I can’t recall another anime about youth sports so willing to be politically incorrect. The aftermath of Masaru-san-chan’s visit to his old coach confirms that he’s quite unlike any other youth coach in sports anime. Indeed, the verdict is in – and if it isn’t “win at any costs” it’s […] Read more
The surprises just keep right on coming with Ginga e Kickoff. Having proved it has depth far beyond the ambition of most sports series already, Ginga e Kickoff manages to ratchet it up another couple of notches with what may be the most philosophical episode of a sports series I […] Read more
With this post, at last we’re caught up with Ginga e Kickoff… It’s nice to see Ginga getting some traction among the fan community, in Japan anyway. There was the Sankakau poll that had it at #19 in the “Series You’re Wasting Your Life by Not Watching” poll. Doujins are […] Read more
That definitely would not have been my guess about who that guy was… Before we blog episode 11, a brief word about an interesting poll from Sankaku Complex. I normally don’t put a lot of stock in the particular site but then ran a poll this week – “Top 20 […] Read more
I can only paraphrase the words I used for Watanabe Shinichiro and Sakamichi – why does everyone else make this seem so hard? There’s a reason why all of the sports shounen I’ve blogged the last couple of seasons have fired and fallen back, and it’s not because I don’t love the […] Read more
The most unassuming of the Triplets reveals his true colors at last… We’ve definitely seen two of the Furuya Brothers carve out their own identity already. Kouta is a sullen genius, the spoiled diva. Ryuuji is the smiling front man for the group, the voice of “reason” such as it […] Read more
We’ve had our “Ginga”, and now we finally get our “kickoff”… You know a sports anime is good when you’re checking your watch like a soccer referee, and hoping the episode isn’t about to end and leave you hanging for another week (or until the sub comes out, anyway). That was really […] Read more
I dare anyone to watch a few episodes of this show and not love it. Because if you don’t, your cold, dead heart has surely shriveled to the size of a prune. I can say after 7 episodes that Ginga e Kickoff pretty much as every base covered (sorry, wrong […] Read more
The soccer diet is all the rage in Japan, apparently. We have a new pre-open and new eyecatches this week, as Ginga e Kickoff makes the transition from team-building to competing. One of the things I really like about this series is that it doesn’t ignore the small details, and […] Read more
I’m afraid I have to rethink all that good stuff I said earlier about Ginga e Kickoff. It’s actually better than I thought. I’m about to pay this series a very high compliment indeed – this is the first show in years that makes me think of the first season […] Read more