Kyojin no Hoshi

Star of the Giants (Japanese: 巨人の星, Hepburn: Kyojin no Hoshi) is a Japanese sports manga series written by Ikki Kajiwara and illustrated by Noboru Kawasaki. It was serialized in Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine from 1966 to 1971. It is about the actual baseball team Yomiuri Giants using fictional characters. It was launched by the "Yomiuri Group" which at the time owned not only the actual baseball team, but the TV network Nippon Television, the newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun, as well as Yomiuri Telecasting Corporation. It was adapted into an anime television series broadcast in Japan in 1968. It later spawned two anime sequels and different anime films. In total there were 262 episodes.