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REVIEW: Knight in the Area Episodes 1-25 Streaming


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dtm42



Joined: 05 Feb 2008
Posts: 14084
Location: currently stalking my waifu
PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 12:28 am Reply with quote
I dropped this after the third episode which featured the lead character becoming a hero who spoiler[saves a kid with an oncoming vehicle with the power of football.] Sounds awesome, but it was as lame as anything. The series was already teetering on the edge and then that bloody ridiculous scene happened and I was like, "no way am I wasting my time on this anymore".

I have heard that the weight fluctuations of that dude were completely stupid and not true to real life, as he 'comically' loses and puts on weight faster than a yo-yo.

Then there's Seven or Nana or whatever she's called. She is good enough to spoiler[play for the Japanese women's team and yet not only does no-one know about her but she chooses to manage a bunch of teens?] I'm surprised Kimlinger didn't mention that in his review.

Want to watch a recent soccer series that is actually good? Try Ginga e Kickoff!!, a show ten times better than this pile.


Last edited by dtm42 on Fri Sep 14, 2012 3:00 am; edited 1 time in total
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KakulonSSJ4



Joined: 25 Jan 2012
Posts: 15
PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 2:59 am Reply with quote
You can also try Aoki Densetsu Shoot or even Whistle! All fantastic soccer anime.
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agila61



Joined: 22 Feb 2009
Posts: 3213
Location: NE Ohio
PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 9:05 am Reply with quote
What a fair review. I follow this series, but only because its on Crunchyroll and that makes it easy to follow ~ if I had to stream episodes on my netbook instead of on the Roku next to my bed before falling asleep, I'd have dropped it when the episodes were still in the single digits.
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Spastic Minnow
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Joined: 02 May 2006
Posts: 4595
Location: Gainesville, FL
PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 10:47 am Reply with quote
I got through the winter season of this somehow, constantly second-guessing myself as to why I was still watching it.

I'd say the worst part for me was the transition from Middle School to High School. By my measurement Kakaru had at least a year left of middle school when he declares that he WILL play soccer and will go to the school where he heard this really good player that his brother admired plays. And they completely skip this time period. He apparently doesn't play soccer in middle school at all, not even practice, and never actually researches the school or the player for whose sake he's joining the school for, causing all sorts of fabricated "shocking" moments. spoiler[HUH? This school has two soccer teams? HUH? The supposed great player I came here to join is a fat slob and doesn't play for either team?] How is a guy supposed to figure these things out?! ...I don't know.... maybe read a paper... ask the school about its sports program... attend a game... walk by...

There's all kinds of things like that. Parts that made me wonder why I kept watching the show.
Like the early plot point about a critical fault in Kakaru's playing. EVERYONE sees it, coaches, Seven, teammates, even his brother saw it when he was alive, NO ONE tells him what it is. IIRC they wait until it costs them a game (or almost maybe) before they tell him he has this bad habit, and that it's gotten worse because he's been playing that way for so long.. And they never explain why the hell no one ever told him about this problem he had that could be fixed with proper practice and only got worse by letting it be. It wasn't that he needed to recognize it himself (they still had to tell him what he was doing) or that there was some corresponding advantage to having the fault, It was just this stupid detail that they were holding over the audience.
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agila61



Joined: 22 Feb 2009
Posts: 3213
Location: NE Ohio
PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 11:13 am Reply with quote
Oh, don't get started listing the plot holes. Its like when I first arrived in Grenada in the 80's ~ instead of having holes in the road, they had pieces of road in the hole. KitA has pieces of plot that float in a river of plot hole.

Yet somehow the series keeps getting the greenlight for more runs. I guess a coherent plot is not what their target audience is looking for.
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Aynslesa



Joined: 08 Feb 2012
Posts: 199
PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 12:03 pm Reply with quote
I have this odd (occasionally awkward) habit of, once I watch a series past a certain point, it becomes part of my routine and I feel compelled to continue watching, no matter how long it runs, just out of sheer curiosity to see where it ends up.

Knight in the Area has, more or less, become that show for me. I'm not normally a sports show fan. In fact, I can't think of another spots show that I have actually ever watched. I think what drew me about Knight in the Area at its starts was a combination of curiosity about Suguru, and the lack of a heavy load of other shows I wanted to watch. I started watching it to have something to watch, and now I continue watching it because if I've gone this far with it, I may as well keep going. It's one of those safe, cotton-candy shows that I can play in the background, not worry too much about missing plot if I miss a subtitle, and do something else while I'm watching it.

I'll admit there are a few aspects of the show that I look forward to. Although I enjoy following Kakeru's story, I don't go into it expecting any great surprises - though on occasion they do surprise me by not taking the VERY obvious route on what's going to happen - but it's really the more minor characters that catch my eye, and subsequently the ones who don't get as much screen time. Mai has turned out to be a deceptively complicated character, and one episode dropped hints that there's more to her past before joining Nadesico than we know (of course, that was at least 5 episodes ago and they haven't gone back to it), I like watching Araki's struggles with his weight, particularly now that it's starting to sink in that yes, he really *does* need to get his act together if he's going to get anywhere in soccer, and I yearn after tidbits of Suguru like a person yearns for water in the desert. These are the little carrots on a stick that keep drawing me back to this show every week.

