Nobody talks about this one. A 1931 anime about rabbits and tanuki playing baseball has no reason to exist, and every reason to matter, it's pure visual joy with no pretension, just animals moving across a field with the kind of hand-drawn precision that makes you forget you're watching something almost a century old. The game itself is secondary to the rhythm of it, the way each play builds momentum like a silent comedy that learned to draw. If you've ever wondered what anime looked like before it became anime, before the industry calcified into rules, this is the answer.

Rabbits and tanuki square off on the baseball diamond in this 1931 animated film. The whole story centers on a single game between the two animal teams, with the rabbits on one side and the raccoon dogs on the other. An early example of sports animation, the movie builds its entire plot around this one simple matchup.