Of making baseball films there is no end. The sport provides an endless supply of ready-made narratives: from a fight to win the pennant ("Damn Yankees") or to simply win ("Major League"), to a player's struggle with illness ("Pride of the Yankees"), or an oversized ego ("Mr. Baseball").

Japan's many yakyū (baseball) fans have also seen their share of domestic films about the sport, often animated and based on popular manga.

The winner of the audience award at this year's Vancouver International Film Festival — where it had its world premiere — was Yuya Ishii's "Vancouver no Asahi (The Vancouver Asahi)," which is a different sort of Japanese baseball film entirely. Based on a real-life team of Japanese-Canadians who were active from 1914 to 1941 (after which wartime restrictions forced them to permanently disband), the film is a serious social drama, if one with a typical win-the-big-game narrative.