Blaseball was the sleeper hit of 2020. This baseball-themed interactive browser game and horror experience immerses players in a baseball league where the rules are merely suggestions and anything can happen. From eldritch entities to people turning into peanuts, there isn't a rule or convention that Blaseball isn't willing to break -- and the new season shows no signs of toning down the weirdness.
But Blaseball isn't the only sport with lax rules. Anime sports aren't exactly the final bastions of fairness, with undertrained rookies routinely pulling off ridiculous upsets, but these anime sports leagues, in particular, have governing bodies so nonchalant they put Blaseball to shame.
Dragon Ball Super - Inter-Dimensional Competitive Martial Arts
Tournaments in the Dragon Ball universe have always taken a laissez-faire approach to rules enforcement, especially when it comes to allowing anyone to enter, no matter how unbalanced the resulting fight is. Case in point: practically any fight involving Yamcha. However, Frost in Dragon Ball Super takes this to its logical conclusion with his blatant cheating during tournaments.
During the Tournament of Destroyers, Frost uses poison needles hidden in his body to gain quick and dirty victories over his foes, even beating Goku and Piccolo with this cheap tactic. However, Jaco realizes something is up and informs the referee about the poison. When the needle is found, the referee moves to disqualify Frost. However, the ref doesn't get the chance as Vegeta beats Frost up.
During the Tournament of Power, Frost seems to have learned his lesson and forgoes using his poisoned needles. However, when Frieza knocks Frost out of the stage, Frost retaliates by shooting Freiza from the stands. However, this doesn't work as Zeno erases him from existence for trying to cheat. Maybe enforcing the rules retroactively isn't the best way to run an inter-dimensional fighting tournament?
Food Wars! - Competitive Gourmet Cooking
Competitive cooking shows can get heated, but you rarely see any underhanded tactics at work. We have yet to see The Great British Bake-Off be racked by a cheating scandal, and it seems unlikely we ever will. However, in the world of Food Wars!, cooking contests are serious business. The Totsuki Saryo Culinary Institute at the core of Food Wars! takes an antagonistic approach to education, kicking students out if they don't win enough, so of course, people resort to dirty tricks to win.
Throughout the series, we see everything from gastronomic sabotage where competitors attempt to ruin dishes made by others to full-on kidnapping and blackmail in an attempt to throw the opposition off their game. Possibly one of the most egregious examples is Etsuya Eizan. This wealthy villain blatantly bribes judges to the point that they'll declare him the winner without even touching the food that has been made, often making it clear they voted before the contest even started. On top of this, Eizan supported Azami Nakiri and his plans to turn the school into a dictatorship, just so he could enjoy an even greater advantage in contests.
Ultimate Muscle - Alien Professional Wrestling
Pro-Wrestling has never been confined to rules in the traditional sense. Especially as one of the biggest names in the sport is an undead mortician who often uses literal magic to get one over on his opponents. But the alien wrestling league in Ultimate Muscle takes this a step further, creating a league where the rules are seldom enforced.
Mostly due to their strange biology, the alien wrestlers themselves are natural cheats, as it's inherently unfair to make a humanoid fight someone made out of a toilet or half a forklift. Ultimate Muscle matches allow all sorts of non-standard tactics, from weapons to biological attacks, including disgusting alien stinkbugs, farts or even pooping mid-match. Several matches also turn into hostage situations or flat-out murders, something that even the old ECW would have considered a step too far.
Kakegurui - Hyakkaou Private Academy's School-Wide Betting League
Hyakkaou Private Academy, the setting for Kakegurui, is not your usual school. This private academy sorts its hierarchy by a complex system of gambling and betting games. The more money you win, the more you can give to the student council and thus the higher your rank. This makes gambling a serious business, and this means everyone is cheating.
Take Itsuki Sumeragi, who uses a deck of cards with hidden marks that appear when the card is warm, allowing her to know what face-down cards are. or Yuriko Nishinotouin, whose personal dealers allow her to cheat via magnets. If a game exists in Hyakkaou Private Academy, someone has found a way to cheat at it. The fact everyone is cheating compounds this further as it forces the cheaters to cheat more blatantly to overcome the cheating of others. However, Russian roulette being allowed on campus cements that the student council truly doesn't care about the rules.
Yu-Gi-Oh! - Competitive Duel Monsters
The world of Yu-Gi-Oh! is packed to the gills with cheaters. Hardly a battle goes by without someone cheating, often to hilariously over the top levels. You have characters like Mai Valentine, who uses perfume to mark her cards and Bandit Keith hides cards in his bracelets. There are also characters like Weevil, who literally sneaks cards into his opponent's deck.
But that is just the tip of the iceberg. Take Pegasus, who makes his own ludicrously overpowered cards and uses his Millennium Eye to see his opponent's hand. And in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, you have Satorius, who uses future vision to see the end of the game before it starts, which, while not technically against the rules, feels against the spirit of them. And it isn't just the villains doing it. In Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL, Yuma, the protagonist, literally creates new cards during the game! Even Yugi gets in on this, with his "heart of the cards" feeling closer to blatant cheating the longer the series goes on.
After watching several series, you would be forgiven for thinking that the Yu-Gi-Oh! world needs fewer card games and more ethics classes.
