Giant Killing: Loving A Show Without Loving What It’s About

There’s something to be said about a show that can capture you from the get-go about something you have no interest in. I find myself experiencing the same thing with Giant Killing as I did with Hajime no Ippo: I have no interest in the sport, but I fully enjoy the show regardless. I find it kind of surprising that I’m British and don’t care about football at all, considering the fact I’m surrounded by it every day. It’s not that I don’t like football, it’s just that I never had the opportunity to get into it until I got to secondary school, and by then my interests lay elsewhere (*cough*anime*cough*).

With the few sports shows anime I’ve seen, it’s much less about the sport than it is about the characters. Their past, their goals, their motivation – all of this comes into play whenever they fight on their chosen field. It’s always more interesting to see the reason the characters are playing than the actual match itself. However, that doesn’t mean to say the match itself is uninteresting. Taking the match between the regulars and the subs as an example, there are the standard dramatic techniques that come up to make the action more exciting (surprised exclamations from spectators, speedlines, slow motion at critical points) which means you can’t help but enjoy what’s going on. And all this is complimented by being able to understand the characters (mostly Murakoshi), so you can enjoy it even more.

Another reason I keep watching the show is Tatsumi, or more specifically, his character archetype. Simply put, he is awesome. He’s eccentric, irritating and arrogant, but he’s still awesome. Just looking at the image above gives you the sense that that guy knows exactly what he’s doing. No matter what the manager(s) of ETU say, they can’t deny his track record or his methods because of the results of the practice match and his work back in England. There’s always that one guy in shows such as this that’s just amazing and infuriating, but no-one can really contradict what they’re doing because they get results. And whenever it seems they’re in the wrong they give a stirring/insightful speech to either distract people from how annoyed they are or spur on the characters they’re arguing with.

Ah, but what good is a sports show without a rival? Murakoshi’s the typical rival in many ways – he’s respected by his underclassmen and peers, has good skills, and even the nickname Mr ETU. The funny thing is it’s not about Murakoshi chasing after Tatsumi or vice-versa. Murakoshi just wanted to preserve the team that had been abandoned (well, “abandoned”) by Tatsumi and that’s the reason he worked so hard, not for himself but for his team. It was about replacing the hole that Tatsumi left rather  than asserting himself as a better player. I rarely see rivals I can empathise with from the get-go, since they’re normally portrayed as all powerful arrogant assholes, but you learn enough about Murakoshi from the start that you can easily understand his point of view. Then again, can Murakoshi even be considered a rival at this point? After the aforementioned dramatic speech that Tatsumi gave him, it remains to be seen whether he’ll continue opposing Tatsumi for a while or just agree with his methods. I think it’s likely to be a slow transition from the former to the latter though – after all, what better way is there to convince someone to trust you than winning matches?

I’m looking forward to the natural ups and downs the series is bound to have, and although I can’t make any conclusions yet, I think Giant Killing is sure to be one of the most entertaining series of the season. One of the things I’m looking forward to is the fall of Tatsumi, or at least momentary lapse, as he has to compromise his sheer brilliance for the sake of ETU. Then again, he may just be amazing all the way through, such as Takamura from Ippo:

I’m okay with this.