Netflix Sports Drama ‘Ballers’ Is Structured Like Anime

Even though anime has a wide variety of stories, the power structure of its characters follows very similar patterns. Protagonists often begin their journeys as weak students. But over the course of many episodes and seasons, the characters level up in ability and strength.

This shouldn’t be surprising as characters need to grow and become stronger along with the threats they face. But this power scale provides a problem in terms of plotting. A character’s strength can’t scale indefinitely. It has to end at some point. So it’s very interesting to see Ballers, a show that has nothing to do with anime at all, take a similar approach to its main character’s journey.

The series follows an ex-NFL player named Spencer Strassmore (Dwayne Johnson). Although he was a successful football player, his career ended uneventfully and he faced financial ruin after making a very bad investment. In order to turn things around and mentor the next generation of players, Spencer becomes a financial advisor and investor, making grand deals over the course of the show’s five seasons.

At first, the deals were relatively small. Spencer is working to secure contracts worth millions of dollars. However, the dollar amounts increase with every subsequent season. By the end of the show, Spencer was discussing buying an NFL team worth billions. This is very reminiscent of how anime treats its characters. In the beginning, Spencer was a nobody and just trying to get by and make a name for himself. By the end of the show, he was a big shot making deals for billions. Anime does the same thing with its characters as they start off small and weak, gradually growing in strength to absurd proportions. It would have been interesting to see just how far Spencer could climb if the show hadn’t ended.

Ballers is now streaming on Netflix.