For a bit of synergy with this months episode of the Speakeasy we decided to talk about Giant Killing, our favorite sport anime of the spring season. Plus with the World Cup having just finished yesterday it seems like the best time to talk about a soccer anime. But the reason we are looking at Giant Killing is its unique story telling considering the other sports shows that have come out in English. It is a seinen series with a distinctly adult feeling. All the main characters are professionals trying to revive a floundering J. League Division 1 team. Even most of the side characters are adults with jobs and adult problems. This is not a show about a high school team or some teenagers in a back lot. The cast has the responsibility of the East Tokyo United club on their shoulders with all the burdens that come with playing for a professional team. We see all the pieces that go into a professional sport club.
Giant Killing swept me up in its first episode. And as I am being carried along quite happily, I am here to tell you it isn’t the soccer that is holding my attention so thoroughly. Truth be told I know very little about the sport not being able to recall ever having watched a real match in my lifetime. The key to Giant Killing’s success despite presenting us with a rather familiar, if only by American standards, plot where an unconventional coach embarks to rejuvenate a washed-up team is how it approaches the story from angle after angle.
Normally the main character in a shonen sports anime would be one of the players. In a shonen or shoujo series it would be a young kid with tons of potential but is just learning to play. In other seinen series it might be an amazing player with a past. The main character in Giant Killing is Takeshi Tatsumi, the coach of the team. As Narutaki said the unconventional coach may be a old troupe but he is almost always a side character in anime. With Tatsumi we get a bit of the typical seinen protagonist. He is the legendary player with a past but he is the team’s strategist not the key player. This lets him connect and deal with everyone who is a part of the club or has business with the club giving the show is broad range of perspectives. The story follows various perspectives so when Tatsumi interacts with them the impact is far greater.
The promotional material, the first episode, and his attitude itself tells us that Tatsumi is the main character, for he is the piece around which everything changes. However, don’t be surprised to see him merely in the background of an episode smirking or deep in thought. Giant Killing is attempting to tell a highly encompassing tale with a large and growing cast of characters occupying every role in the world of soccer from player to aging veteran fan, middle-management to reporter, coach to hooligan. Each new perspective builds on the other pieces until you end up with (or is leading up to) a panoramic view of the Japanese soccer scene. It’s ambitious but it’s succeeding. The way Giant Killing presents its characters, in snippets and moments, dives at the heart of the matter succinctly.
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