Anime: Giant Killing

Introduction:

First I would like to say I'm no soccer fan myself; if someone wants to watch a game with me and it's exciting (many goals, ball is not going around midfield and back to the defense/keeper too often), I can enjoy it to some degree, and I also have respect for the incredible atmosphere in soccer stadiums with all the enthusiastic fans cheering their team on, but that's it. I don't even bother watching a big event like the world championship. But I do like watching sports anime in general because I think the sport usually gets more exciting if it is portrayed in good anime. A good example for this is Hajime no Ippo: I find boxing to be even more boring than soccer, but I enjoyed the anime many times with great excitement already. Also, I just watch anime, I don't read or know anything about mangas, so don't wonder if no references pop up.
So, with this in mind, read my review & enjoy it if you can.

Review:

The animation has its ups and downs, like many points about this anime. It comes through strong at times with fluid movements, exciting angles and interesting effects that increase the suspense. But I think they used a close view showing just the action on the field too often. To really understand which tactics are going on, I personally think it is important to show a head view from time to time. I don't know if the creators found realizing this in an anime difficult, or if they wanted to concentrate on the personal plays of the players, but even then there are many times where a head view would've increased the enjoyment of this anime, especially because you're used to it from soccer matches on TV. There are a few places where they show such views vaguely, but they're usually not important and in CGI. Where we arrived at our main problem... this anime uses a lot of CGI animation, and it's pretty bad made as well. I'm personally not a fan of CGI, but I think in every anime are a few scenes where it can be used carefully without destroying the atmosphere and there are also a few anime that have amazingly well looking CGI. This anime is not one of them; both fans and players get frequently replaced by faceless, LEGO look-a-like figures, and it feels really unnecessary as well.
Besides this strong minus, I was also distracted by the way they did some shadows under the player's chins and especially their knees. I'm pretty sure the player's wear no protectors or anything like that, but the knees still look like they're made out of plastic or some other hard material in many scenes. Also, the studio makes their characters close their eyes pretty often at times where they probably want to make them look cool, philosophic or something along these lines, but the times, the frequency and the lines that are connected to these moments make it look pretty ridiculous and unnatural. Comedy scenes are pretty much not existing in this anime, and if there is something close to it, they rarely bother drawing the faces of the characters in a funny, unusual way like in Nodame, so there's not much to say about that either.
So while the animation has some strong points, it failed in too many unnecessary ways in my opinion, resulting in a rating of
6

The sound is intriguingly similar to the animation. It has some strong voice actors who mostly fit the personality of their characters pretty well, but often it doesn't feel like their full potential was achieved in this anime. What really annoyed me were the scenes with different languages though; don't get me wrong, I'm fairly used to the mispronunciation of the Japanese people. What really got to me was the way foreign speakers and other languages in general were handled: they are always spoken very slowly, focusing unusually strong on the pronunciation of words, almost like they hoped the viewers could understand a language they don't even know better as long as it's spoken slowly and clearly. Instead this produces a lot of awkwardness, resulting in a very unnatural feeling. Also when foreigners speak, they use some (not that native sounding) speakers to speak the current language, but as soon as those very same characters are thinking something, they use a completely different sounding Japanese voice who speaks out the thoughts in Japanese, while in the background you can hear the "original" voice mumbling in the original language. This is very irritating.
I barely had any strong feelings concerning the game sounds like kicking, running, etc. so I guess they were about average; not strong enough to boost the anime's enjoyment, but not too weak to notice it either.
Pretty much same balance as the animation, resulting in a rating of
6

The story of a manager who was an ace player himself once and loves soccer above everything else and also has an interesting character trying to make a weak team a strong one sounds so promising... too bad it focuses mainly on the development of the players and their personal issues. The series is already over after a way too short 26 episodes, in which they barely manage to show the managers start and the first signs of the team stabilizing. This anime sadly feels more like an appetizer than the real show and, in my opinion, wastes too much time on less interesting things on top of being short. I still have to compliment the studio on their last episode, though. For leaving so much out, they did a pretty good job on making an ending that somehow still manages to end the series softly; neither forcing it with a sudden jump to the future, nor suddenly stopping in some important, exciting moment.
Thus, although lacking in many ways, the story deserves a slightly better rating than animation and sound
7

