A lot of people had been wondering whether it would be possible, but Tiger Woods has returned to The Masters golf tournament after suffering that horrific car accident about 14 months ago. Although as of this writing, he hasn't exactly been up at the upper echelons of the leaderboard so far, I think his fans are still just happy that he's at Augusta. The above video by the way is of his victory at the 2019 tournament via The Masters YouTube channel.
Except for several days of golf practice with toy plastic clubs in gym class because our gym teacher was such an avid fan, I've never had the chance to go onto the links. It's been vicarious enjoyment via the telly all these years and although there are people who will disagree with me, I've found it rather soothing to watch the pros shoot and putt. Plus, in the early months of the pandemic, it was reassuring to see golf players return to the courses as some of the first athletes to return to regular play.
But as I was watching this year's Masters just before coming onto the blog today, I was left with a question. Have there been any golf-themed anime? Well, the answer was rather obvious since I know that the Japanese have had a long affair with the pastime, and in fact, I remember during the Bubble Era in the 80s when golf club memberships were probably worth more than whole houses here in Toronto (then again, it's probably the other way around now). If the Black Card existed for the major credit card companies back then, it would probably be for those memberships.
I did find a number of golf-themed anime with the first one on the list being "Pro Golfer Saru"（プロゴルファー猿）based on a 1970s manga that ran for the better part of a decade. Apparently, each episode of the anime which ran from 1985 to 1988 was only 15 minutes long and starred a young and very dextrous genius golfer named Sarumaru Sarutani（猿谷猿丸）. Not sure if there were ever a live-action version of the series, but I would have chosen Osakan comedian Takashi Okamura（岡村隆史）to be Saru.
The thing about the manga was that the creator was none other than Fujiko A. Fujio（藤子不二雄Ⓐ）who had passed away just a few days ago. I wrote about another much darker character of his making back on Thursday.
Being a sports-based anime, the opening credits and the theme song were appropriately epic to clearly illustrate the heroic aspects of young Saru. "Yume wo Kachitorou" (Win The Dream) was recorded by seiyuu/singer Ichiro Mizuki（水木一郎）, written by both Fujiko A. Fujio and his professional partner Fujiko F. Fujio（藤子・F・不二雄）under their collaborative nom de plume Fujiko Fujio (藤子不二雄) , and composed by Asei Kobayashi（小林亜星）.
Morning, Brian. Yeah, I think that there will be retrospectives on his and his partner's lives over the coming days. But at the age of 88, I think A-san lived a good long life.
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