available |
| Apple TV+ | Not available |
On Crunchyroll in the US, with an English dub. Prime Video has it through the Crunchyroll channel, and you can buy it there.
6. Farewell, My Dear Cramer
| Format | Genre | Length | Emotional tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime series | Sports, Drama | 13 episodes | Moving, Hype |
Warabi Seinan, a public high school in Saitama, has a girls' soccer team nobody takes seriously. That changes when a handful of strong players enroll at once and a former member of Japan's women's national team arrives to coach them.
From the manga by Naoshi Arakawa, the author of Your Lie in April. Liden Films produced it in 2021.
After Japan Won the World Cup
Japan's women's team, Nadeshiko Japan, beat the United States on penalties to win the 2011 Women's World Cup. American readers may remember that final from the other side. The coach in this story is a former national team player, which gives the girls someone who has already been where they want to go.
The question the story is built around is where a girl who is good at this can go once school ends. The manga started in 2016, before Japan had a women's pro league; the WE League launched in 2021, the same year this aired, and the anime lists it among its official supporters.
| Service (US) | Status |
|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Streaming |
| Netflix | Not available |
| Hulu | Not available |
| Amazon Prime Video | Not available |
| HBO Max | Not available |
| Disney+ | Not available |
| Apple TV+ | Not available |
On Crunchyroll in the US.
7. Farewell, My Dear Cramer: First Touch
| Format | Genre | Length | Emotional tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime film | Sports, Drama | 104 min | Moving |
Nozomi Onda is fourteen and wants one thing: to play in official matches. She trains with her junior high's boys' team, but the boys are getting bigger and stronger, and a place in the lineup keeps slipping away. Then a boy from her past confronts her on the street, and she decides she cannot wait any longer.
A 2021 film adapted from Sayonara, Football, Arakawa's earlier manga about Nozomi, released in Japan about two weeks before the TV series finished.
The Prequel to Watch Second
Sayonara, Football came first: Arakawa drew it in 2009, years before Farewell, My Dear Cramer, and the series picks Nozomi up at high school. The film adapts that earlier manga, so it is the start of her story, released after the middle of it.
That is why the box says second: the film answers a question the series raises first, which is how a girl this good ended up without a team to play for.
| Service (US) | Status |
|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Streaming |
| Netflix | Not available |
| Hulu | Not available |
| Amazon Prime Video | Add-on |
| HBO Max | Not available |
| Disney+ | Not available |
| Apple TV+ | Not available |
On Crunchyroll in the US. Prime Video has it through the Crunchyroll channel.
8. Galaxy Kickoff!!
| Format | Genre | Length | Emotional tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime series | Sports, Kids | 39 episodes | Warm |
The Momoyama Predators, an elementary school team, folds for lack of players. Sho Ota, a sixth grader who is not very good but loves the game more than anyone, sets out to round up enough kids to start the team again.
Made for NHK, Japan's public broadcaster, in 2012 and 2013, based on Hiroto Kawabata's novel. It reached Crunchyroll in May 2026, the first time it had been streamed in English.
Fourteen Years to Reach English
Most Japanese kids who play soccer start at a neighborhood club like the Momoyama Predators, and most of them stop there too. That is the level NHK put this show at: a team that cannot field eleven, and a sixth grader who is not good enough to carry it but will not let it fold.
NHK followed each episode with a five-minute live-action segment featuring J.League players, so the kids watching could go straight from the cartoon to the real thing.
| Service (US) | Status |
|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Streaming |
| Netflix | Not available |
| Hulu | Not available |
| Amazon Prime Video | Add-on |
| HBO Max | Not available |
| Disney+ | Not available |
| Apple TV+ | Not available |
On Crunchyroll in the US, in Japanese with English subtitles. Prime Video has it through the Crunchyroll channel.
9. Inazuma Eleven
| Format | Genre | Length | Emotional tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime series | Sports, Action, Kids | 127 episodes | Hype, Fun |
The soccer club at Raimon Junior High is about to be shut down: it barely has enough members to field a team. Its captain and goalkeeper, Mamoru Endou, refuses to let that happen and sets out to win the national junior high tournament, the Football Frontier.
