(CR) Giant Killing (TV)

[Crontica]

Originally Posted by epl

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnKvIIXGgnI

PV for Giant Killing animated by the awful studio in Studio Deen.

Also, rumor has it that there are conflicts between the animation staff and the mangaka

With sports anime being as stale as they are cash cowfries, now with studio DEEN now joining the fray there are now conflicts within the animation staff!? I can only pray they wont repeat those horrific Tsubasa chronicle / Umineko incidents.

At least with studio deen they "may" not drag the matches out and actually focus on the slice of life aspect..
WTF is with that patternless soccerball are they srs.

[pagan poor]

Originally Posted by Saturn Beaver

Also, just a passing mention by Yuri in how they got back from 0-2 to leading back 3-2 failed to portray how epic it really is - sure, Portsmouth may not be that good (especially now) in the Premier League, but it's still way stronger than the 3rd division non-professional team, and the match really shows how awesome Tatsumi's tactical prowess really is.

You didn't mention that 2 years ago, Pompey.erm. Portsmouth did win the FA Cup. Unfortunately, it's been downhill ever since then leading now to relegation and worse, administration. Still, it was good for them while it lasted.

Not having read the manga myself, I was curious about this show. I was a bit surprised about the first thing i see was an animated FA Cup match between a Premier League side and a fictional (?) 3rd division team. I'm somewhat a fan of the sport so it'll be interesting to see how it develops, even if we know what the end result probably will be on the anime side.

[KiNA]

Originally Posted by Kaoru Chujo

The manga is in the top ten in sales and seems excellent to me, through the first three chapters (it's on Mangafox). The cast is good: Seki Tomokazu, Okiayu Ryoutarou, Mizushima Takahiro (Rollo in Code Geass), Ono Daisuke, Asano Masami. The writer of Higurashi and Umineko is doing the adaptation. The director is Kou Yuu, who did Loveless (not sure about him).

Studio Deen is uneven, but it can do good shows as well as bad. Maybe this is going to be a good show. If they can capture the spirit of the manga it will work. And Seki Tomokazu seems perfect for the lead role.

Anyway, this is the first Association Football (i.e., soccer) anime I've seen, so I'm interested. As Kagura89 said, the strategy "East Ham" used to play "Portsmouth" in an early chapter was interesting and made some sense.

Wrexham .. my dear girl .. Wrexham. Its a league 2 team (or the 4th down the division - Premiership, championship,league 1, league 2)
West Ham on the other hand is a big team playing in Premiership, alongside Portmouth - which wont be the case next season :heh;

First thing that capture me is they started the series is they used real footballing (yes, football, not soccer) team from England's leagues.. I'll be following this series, as its quite rare to find a football anime this day.

And heh .. stamina and pace strategy.. I could almost tell what he trying to achieve next week .. Let see how far I get at guessing his strategy throughout his career in the series.

edit:
OK.. Wrexham been relegated to lower then league 2 now.. they are playing for Blue Square Premier now .. which basically a semi pro league. And that made the 3-2 result (even if its against Portmouth) a very commendable feat.

edit2:
Checking the manga prologue, they did use East Ham >.> .. Oh well.. I'm sure I heard Wrexham on the episode.. And Wrexham are real team, as minnow as they are anyway.

[Saturn Beaver]

Originally Posted by pagan poor

You didn't mention that 2 years ago, Pompey.erm. Portsmouth did win the FA Cup. Unfortunately, it's been downhill ever since then leading now to relegation and worse, administration. Still, it was good for them while it lasted.

Not having read the manga myself, I was curious about this show. I was a bit surprised about the first thing i see was an animated FA Cup match between a Premier League side and a fictional (?) 3rd division team. I'm somewhat a fan of the sport so it'll be interesting to see how it develops, even if we know what the end result probably will be on the anime side.

Yeah, I completely forgot about that, that makes it even more epic. I'm not sure at what year exactly did the manga start, is it possible that the author picks Portsmouth on purpose for this reason? And I made a mistake, Eastham isn't even a 3rd division team but from the fifth division, making it even more epic.

Originally Posted by KiNA

edit2:
Checking the manga prologue, they did use East Ham >.> .. Oh well.. I'm sure I heard Wrexham on the episode.. And Wrexham are real team, as minnow as they are anyway.

Yup, there's a real town called Eastham in England so it may not be fully fictional, but as far I know no team of that name has ever performed such a giant killing in the FA Cup. It's very possible that Eastham is inspired from Wrexham's amazing record though, maybe the author and Takumi just prefer teams with the word East on them...

