Kyojin no Hoshii

This series (which translates to "Star of the Giants") is a melodramatic series about a young baseball star named Hoshi Hyuuma who starts as a boy who trains hard, thanks to his No-Mercy father, to become the pitcher for Yomiuri Giants [the most popular team in Japanese Baseball]. Hyuuma's father was perhaps the least lenient man in the entire universe, as well a semi-alcoholic, who'd beat his son into training hard for baseball.

The series goes on to involve his trainer and his idol singer girlfriend. Hoshi tries to have a normal relationship with his girlfriend, but his trainer keeps getting involved and tries to keep him focused on his training and out of the media spotlight that dating such a famous girl would bring him.

The series ran from 1968-1971 with 181 episodes and was brought back in the form of a second series that ran for 75 episodes in 1975.

Relevance to Urusei Yatsura

Tobimaro Mizunokoji's entire character is based upon the characters and situations in this comic. Tobimaro is often portrayed as a Hoshi Hyuuma-like character treating baseball with a near-religious fervor. The "in" drawing-style of that era made the eyes 'sparkle' to dramatize many characters, although it eventually became so passé that newer non-serious anime/manga made mockery out of it. Thus the outrageous sparkles in Tobimaro's eyes.

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