The author of the manga icon “Super Champions”, Yoichi Takahashiwants to leave the pencils for dedicated to his real soccer team, Nankatsu SCclub that he has chaired since 2013.
“Super Champions” was published for the first time in 1981 in the Japanese weekly magazine Shonen Jump, its cartoon adaptation was a worldwide success that inspired video games and some of the children who admired their main character, Oliver Atom, turn to sports legends like Lionel Messi or Zinedine Zidane.
But the creator of this legendary manga prepares to end the series to dedicate himself to another project: Try to lead your soccer team to the J. League, the Japanese professional championship.
From the series to professional football
Yoichi Takahashi became a soccer fan watching the 1978 World Cup on televisionorganized and won by Argentina, and created the Super Champions with the aim of popularizing this sport in Japan, where the J. League was not created until 1993.
Now I dream of Nankatsu SCclub that he has chaired since 2013 and of which he has owned since 2019, rise from the fifth division, in which you are currently, until the first
“In Europe it’s natural to support your local club, but this culture didn’t exist in Japan,” explains the author. “I didn’t have a local club, so I wanted to create one myself”added.
The name of the club is a tribute to the one in which the protagonists of the manga Oliver Atom and Benji Price played (Tsubasa Ozora and Genzo Wakabayashi in the original version of the anime).
The Nankatsu SC signed prestigious players to help in his promotion, like Japanese internationals Junichi Inamoto and Yasuyuki Konno.