[pagan poor]

Also, don't look now, but Portsmouth are in the semi finals of the current FA Cup competition.

[KiNA]

A bit of googling shows there is a East Ham club .. but its a cricket team.

Let this be a lesson to me never to babble on thread after watching raw I get too excited with a football anime roflmao

[fertygo]

Originally Posted by KiNA

A bit of googling shows there is a East Ham club .. but its a cricket team.

Let this be a lesson to me never to babble on thread after watching raw I get too excited with a football anime roflmao

and why u watching raw ?
The subs already out eh ?

The googling result make me lol btw

[KiNA]

Because I've earmarked the show earlier.. but cant find anything on TT except the raw .. It didnt show up on my usual stream site so I just download the series to watch.

Watched the subbed now btw

I havent checked the manga past the prologue chapter... but being a japanese football show, do it contained crazy formation? The japanese seems to load a certain part in abundance sometimes..

[SuperKnuckles]

Originally Posted by Falkor

I'm neutral optimistic about DEEN. I don't think they are going to do an awful job at it; but I'm not really expecting to see anything grandiose, either.

Hoo boy. I actually am constantly expecting a letdown from DEEN lately. They're almost on the level ZEXCS is to me now.

First ep does look fun, but wow the animation quality is just.... very iffy to start.

[KiNA]

I kept my reservation until they have a proper match. Normal daily stuff animation are ok as long as it isnt still frames. Let they burn money on the matches.

If the match is animate fluently, it works fine for me. I'm not really fussy about these animation stuff. Good story, and good animation where it matters.

[Kaoru Chujo]

Wikipedia has an item about a club called Barking & East Ham United, which it says formed in 2001 as a merger of two clubs that existed earlier: called respectively Barking, and East Ham United, strangely enough. It was slated to play eighth tier football in 2006-7, but disbanded before it could.

We used to have relatives in East Ham, which is in the far eastern part of London (maybe that's why they wanted a Far Eastern manager). Everyone there supported West Ham, of course (which is in the top league).

I've always had a soft spot for Studio Deen, since they made my favorite anime, Simoun, and two others I like a lot: Maria-sama ga Miteru and Touka Gettan. They have also made some of the worst shows, however: for example, Code-E.

[Saturn Beaver]

Originally Posted by KiNA

I havent checked the manga past the prologue chapter... but being a japanese football show, do it contained crazy formation? The japanese seems to load a certain part in abundance sometimes..

I'm mostly watching European football (and event then only EPL, Calcio and La Liga) so I don't have any idea how crazy the formation will be in a Japanese football show. What part exactly will be in abundance? The midfields or something?

[fertygo]

Nah... most J-League team is not differ than a most team on europe in matter of formation I think, they use a traditional 4-4-2 as a formation for most team, but i see some of highly rated team use modern 4-5-1 too as their main formation.

[KiNA]

They seems to love wingbacks .. not fullbacks, and those will crazily instruct to run up and down the pitch like crazy thoroughout the matches.. and seems to have a knack with 3 man defense >.<

When did the manga started? If its old .. as in 2-3 years ago then we could see a 6 man midfield. And Maradona ... aka a playmaking #10.

[fertygo]

Originally Posted by KiNA

They seems to love wingbacks .. not fullbacks, and those will crazily instruct to run up and down the pitch like crazy thoroughout the matches.. and seems to have a knack with 3 man defense >.<

When did the manga started? If its old .. as in 2-3 years ago then we could see a 6 man midfield. And Maradona ... aka a playmaking #10.

You're talking about indonesian League or what >_>
I don't think J-League team still use barbaric 3-5-2 as their main fomation, their football always use latest trend of europe tactic because influence of many foreign coach on there. But yes they have many wonderful WB on their league.

However they're still depending much to their foreign player on their lineup, to take its simple. Foreign player > Their key's player.

And i found its quite amusing, from my view The ETU not have foreign player at all on their team

[KiNA]

LoL.. thats why the manga age will define the formation picked

As for no foreign player on ETU, thats probably because they are in decline and cant afford 1.

[Kaoru Chujo]

The manga started in April 2007 and is now up to volume 13. It is published in the manga magazine Morning.

