Category: Giant Killing

In my experience, you can really divide sports series into three categories. The first is the typical shounen, and usually the most boring: a band of underdog kids trains hard and wins in an over the top fashion against all odds. Then there’s the realistic type, like what Ookiku Furikabutte is currently doing: really analyzing and pudding down an as believable representation as possible. Touch also belongs to this category. The third category doesn’t necessarily aim for realism, but tries to explore the borders of the sport it’s discussing, with wild and reckless tactics, tailoring games based on unique characters: it’s an exploration of the extremes in a sport. This is the category of Giant Killing, along with shows as One Outs.

I was really certain that this episode would feature some sort of come-back after last episode’s cliff-hanger. You know, an entire episode dedicated to them, making up for that nasty goal that was scored against them. And they lose. Miserably with 0-4. They then proceed to lose the next two matches again. The whole euphoria of the end of the previous episode, it wasn’t just meant to build up for one measly match, it was meant to build up for the entire series!

It’s still a mystery what Tatsumi has in mind, letting the players play football tennis matches during the training. It’s in any case obvious that he’s not a Deus ex Miracle coach, and this episode really stresses that even though he won in England, it doesn’t mean that he’s automatically going to win every match here.

Central to this episode was also the buzz-cut guy whose name I can’t seem to find: his patience was bound to run out sometime, but this episode made him more than a random hothead. He’s outspoken and often gets angry, but also a perfectionist and a passionate player. But I also love how each player reacts to Tatsumi’s practices in a different way: some of them also start wondering what the hell Tatsumi is up to, while others don’t really care, others think that Tatsumi might have something in mind, and others in turn are sure of it. The cast here is HUGE, but there are so many different nuances between them.

I’ve been thinking, but this show is actually quite refreshing to watch after watching a ton of different high-school baseball series. This isn’t because they’re inferior or something, because Cross Game, Ookiku Furikabutte and Touch definitely rock in their own ways. But the way that high school baseball is set up is very limited: lose once, and you’re out. Instead, the adult teams in contrast can afford to lose. You’re not immediately out if you lose once. It perhaps leads to less drama, but it allows the creators to play much more with their matches.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Muaahahaha! That was AWESOME! Never since the bald gay ambassador of Samurai Champloo have people talked in actual Dutch in anime. Hearing the voice actors trying to utter the Dutch sentences totally made my day. What an awesome series.

En dan te bedenken dat deze aflevering ook vol zat met Fransen en Engelsen, het zou helemaal geweldig zijn als de Zuid-Amerikanen ook ergens in de serie zullen verschijnen. C’est génial de voir que anime de plus en plus orienter vers un anime international. Wo man früher nur ein paar Sätze in Engrish finden konnte, werden ganze Gespräche in anderen Sprachen geführt.

The creators actually did pretty well. There were some voice actors who just couldn’t take it at one point, but that Dutch coach was voiced really well, he even got that nonchalant monotone tone that you often hear with Dutch guys nailed. He also spoke English with quite a good Dutch accent, without overdoing it. The same goes for the French coach. It’s a shame that Tatsumi himself didn’t get the best voice actor: you could see him struggle with his English, which caused some lines to be just replaced with their Japanese counterparts.

This episode introduced a ton of interesting looking characters. What I also loved was seeing just how many different, varied and unique character-designs the creators could produce. Seriously, every character here has unique character-designs that stand out. Every person has his own features.

On top of that the creators also slapped the start of the new football match at the end of the episode. Neat. I also loved the way it was written: everything seemed to be going well, everyone was in the right spirits, the fans even brought a huge-ass sign to cheer everyone on… and suddenly the ball misses and the opposing team makes a goal. It’s really a great way to introduce the next episode.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Ah, this is awesome. It’s clear now that Giant Killing is one of those series where the matches are written to get the best out of the characters. Right from the start, it looked like this match was all about Tsubaki: making him lose his rookie status and establishing himself as a great player. However, in the middle of this episode, the creators went “nah, that’s just too predictable”. And instead they went back and made Murakoshi take over the spotlights, leaving Tsubaki as the main cause behind the two goals they got against them. I love how balanced this show is: at any point, it’ll decide to focus on a completely different character.

This is really why I love Studio Deen. Who cares about their cheesy stuff as Hakuouki; it’s series like this that show again and again how well these guys know their characterization. Tsubaki’s downfall, as well as Murakoshi just throwing on the final five minutes. With average characterization they would just have been really really cheesy, but they actually pulled it off here. The atmosphere within the football match really fitted, from celebrating the goal to simply those people running to catch up to the ball.

