Diego Almeida Ferreira

Diego Almeida Ferreira was twelve and training six mornings a week at a judo club in Santo André, São Paulo, when an older teammate lent him the first volume of the *Slam Dunk* manga. He read it in two evenings. Within a week he had sourced a way to watch the anime. He had never thought of sports narratives as something worth taking seriously until *Slam Dunk* showed him that athletic training, team psychology, and individual ego could be the spine of genuinely literary storytelling. He still holds a blue belt.

Diego's MAL profile contains 460 completed series, and his specialty is sports anime: the mechanics of how different series translate physical competition into dramatic tension, the way training arcs function narratively, the gap between realistic and fantasy depictions of athletic bodies, and the role of team dynamics versus individual heroism across different sports genres. He is fluent in Portuguese, Spanish, and English, and covers the Brazilian anime community closely — Brazil has one of the world's largest anime audiences and its specific fandom history is underreported internationally.

Before Otakiva, Diego wrote for Brazil's *Omelete* website (sports and anime sections) for three years, and was one of the original hosts of the *Sakura e Gols* podcast, which covered the intersection of football fandom and anime culture in Brazil.

His personal top five: *Slam Dunk*, *Haikyuu!!*, *Hajime no Ippo*, *Ping Pong: The Animation*, and *Yuri!!! on Ice*.

Based in Pinheiros, São Paulo. Contact: [email protected].