In the early 1950s, the franchise made a dedicated effort to attract foreign talent, particularly African-American veterans of Negro league baseball,[2] including infielders John Britton and Larry Raines, and pitchers Jimmy Newberry and Jonas Gaines.

These players were the first Americans other than Wally Yonamine to play Nippon Professional Baseball after World War II.

But the Hankyu Braves won Japan Series three times in a row from 1975, against the Tokyo Giants in 1976 and 1977, led by manager Toshiharu Ueda.

At that time, many good players in Japanese baseball history played for the Hankyu Braves, including pitcher Hisashi Yamada and outfielder Yutaka Fukumoto.

The sale was a surprise; at that time, it was much rarer for a Japanese professional baseball team to change owners, not to mention for a large company to sell one of its parts.

What made it worse was in that second poll, "Thunder" was the winning name, which fit the new color scheme (when Orix bought the team, they changed their colors from black and red to navy blue and gold), and because the team's batting lineup was named Blue Thunder (ブルーサンダー, Burūsandā).

However, since Nishinomiya and Kobe are close to one another, and the new home field of the team was better than the old one, most fans accepted the move, although with some nostalgia for the historic "Braves" name.

The team was sometimes called Aonami or Seiha (青波) by fans and the baseball media, which means "blue wave" in Japanese.

Following that campaign, Masataka Yoshida requested to be posted to MLB, and signed with the Boston Red Sox that offseason.

In 2023, an 86-53-4 record yielded them their 3rd straight Pacific League pennant, alongside Yamamoto winning his 3rd consecutive Triple Crown.

Following that season, manager Satoshi Nakajima announced he was stepping down after he failed to guide the Buffaloes to their 4th straight pennant.