This episode also started playing some new background tunes, if I’m not mistaken, and the soundtrack only became even better because of them. The soundtrack here is very simple, but SO effective. I’m also very impressed with the character-development that the creators have already gotten into just five episodes: Murakoshi is bound to change after this; it’s very impressive of the creators to go with this right from the start. Just a shame of the speedline abuse in this episode.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

The first real match of the show, and the creators have really shown that they know how to write one. It’s not the kind of match that stands out in terms of technical excellence, like with Ookiku Furikabutte. Instead, they’re all focused on getting the best out of the characters. While it’s less hard to do, it still requires a lot of skills to make this not boring and predictable.

Tatsumi, Gino and Tatsumi proved to be an excellent combination for this series to work with. Murakoshi and that bald guy actually didn’t play a role at all here, even though they were featured so prominently in the first three episodes. If anything, the past four episodes have all been significantly different from each other, in terms of important characters and premise. That’s the sign of a well balanced and dynamic series.

This episode pushed Tsubaki’s character forward; it’s here where we get to know him. The title of “Giant Killing” also makes a bit more sense now, this very much is intended as a self-aware version of David and Goliath, and Tsubaki turned out to be the vital character in this, in how he performs the best when he’s put against huge odds.

There’s one thing that the creators need to watch out for, however. It’s a shounen-syndrome of “cheaters are losers”. Granted, it’s something that you more often see in American animation compared to the Japanese, but it still sticks out whenever the writers look down on the enemy teams by having them cheat, in order to make the protagonists look better. With this case, I could see that player as someone who would fake injury, but let’s not make a habit out of it, okay?
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Another excellent episode, three episodes in and Giant Killing still is able to consistently entertain with its excellent chemistry. I love how, instead of trying to play as nice as possible, the coach seeks conflict. Now that Murakoshi isn’t allowed to take the lead anymore, the hierarchies that unfold are really interesting to watch. This episode also showed that he isn’t perfect: one of his experiments goes completely wrong and everyone just ends up arguing with each other.

A new player also makes his entrance, some sort of narcissist who actually turns out to be quite good. The next episode should be interesting to see what he can do as the new captain of the team. It’s pulling something similar to Ookiku Furikabutte: instead of building up, go against a really good team right away.

I also think that this is the series with the most amount of variety in terms of ages this seasons: there are teenagers, people in their thirties, we have supporters in their forties and also the kids are part of them. The only ones are missing are the really old people and high schoolers. And to be honest, I’m not at all sad about the latter.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

So yeah, out of all of the series that debuted during the spring season so far, Giant Killing had the best first episode, it had the best OP and ED, it was the only series that bothered to experiment with a new art style, it was the first series since ages to have actual English, despite being a sports series it had one of the most diverse casts of the season, it has the best chemistry between the characters, it was the best at portraying the unnamed characters in the background for me. Is anyone surprised that I ended up blogging it? ^^;

Seriously though, I absolutely love the first two opening episodes of Giant Killing. It’s so refreshing to finally see a series not rip off the standard art style that there is for moe and bishies. It’s so refreshing to see these characters and every second so far has been fun and enjoyable. This is like One Outs if it actually had good characterization. It’s witty, unpredictable and creative. There’s a bit of angst, but none of it is pointless: you can really see that these characters have a reason to hate the main characters.

Because seriously, what this series also did really well was portraying the football fans: the supporters behind the club. Ranging from the kids to the passionate fans, to the ones who like to yell at everything. It’s such a great and varied portrayal. The creators here didn’t just animate a football team, they animated everyone around it and they gave everyone a character.

And let me also talk a bit about the production values. It’s true that this series doesn’t have the biggest budget, however it’s really well used: the filters may seem cheap, but the audience shots in these filters are some of the best audience shots I’ve seen: the audience in this series doesn’t feel like a wallpaper, but alive. Even though the creators use the known tricks in the book, of using copied and pasted CG, and just random images, they manage to deliver it in such a way to make it dynamic.

On top of that, it also seems like the best soundtrack of this season has reached this series. It’s again not as elaborate as, say, Angel Beats, but the simplicity and creativity behind the sounds that kicks ass. Apparently the composer also did Kuchuu Buranko’s soundtrack, but damn, he really surpassed himself here. Talk about catchy.

So yeah, this is probably going to be the series that I’m going to sing a lot of praises over. It’s really one of those series that got me fired up like hell.
Rating: *** (Awesome)