Review of Giant Killing

Giant Killing. Not a complex anime, also not a simple anime. Basically, the story of a team that really needs some help to get back to action: ETU. Not only does it show the coach's point of view, the players', but also the reporters and even the fans'. The little intrigues that revolves around the traditional and the new fanbase of the team, although these don't get too much attention. Story The story is quite simple. They don't try to make a big thing out of it, which is good on certain cases. It's pretty much this: The story of a great manager driving a not-so-goodteam in direction to fame and success. There are small elements left unexplained through the series, although there's no big deal about that all. It leaves you with a doubt, expecting that it will eventually be answered on a next season, OVA or special. Like I stated earlier, it also shows us the side of ETU's fans: the ones that support the team since long ago, the ones that lost faith on the team and eventually regained them, the children... Anyway, even though it (obviously) doesn't get as much space on the anime as the club, it's well featured. Even less featured is the side of the reporters, but we can see a bit of that too. An interesting part of it is that it doesn't try to make "impossible" things happen. ETU is not a team that can always win - like we usually see on most of these shows. They also don't pull cards off their sleeves all of a sudden and make a giant play that will save the game - most of the time.

Art
There's nothing wrong with the art. It's actually very good. Truth be told, basically all the matches are very well animated and worked on through all points of view. Although the character's designs may look weird at first, you easily get adapted to the style.

Sound
The OST of this show is awesome. So are the voice actors, who did a remarkable job with all roles. The only reason I'm not rating it with a 10 is simply because of the characters who spoke some language other than japanese. On these cases, the dubs weren't satisfactory at all. Besides the idea of making each character from each region (France, England, Brazil and others) speak their natural idiom is good, the japanese accent didn't help much. Other than that, the voices match really well the characters they are designed for.

Character
All the characters are pretty well developed. They are given interesting personalities and these are worked on as the team moves forward. Besides some characters didn't get as much attention as others did, the job is well done with all of them. Not only individually, but as the entire group that is ETU. You'll get attached more to some players and less to others, instead of having, like, three characters between which you will choose and say who's your favorite. You'll learn to like the team and - maybe - dislike some of its players.

Enjoyment
Even if you aren't a great fan of soccer, you surely will enjoy this anime. It really makes you want to watch the next episode and see what will happen. It gets you into the story and eventually you will even cheer with the public on the stadium. There surely won't be any regrets if you start watching it anytime, anyday.