Based on Level-5's 2008 Nintendo DS game. OLM produced 127 episodes from 2008 to 2011.
Soccer With Special Moves
If Aoashi is a coaching manual, Inazuma Eleven is the opposite. Shots catch fire, keepers summon giant hands, and every match turns on a new named technique. That made it huge with Japanese kids, alongside the games, the manga and the toys.
I should be upfront that the only free way I found to watch it is a library card: Hoopla has the first season in English. That surprised me, given how big it was in Japan.
| Service (US) | Status |
|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Not available |
| Netflix | Not available |
| Hulu | Not available |
| Amazon Prime Video | Not available |
| HBO Max | Not available |
| Disney+ | Not available |
| Apple TV+ | Not available |
Not on a subscription service in the US. Hoopla has the first season free with a library card, and episodes are for sale on Prime Video.
10. Inazuma Eleven: Ares
| Format | Genre | Length | Emotional tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime series | Sports, Action, Kids | 26 episodes | Hype, Fun |
In this version of events, the original Raimon players have scattered to clubs across Japan, and youth teams now need sponsors just to survive. Asuto Inamori and his friends from Inakuni, a remote island, move to Inazuma Town and take over Raimon Junior High's soccer club, with a local tourism company paying their way, to play in the Football Frontier.
A 2018 restart of the series, set in a different timeline from the original. A 49-episode sequel, Orion, followed.
The One That Aired on Disney XD
This is the Inazuma Eleven many American kids actually saw, since Disney XD aired its English dub starting in April 2019. You do not need the 2008 series first: it shares the name and some faces, not the story.
Money is written into the premise this time, where the 2008 series only had a club short of members. Whether a youth team survives depends on whether someone pays for it, which is a problem real youth teams know well.
| Service (US) | Status |
|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Not available |
| Netflix | Not available |
| Hulu | Not available |
| Amazon Prime Video | Not available |
| HBO Max | Not available |
| Disney+ | Not available |
| Apple TV+ | Not available |
Not on a subscription service in the US. Hoopla has it free with a library card, and the season is for sale on Prime Video and Apple TV.
US Streaming Comparison at a Glance
| Title | Crunchyroll | Netflix | Hulu | Amazon Prime Video | HBO Max | Disney+ | Apple TV+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aoashi | ◎ | ✕ | ✕ | △ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Blue Lock | ◎ | ◎ | ✕ | △ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Blue Lock: Episode Nagi | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | △ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Captain Tsubasa | ◎ | ◎ | ✕ | ◎ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Shoot! Goal to the Future | ◎ | ✕ | ✕ | △ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Farewell, My Dear Cramer | ◎ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Farewell, My Dear Cramer: First Touch | ◎ | ✕ | ✕ | △ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Galaxy Kickoff!! | ◎ | ✕ | ✕ | △ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Inazuma Eleven | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Inazuma Eleven: Ares | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
Checked in the US region on October 9, 2026. ◎ means included with the base subscription, △ means a paid add-on channel or a rental, and ✕ means that service does not carry it. Crunchyroll has everything here except the Blue Lock film and the two Inazuma Eleven series. Netflix is the only place with both seasons of Captain Tsubasa; the ◎ on Prime Video is the 2018 season alone.
If You Only Watch One
For someone who plays or coaches, Aoashi. It spends whole episodes on where to stand when you do not have the ball, and the moment Ashito finally sees the whole field from fullback is worth more than any goal the show scores.
Blue Lock is the one for a tournament arc with the volume turned up. Its first season happened to air while Japan was beating Germany and Spain for real, and Season 2's match against the under-20 national team is where the show goes furthest.
And if there is a kid in the house who is just starting out, Galaxy Kickoff!! or Inazuma Eleven. One is NHK's show about a team of sixth graders; the other has goalkeepers summoning giant hands. Either one will tell you fast which kind of soccer fan you are raising.
Streaming information was verified in the US region on October 9, 2026 and can change without notice.
