Captain (キャプテン) is a baseball manga series by Akio Chiba which ran in Monthly Shōnen Jump (published by Shueisha) from 1972 to 1979. This series ran concurrently with another Chiba manga series Play Ball, which ran in Weekly Shōnen Jump (also published by Shueisha) from 1973 to 1978. Captain, along with Play Ball, won the 22nd Shogakukan Manga Award for shōnen in 1977.[2]
The manga was adapted into a film by Eiken and released in theaters on 1981-07-18.[3] It was also adapted into a 26 episode anime television series which aired on NTV from 1983-01-10 to 1983-07-04. The TV series was also directed by Satoshi Dezaki. The Captain TV series was ranked 95th in the top 100 favorite anime titles of all time in a web poll conducted by TV Asahi in 2005.[4]