

This might sound like a weird question, but hear me out. In all of the anime
that I've seen that revolves around high school sports, they never seem to
have the concept of the "tryout".

Keep in mind that I live in the States, so my perspective will be biased. When
I was in high school, all of our sports teams required prospective members to
pass the tryouts in order to join. Basically, the coach/advisor of the team
would administer an exam for the new potential members, to gauge their
proficiency in the sport. If they were deemed satisfactory, they are granted
membership into the team. If not, then they are rejected.

However, in all the sports-related anime that I've seen, it looks like any
student could just submit an application and join the team. They often don't
even care about their skill in the sport, since I've seen many sports anime
where new team members can be complete novices. So how come they don't hold
tryouts/auditions to make sure that all members of the team are above some
baseline level of competency in the sport? I'm sure this would greatly improve
their performance in competitions and such. This isn't limited to anime
either, since I've also seen it in Japanese soap operas. Is it just a cultural
difference?


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anime-production culture
How come sports anime never have tryouts?


Japan is very different from the US, and I've picked up on some of subtleties
that by watching waaaay too much anime.

## Japan

Japan is a socialist state, Asians are very communal, and from what I can
tell, sports are not just sports, but also clubs. Students join a single club,
be it a sports club, or the epitomous occult club. Oftentimes the captain of
the club has final say on who can join, and we've seen in many anime that
there is paperwork involved. As stated in the comments above, sometimes even a
stellar rookie doesn't have access to contribute, instead letting the older
students play on the team and/or first string.

In Japan (probably many Asian cultures), the student would be worried about
embarrassing his teammates if he was unable to contribute. Once accepted by
the team, if he or the team feels that he was especially under performing,
social ostracization would kick in. You've probably seen this in anime where
people talk loudly behind their hand and say awful things. This shaming would
be an effect to make the under performing team member quit the team. Shame is
a big part of Asian culture, and not a big part of the American way, so it
might be hard to wrap your head around how important it is to them. I don't
fully get it, but I can see that it exists.

## The USA

Contrast that with the US, where individuality is encouraged, sports teams are
not clubs, and students can usually join clubs and sports teams. There's
usually not paperwork to join, though a liability waiver might be signed. As
stated above, there's free reign to let awesome rookies perform, so it's
highly desirable to find out who your best players are, and a tryout is one
way to assess how good your incoming players are.

In the USA, you might join the sports team, go to practice, and participate in
the background until you hit your breakout moment. Since you're not in an
anime (Netflix is working on that though), you might not find a breakout
moment, and you might just be a small contributing member. If the school or
team is big enough, there might be a limited number of slots on the team, so
tryouts would be in order. I'd hazard a WAG that even though Asia is more
populous, they have more (and smaller) schools, where here in the US, schools
can get a lot bigger, thus triggering tryouts due to size more often.

## Anime

In anime, the MC usually joins a non-performant or loser team (take
Hinomaruzumou ([MAL](https://myanimelist.net/anime/37007/Hinomaruzumou)) for
example), and then through plot armor, awesomesauce, friendship, and some
tsundere, makes it a winning team. That's not usually how reality works, East
or West. But that's what makes an entertaining anime. In an anime like this,
the club captain is usually trying to get the minimum number of members so
that the club doesn't get cancelled, so tryouts would be counter productive.

In anime where the club is not in danger of being forcibly disbanded, the MC
usually has some desirable trait to make the club captain try to recruit the
MC, again bypassing any kind of a tryout. I'm not a big sports anime fan, but
every time I've seen a sports anime (or an anime with sports elements), it
fits into either of these categories.

**Sources:** Watching too much anime, and therefore osmosis of Japanese
culture. Also, the comments above that should have been answers confirm my
osmosis.


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