Review of Giant Killing

I'd previously ignored "Giant Killing" as the combination of the title and its lack of popularity made me think it's some kind of mediocre fantasy anime. Then I heard it's actually about football, and no, not the American variety, I'm talking about soccerl - you know, the kind of football where you actually use your foot more than your hands. Since I'm pretty into football, my interest in this anime suddenly shot up. "Giant Killing" follows the fortunes of ETU (East Tokyo United), one of the weakest teams in the top division of Japanese football. A once proud club capable of challenging the very best teamsin the Japanese league, they start off in the series as a team barely able to escape relegation. But all this is about to change with the appointment the new manager, a former player named Takeshi Tatsumi, who as a player, had a hand in both bringing the club to the height of its glory, and to its knees after what many saw as his betrayal.

First of all, I should make it clear that "Giant Killing" is pretty serious about football. And by that I mean it tries to be realistic about the game, and it doesn't receive the whole over the top "anime treatment" given to the likes of, say "Captain Tsubasa". While I haven't watched "Captain Tsubasa", I've heard plenty of stories about it. Stories such as how an out of position goal keeper saved a shot by kicking the one of the goalposts so hard that it bent the goal frame, causing the shot, which was heading for the top corner, to bounce off the goal frame instead. This pretty much says everything you need to know about "Captain Tsubasa! Anyway, you won't find such epic feats of skill in "Giant Killing". Instead you'll see more realistic situations such as the hazards of defending too deeply and the importance of man marking on key players. If you think this might lead to boredom for the people who simply do not care about football, well, you may be right. But from the amount of effort that went into making this anime feel like a real football story, it can be argued that its primary concern is not about winning over people who aren't into football.

Having said that, I found the tactical aspect of "Giant Killing" to be somewhat limited (this is perhaps due to influences from games such as "Football Manager" giving people like me over-inflated opinions on the tactical part of the game). It seems to me that they opted for a more sensationalist than analytical, more tabloid than broadsheet approach to illustrating the game. Beyond the emphasis on the defence line, there really is very little "team" level tactics involved in "Giant Killing". It says a lot that for most of the series, I was in the dark about what formation ETU is using, or even what positions most of the players play in. Instead, the series is more concerned with micro scale management such as personal duels between players, which of course makes for a more straight forwardly entertaining but also more amateurish depiction of the game. Unlike "Nodame Cantabile" and "Hikaru no Go", "Giant Killing" feels more like an anime made by fans rather than experts of the subject. The animation also contributes to this feel. Shoddy quality of the artwork aside, a bigger problem is that whenever they're showing a view of the whole pitch, you would often get scenes like where all the players are moving in the same direction at the same speeds etc, and everything just looks stupidly wrong, not like a snap shot of a real football match at all.

What "Giant Killing" does portray extremely well though, is the human factors and the cultural aspect of football. The atmosphere during the matches is fantastic, with the noise of the crowd making it sound like a real match is being played. The foreign players often conform to the impressions given out by their real counterparts. Gino, the laid back, elegant Italian playmaker, is such a diva (in the spoilt sense, not the female singer sense), and fits right in with the image of overly pampered Italian footballers. The Brazillians, too, are portrayed as very pure players who just love playing football, be it an opportunistic kick-a-about while out on a stroll or in a proper match.

With so many foreign characters, "Giant Killing" makes a big effort towards making the series seem more real by having a LOT of dialogue spoken in a foreign language (Dutch, French, English to name a few) accompanied either by subtitles or a louder Japanese dub put on top. Although the effort is very commendable, the quality isn't really up to scratch. If the English voices are anything to go by, they most likely got some Janpanese people to do them rather than native speakers. The English spoken in the very first episode sounds quite odd even though it doesn't sound like run of the mill Engrish. It's spoken sluggishly, as though the voice person was trying very hard to avoid sounding English. But despite this, I still found it difficult to understand what was being said. In addition, the foreign voices seem very quiet compared to the Japanese voices (and I don't just mean when the Japanese dub were being spoken over the top), which makes them stand out even more.

Apart from the different footballing cultures, the relationship between fans and the club and its personnels are also well fleshed out. You can see the disillusionment of fans while the club is doing badly, and also their hope as a former hero returns to try and change the club's fortunes. It's not smooth sailing for Takeshi though - his reception at ETU as he returns to coach the club is very much a mixed one. Some aren't ready to forgive him just yet for turning his back on the club, while he is still adored by others for setting the the club alight during his time there as a player. Several bad results in a row, and it's not too surprising that the mixed reception starts to turn hostile rapidly, with hecklings and protests popping up all over the place. It's a familiar situation that can often be seen at real football clubs. In these respects, "Giant Killing" seems to give a very accurate up close and personal perspective of all the drama revolving around a football club that you see and hear regularly on the TV and other media.

"Giant Killing" focuses on the development of several players within the squad, and this is probably the most interesting part of the series. The fleshing out of these players are very believeable, and their up and downs seem to be consistent with what we see of the players of the real world. It's funny because the anime's airing coincides with the time period where, in the real world of football, a young Welsh winger named Gareth Bale is just starting to shine and attract attention. The fictional character Tsubaki (still not sure where he plays, I suspect he's a winger or a fullback) is quite similar to Gareth Bale - both are blessed with blistering pace and great stamina, both are under-achievers in the early stage of their careers and both are just starting to blossom. Less than a year after "Giant Killing" started airing, Gareth Bale is now arguably the world's finest left winger, having completely destroyed Maicon (acknowledged to be the world's best right back, the opposing position to the left winger in the other team's formation) and almost single handedly demolished one of the top teams in Europe. Although Tsubaki isn't quite in the same league as Gareth Bale, it's kind of exciting to see a similarly aspiring player reflected in "Giant Killing".

The exploration of the mentality of strikers is also particularly well done. It recognises that not scoring for several games in a row for an out and out striker is a big burden to bear, and you can see it playing more and more heavily on the mind of the player as the goal draught gets longer and longer. But just like in real life, the fans loves a player who gives it his all for the club, and it's a familiar sight seeing them getting behind and cheering for a striker who's running himself to the ground match after match without the reward of a goal. More profoundly than this though, is the anime's exploration of the mentality of a selfish goalscorer. I've heard it said more than once by ex-strikers that, you need to be selfish to score lots of goals, so I'm quite impressed that "Giant Killing" has picked up on this intricate insight of balance between team work and selfishness, especially since it's by no means an obvious one given football's emphasis on team play in general.

As you can see "Giant Killing" does a lot of things right, and most of its flaws are fairly minor, but one aspect that really hurts it badly is the pacing. When it comes to key matches, it really suffers from the "shounen syndrome" where it would stretch them across an unreasonable number of episodes. A couple of the matches literally goes on for 5-6 episodes, and when you consider that a normal football match is played over 90 minutes, it really is beyond ridiculous to have the showing of a match go beyond the full length of a real match. And because the series contains these two matches which make up for nearly half the entire season, you don't actually get to see that many matches overall.

Still, the good points do outweigh the bad, and so I think "Giant Killing" is a good anime that is likely to appeal to football fans a lot more than a casual viewer. It's a show that tries to portray a football in a more down to earth and realistic way, and even though it doesn't do that perfectly, it's probably the closest you're gonna get to an anime about REAL football.