The character development has left me with some disappointment; at start I was highly intrigued by the interesting character of the manager, just to find out that the main focus over the series is on the issues of the players. The thoughts, history and the likes of the manager, the likely most interesting person in this anime for most viewers, barely get revealed and as such, a development is nearly not existing there. This is also the case for a couple of interesting players like Tsubaki; they maybe get one or two episodes featuring their issues and how they're trying to overcome them, but in the long run you don't get to know any of the characters too well. This problem can be traced back to the try of getting a soccer anime project of this size (featuring interesting manager + players) into 26 episodes, which is clearly too less. They should have focused more on a few people like the manager and expand these roles, like sports anime usually do, or just make more episodes which would've been the right thing to do anyway.
So, I don't think that they did a particular good job here. The manager seems pretty flat as a character towards the end since his character doesn't change and you don't get new, exciting information about him or his issues. The players and most other characters seem much more alive and authentic compared to him, but you find yourself always yearning for more information on the really interesting ones. All they managed to give us in 26 episodes is a brief overview, alive enough to not bore, but unable to satisfy curiosity
7

The value should be pretty high since this is probably the first sports anime with some focus on the managing of a soccer team, maybe even a sports team in general. It's also the first anime I saw that portrayed the event of a soccer team playing in league matches inside an exciting, atmospheric stadium. But since this anime is lacking in so many points and feels so unfinished, the desire to watch it more than once is probably rather slim for most except soccer fans who probably still get something out of the frequent soccer action. What surprised me about this show though was the unnatural high pace I felt especially during the first half. Maybe I was still hoping for more development of the manager, or maybe I just found the atmosphere of this anime interesting. Whatever the case, the fact remains that I could watch one episode after the next one despite all the annoying things I noticed while watching. So the pace might actually be one of the best things about this anime, and should raise the value to a level where I would actually consider watching it once more. Combine that with the uniqueness of the handled theme, and you get a rating around
8

I enjoyed this anime in terms of spending time since it's pace was, as already mentioned, pretty high and there were some interesting things going on. I would recommend it to anyone who doesn't know what to watch/do next and has some free time on his hands, but that's about it. I don't even consider writing a recommendation for it, I wouldn't know what to mention of this review and what to leave out. I had high hopes for this anime at start to be a rare, truly interesting and unusual jewel, but the only hope that was fulfilled was the high pace and the ending. There were so many things in this show not going the way I hoped they would; I already mentioned many of them, and two I still left out were: one, the way the sport was portrayed: maybe it was because the anime focused on a bigger overview of the team or maybe it just wasn't good enough, but compared to other great sports anime like Hajime no Ippo or Major where I actually feel excited about watching a sport I didn't consider touching before, actually so excited that I consider trying it myself for some time, this show just doesn't get me excited. It feels alright to watch, but I don't get a real feel for what's so interesting about this sport. And two, an important thing about anime in general is the amazing sense of humor of the Japanese people. I don't think an anime has to have many comedy scenes in order to be truly good, but it should at least somehow try to change its paces between exciting sport scenes, funny moments and optionally casual private life scenes, maybe with some romance somewhere between those scenes. Good examples of how it's done are One Outs or Ookiku Furikabutte. The sports scenes are very exciting and interesting made, which seems even more so in contrast to viewing a funny scene from time to time. And this show didn't make me laugh even once, the best were a few light smiles. Comedy is pretty much not existent, and thus the sports & life issue scenes alone seem a bit lonely and thin, like a picture without a nice frame.
To sum it up, the pace was pretty good and it was a fine watch, but I'm left with a feeling of emptiness and regret that the studio wasted the potential of the general idea. It's good enough to keep you entertained, but it wasn't good enough to get me in a mood of satisfaction
7