is a Japanese

sports Sport pertains to any form of competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain, or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to spectators. Sports can, ...

manga series written by

Shinji Morisue is a Japanese gymnast and Olympic champion. He hails from Okayama City and attended the Nippon College of Physical Education (now called Nippon Sport Science University). Morisue is now a show business personality in Japan and is frequently seen ...

and illustrated by Hiroyuki Kikuta. It is about high school gymnast Shun Fujimaki as he pursues his goal of competing in the 2000

Olympic Games The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a vari ...

, and is in part based on Morisue's experiences as an Olympic champion. The series was published in

Shogakukan is a Japanese publisher of dictionaries, literature, comics ( manga), non-fiction, DVDs, and other media in Japan. Shogakukan founded Shueisha, which also founded Hakusensha. These are three separate companies, but are together called the H ...

's ''shōnen'' manga magazine ''

Weekly Shōnen Sunday is a weekly ''shōnen'' manga magazine published in Japan by Shogakukan since March 1959. Contrary to its title, ''Weekly Shōnen Sunday'' issues are released on Wednesdays. ''Weekly Shōnen Sunday'' has sold over 1.8billion copies since 1986, ...

'' from June 1994 to October 2000, with its chapters collected into 34 ''

tankōbon is the Japanese term for a book that is not part of an anthology or corpus. In modern Japanese, the term is most often used in reference to individual volumes of a manga series: most series first appear as individual chapters in a weekly or ...

'' volumes. The series was adapted as a 30-episode

anime is hand-drawn and computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japanese, (a term derived from a shortening of ...

television series titled ''Gambalist! Shun'', produced by

Sunrise Sunrise (or sunup) is the moment when the upper rim of the Sun appears on the horizon in the morning. The term can also refer to the entire process of the solar disk crossing the horizon and its accompanying atmospheric effects. Terminology A ...

and broadcast on

Yomiuri TV JOIX-DTV (channel 10), branded as , is the Kansai region flagship station of the Nippon News Network and the Nippon Television Network System, owned by the subsidiary of the eponymous Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings, Japan's largest media conglomer ...

from July 1996 to March 1997. In 1998, ''Ganba! Fly High'' received the 43rd

Shogakukan Manga Award The is one of Japan's major manga awards, and is sponsored by Shogakukan Publishing. It has been awarded annually for serialized manga and features candidates from a number of publishers. It is the oldest manga award in Japan, being given since ...

for the '' shōnen'' category.

Media

Manga

''Ganba! Fly High'' is written by

and illustrated by Hiroyuki Kikuta. Morisue based the series on his own real-life experiences in winning the gold in horizontal bar in the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984 and wanted to inspire more kids to try gymnastics themselves. It was serialized in

's ''

'' from June 8, 1994, to October 18, 2000. Shogakukan collected its chapters into thirty-four ''

'' volumes, released from December 10, 1994, to December 18, 2000.

Anime

A 30-episode anime television series adaptation, titled , was produced by

and broadcast on

from July 1, 1996, to March 10, 1997.

Reception and legacy

In 1998, the manga won the 43rd

for the '' shōnen'' category. The gold-medalist gymnast

Kōhei Uchimura is a retired Japanese artistic gymnast. He is a seven-time Olympic medalist (all-around, team and floor exercise), winning three golds and four silvers, and a twenty-one-time World medalist (all-around, team, floor exercise, horizontal bar, a ...

has credited the series with helping to inspire him in the sport.

References

External links