Days
DAYS
- Sports
- School
- Team Sports
- Episodes
- 24
- Duration
- 24 min per ep
- Aired
- Jul 3, 2016 to Dec 18, 2016
- Status
- Finished Airing
Synopsis
Tsukushi and Jin couldn’t be more different: Tsukushi is an ordinary boy without any standout talent, while Jin is widely regarded as a soccer prodigy.
Their paths cross on a stormy night, and that chance encounter pulls both of them into the competitive world of soccer, where their contrasting strengths begin to shape what comes next.
Otaku Consensus
Days earns affection through Kounosuke Uda’s plainspoken direction and character-first pacing, giving camaraderie, fear, and perseverance more attention than tactical football analysis. Supporters embrace Tsukushi’s motivational through-line and the likable treatment of familiar sports archetypes, while detractors argue that the series proclaims growth more convincingly than it dramatizes it. Its earnestness carries a visually workmanlike production, but the limited depth of its development keeps it below the genre’s top tier.
Why You Should Watch
Watch Days if you want the emotional charge of a school sports club without dense tactical exposition, superhuman techniques, or an endless tournament structure. Its 24-episode run treats effort as a daily discipline: embarrassment, encouragement, and incremental improvement matter as much as match results. That approach scratches part of the same underdog itch as Haikyuu!!, but with rougher animation, less strategic detail, and an even more openly sentimental tone. MAPPA keeps the action readable rather than extravagant, while Yoshihiro Ike’s music and the contrasting performances of Takuto Yoshinaga and Yoshitsugu Matsuoka reinforce the central personality clash. Viewers drawn to sincere coming-of-age stories, primarily male club ensembles, and protagonists whose value comes from persistence rather than hidden genius will find its priorities unusually clear.
Key Characters
- JJin Kazama(VA: Yoshitsugu Matsuoka)
Jin is most engaging as a gifted player whose interest in another person’s potential reveals more about his values than his reputation as a prodigy does.
- TTsukushi Tsukamoto(VA: Takuto Yoshinaga)
Tsukushi serves as the series’ emotional measuring stick, turning persistence and vulnerability into qualities that admirers find inspiring and detractors find excessively sentimental.
What Makes It Stand Out
- 1
MAPPA produced the complete 24-episode television run, favoring readable movement, expressive reactions, and functional match staging over the elaborate visual spectacle associated with more animation-driven sports series.
- 2
Kounosuke Uda handled both direction and series composition, giving the adaptation a consistent character-first structure in which club relationships and personal anxieties routinely receive more space than football tactics.
- 3
Kazuto Nakazawa designed the characters, while Daisuke Niinuma and Rie Nishimura shared chief animation director duties; the resulting look emphasizes easily distinguished silhouettes across a predominantly male ensemble.
- 4
Composer Yoshihiro Ike and sound director Masafumi Mima shape the series’ emotional register, supporting its earnest motivational tone rather than presenting matches as purely technical contests.
- 5
The series openly divides sports-anime viewers: positive reviews praise its sincerity and attention to fears and joys away from play, while negative reviews cite repetitive inspiration, thin development, and a gap between what the story says and what it shows.
Fun Facts & Trivia
- Fun fact 1
- Original creator Tsuyoshi Yasuda is the sole creator credited in the supplied staff data, while the television adaptation was led by director and series composer Kounosuke Uda.
- Fun fact 2
- Munehisa Sakai served as assistant director beneath Uda, while the production split chief animation supervision between Daisuke Niinuma and Rie Nishimura.
- Fun fact 3
- Days aired from July 3 to December 18, 2016, completing all 24 episodes within two consecutive broadcast cours.
- Fun fact 4
- Its audience metrics show warmer reception on MyAnimeList than AniList: 7.17 from 71,126 MAL votes versus 67 out of 100 on AniList, where it also has 396 favourites.
- Fun fact 5
- AniList users tagged Football most strongly at 83 percent, while School, Shounen, Primarily Male Cast, and School Club each registered an identical 79 percent.
Studios
- MAPPA