[Falkor]

I'm surprised to see some people trashing the animation of the show at this point. I didn't think it was that bad; I mean, the episode was dialogue-heavy---was there something extraordinary to be expected here? I will rather have them spend more money to animate the official matches. We will see how they handle that in the future, most likely in the third episode, though we might see something this week. By the way, I liked the few seconds of animation we had at the beginning; I thought it looked interesting, together with the OP/ED---which I usually skip for most shows.

with regards to the character designs, I'm not sure if there's something to criticize here. They kept the characters very close to the manga, with very little changes from one medium to the other. I don't think the style used is bad (the pointy noses, the rough feeling of the characters), but it contributes in some way to create the unique aspect of the show.

concerning the writing, they approached the adaptation in a non-linear fashion (and non-linear means good, most of the times :P); the result created was very interesting, in my opinion, since I'm a manga-reader and I was already familiar with the story. I didn't mind the changes they made to the FA Cup match (actually, having to cut off that part entirely from the first episode); it wasn't that important, in my opinion, and the tactics used is more confusing than otherwise. There's still the chance they might include it in the future; we will see. But I would be seriously worried if they start to cut off the more important parts.

Kaoru, regarding your question. there's Area no Kishi, a football manga focused on the players. it's more shonen character orientated, you can say. I would consider Giant Killing to be the better one, only because it makes more sense to me---plus Tatsumi is awesome. oops, someone mentioned this already... :P

Originally Posted by fertygo

You're talking about indonesian League or what >_>
I don't think J-League team still use barbaric 3-5-2 as their main fomation, their football always use latest trend of europe tactic because influence of many foreign coach on there. But yes they have many wonderful WB on their league.

However they're still depending much to their foreign player on their lineup, to take its simple. Foreign player > Their key's player.

And i found its quite amusing, from my view The ETU not have foreign player at all on their team

a 3-5-2 formation has its strenghts and its weaknesses, though I would think it's a much harder one to use, given that you would need well-rounded and fast center backs and wingers with good pace/stamina that can go back and forth. if I remember correctly Brazil won the 2002 world cup using this formation; and Guus Hiddink's Australia also used it in the last world cup. I don't watch that many games anymore, but of the few I watched from the Champions League, you get the impression that you will never see a 3-5-2 formation, even less the possibility of having a 3 man defense. it would be suicidal to do so, given the fast-paced football that is played over there. On the other hand, I've seen some games in South America where teams do use 3-5-2 (or a 3 man defense), but games are not as fast-paced as they are in Europe, which is understandable given the quality of the fields and the lack of emphasis in speed/endurance. But now that the world cup is coming, I wouldn't be surprised if some national teams use 3-5-2, given the trend for 4-5-1; it would make more sense to have a three man defense if the opposite team has a only one forward. Whenever I see a match with one of the teams playing a 3-5-2 or a 3-4-3, I'm more often than not guaranteed a more interesting and exciting game that has less emphasis on defense and a good amount of goals, too.

[Saturn Beaver]

Yeah, looking back to the manga I think I may be a bit too harsh on the adaptation, the design is actually quite similar and there hasn't been too much animation to be a problem yet. My main problem with it is cutting most of the important parts of the prologue: as I said, I can understand cutting the match in order to save budgets, but not cutting the rest of the negotiation to get back Tatsumi as it serves as an important characterization for Gotou, Eastham and especially Tatsumi. Perhaps I'm biased, as I remember the underdog spirit and the love of the city to the team and especially Tatsumi, as well as the display of Tatsumi's tactical prowess, is what immediately hooked me on the manga and most of this is cut on the anime.

Oh, and Falkor, I think with two hard-working volantes/DMF to stop the opponent from getting deep into the defense line, as well as utilising offside trap (as it is the great advantage of running 3-man defense) to avoid long balls, 3-5-2 can still defend well. It does takes a huge toll on stamina as they must always be running all over the place as well as requiring great teamwork though. Personally, my favorite formation right now is 4-3-3, most likely influenced by just how damn well Kakegawa from Shoot! and Barca is using this formation. Seeing that this is a manga and also judging from Tatsumi's character, I guess he won't use a specific formation too often and will most likely alter it by the second half to suit his strategies.

[fertygo]

I don't think the chara design is that bad too, at least Tatsumi looks more alike 35-year old guys than in the manga

Originally Posted by Falkor

a 3-5-2 formation has its strenghts and its weaknesses *snap from here*

Nah... 3-5-2 formation is not that good you know, its just a old and barbaric formation, which even South East Asian team started to leave this tactic. Its really easy to exploit this formation if you use classic 4-4-2 or modern 4-5-1 unless you have two midfield with high defence ability, main weakness of this formation is the wings defense, if the opposite team use their Full-Back they are screwed. Even if they can broke attack from the side, if ball move to center or other side from wings, that will leave a hole on your defense.

I think this tactic will only succeed if you have player like makelele on your team, or the coach give a correct marking instruction for the team

BTW, I think Brazil 2002 use 4-3-3 as their formation not a 3-5-2.