Giant Killing – 20

I’m really glad to see that everything just worked perfectly in this episode. The banter between the different characters was absolutely hilarious, the match itself was very exciting despite its predictability, the characters shined more than ever here, the Osaka team itself is just awesome to watch in their relentless onslaught. If anything, Giant Killing has the climax that I’m looking forward to the most this season.

Hauer’s accent is hilarious. His voice actor isn’t as good as with Dulfer, but I can now somewhat understand what your regular anime voice actors may sound like to Japanese people. The thing is, most Dutch guys have a bit of a monotone voice. This guy, whoever he may be, speaks with so much passion in his voice though that it becomes hilarious. He also has this really weird but awesome sense of dramatically stopping for a split second in the middle of his sentences. Take for example the line “Je hebt me…. BELEDIGD HE!”, which can be translated to “You have…. INSULTED ME!”. Imagine saying that with the passion of an Italian soap opera actor.

But yeah, that could be the whole point. We’ve got a number of famous Dutch soccer players who are notorious for their strange personalities, so why not?I’m not sure whether the creators actually intended this, but I love this guy. In one way, he’s really trying to look cool, especially considering his huge posture. And yet the way he keeps his hair so cool and the huge accent end up only backfiring, making him look a bit adorable in a strange kind of way.

Either way though, I’m very surprised at what this episode decided to focus on. Of course it’s something we could have expected, but it didn’t occur to me until now: after all of the build-up the previous arc did towards the battle of the battle of the forwards, we actually didn’t get to see them at all in this episode. Instead, this episode was all about the defence, with Kuroda at the center.
Rating: *** (Awesome)