Kickoff to the Galaxy #01 — Girls and Balls

March 26th, 2012

 

The text on Erika’s shirt was driving me insane.

As mentioned in the preview (which will be confusing because I’m bumping it above this), the first five episodes are being streamed on the Bandai Channel over the course of this week, but the show doesn’t actually begin its normal broadcast until April 6th, which means after this week, there won’t be new episodes until May. Yeah, it hurts my brain too.

Impressions:

This’ll be a toughie. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your bend), this doesn’t do all the horrible things wrong that most other sports shows do. It isn’t some overblown melodramatic "My brother’s love for soccer lives on inside me" like Knight in the Area, no "Believe in the Heart of the Balls" like Inazuma Eleven, and things actually happened without ten minutes of explaining what soccer is unlike Giant Killing. That exhausts my knowledge of soccer shows besides Captain Tsubasa, but all I know of that is what Touhou Soccer 2 taught me, which is that everything can be solved with more beams. Maybe most importantly, it also doesn’t look like it was animated by a bunch of Korean interns two hours before broadcast. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t production issues. The art is highly inconsistent (just look at the kerning on Erika’s shirt) and the animation gets significantly worse as the episode goes on, but it’s still above the slideshow of stills that most other sports shows call ‘animation.’

There’s nothing particularly complex or complicated about the characters or story here. Team disbanded because Shou’s the only player, but Shou loves soccer so he wants to get it back together. Erika loves soccer too but is not incompetent, but to differentiate her, she gets to have gender issues too. Misaki’s the mentor. And there’s the drunken man who’s some kind of soccer star lurking around while they look for a coach. The more important part is that they don’t dwell on any of it for long enough to become tiresome or irritating. Some of it is pretty horrible though, like Erika’s soccer-ace dog that takes Shou to the cleaners.

At it’s heart though, the show’s exactly what it says on the tin; a kid’s show about soccer. If that doesn’t interest you, then there’s little you’ll want to see. However, I can’t be too harsh on it because it’s probably the best executed sports show I’ve seen in a long time, aimed at kids or otherwise, and it was unmistakably about soccer the whole time instead of maudlin nonsense about dreams or friends dying or what-have-you. Not that I have any particular interest in pursuing it further, but I’ve seen and been bored by far worse for the spring season already. Thanks again for setting the bar so low, Deen.

Preview:

Surprise! They go to the same school after all.

Posted in Anime | 4 Comments »

4 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • ewan says:

    It’s dande-lion! Not dandelion! OH WOW. Inconsistent animation prove her otherwise…

  • Kunagisa says:

    I freaking love this series. I doubt you’ll keep blogging it but after watching 3 episodes this is fun.

    • Aroduc says:

      I did idly flip through the second episode yesterday while waiting for the horrible drek to show up and it remained quite watchable, although the production took a hit which continued over into episode 3 which I also just sort of let play while working on editing. The triplets seemed so corny and awful at first, but it’s amazing what a lack of bad melodrama and moving stuff right along can do for a show. I’ll see how things go with the rest of the season, but I might pick it up once the real broadcasts begin if other things don’t pan out very well. No promises though as my attention span rarely lasts a week, let alone the month gap between episodes.