Of course, I have come to accept the fact that between each of these carrots, I usually have four or five episodes. Oh, well. At least they give me good soccer games in the middle of it.
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giseki



Joined: 19 Nov 2010
Posts: 54
PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 12:26 pm Reply with quote
Damn i hate Americans sometimes...it's called FOOTBALL. And the FOOTBALL in this anime was a joke. Not that i watched it past episode three, but that was enough to conclude that this anime was an appalling abysmal atrocity.

The review was funny though.
Quote:
A game might pivot on dealing with tight man-on-man defense, a thrower with an ungodly arm, or a coach who uses big, athletic players and frequent substitutions to tire out the opposition


What game were they playing? American ball? Japanese ball? FOOTBALL, at any level, has 3 substitutions or it's a friendly match with little to no meaning. If you change the rules you might as well give the game a silly new meaningless name like soccer. Rolling Eyes
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Snomaster1
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Joined: 31 Aug 2011
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 2:15 pm Reply with quote
giseki,no disrespect,but we call it soccer here as though not to confuse it with our own game of football. And,if I may be a little blunt,soccer isn't all that popular here. Here,it's a fun game for kids to play,like Little League baseball. We have some pretty lively sports here,like baseball,American football,as it's known overseas,basketball,etc. Soccer isn't that exciting to us Americans.
I doubt that "Knight in the Area" is going to come to this country. Why have a soccer anime come to America when soccer isn't all that popular here anyway? It might work elsewhere,not here.
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Spastic Minnow
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Joined: 02 May 2006
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Location: Gainesville, FL
PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 2:26 pm Reply with quote
giseki wrote:
Damn i hate Americans sometimes...it's called FOOTBALL.


A good practice is to use the name used in the show but the Japanese word is "Soccer", a directly borrowed word, so, although I'm usually sympathetic to those upset with the change, your argument here is a little misplaced. Although, IIRC, it's a little interchangeable, some teams call themselves "football clubs" but the actual sport itself is always referred to as "soccer"
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egoist



Joined: 20 Jun 2008
Posts: 7762
PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 3:07 pm Reply with quote
Snomaster1 wrote:
giseki,no disrespect,but we call it soccer here as though not to confuse it with our own game of football.


Don't you mean handegg?

Oh, I know handegg. That game you carry an egg with your hands.
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Stark700



Joined: 30 Jan 2012
Posts: 11762
Location: Earth
PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 3:37 pm Reply with quote
i got the series on-hold right now around episode 20 or something. Thank God there's Kuroko's Basketball this season as that's a decent sport series but anyways, decent review and summed it up pretty well.
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agila61



Joined: 22 Feb 2009
Posts: 3213
Location: NE Ohio
PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 6:46 pm Reply with quote
giseki wrote:
Damn i hate Americans sometimes...it's called FOOTBALL

Thing is, we started playing it soon after it became popular in England, and at the time, "soccer" was a slang for Association Football, and "rugger" a slang for Rugby Union Football. When Rugby became more popular in the US (American Football is descended from Rugby), it was only natural that the slang "soocer" hung around, same as it did in Austtalia.

Later, when it became popular in continental Europe and Latin America, the English were calling the two game Football and Rugby, and those are the names they went by to countries that started playing them later.
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Tanteikingdomkey



Joined: 03 Sep 2008
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 6:53 pm Reply with quote
I ended up dropping this right around when the teams were threatening to split up again. I didn't really find the show to be funny, and I found the yoyo weight for arike (misspelled I know) because I work as an athletic trainer and I can tell you right now NO ONE HAS THAT MUCH WATER WEIGHT. yes you can lose that much water weight, however you will need to probably go to the hospital. the soccer moments are great but the rest of the show.....ya....
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agila61



Joined: 22 Feb 2009
Posts: 3213
Location: NE Ohio
PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 7:13 pm Reply with quote
Tanteikingdomkey wrote:
I ended up dropping this right around when the teams were threatening to split up again. I didn't really find the show to be funny, and I found the yoyo weight for arike (misspelled I know) because I work as an athletic trainer and I can tell you right now NO ONE HAS THAT MUCH WATER WEIGHT. yes you can lose that much water weight, however you will need to probably go to the hospital. the soccer moments are great but the rest of the show.....ya....

I always figured they massively exagerated the changes in weight because as sloppily as the show is animated, a realistic change in weight would just look like the character was a little off model again.
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Tanteikingdomkey



Joined: 03 Sep 2008
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 7:50 pm Reply with quote
agila61 wrote:
Tanteikingdomkey wrote:
I ended up dropping this right around when the teams were threatening to split up again. I didn't really find the show to be funny, and I found the yoyo weight for arike (misspelled I know) because I work as an athletic trainer and I can tell you right now NO ONE HAS THAT MUCH WATER WEIGHT. yes you can lose that much water weight, however you will need to probably go to the hospital. the soccer moments are great but the rest of the show.....ya....

I always figured they massively exagerated the changes in weight because as sloppily as the show is animated, a realistic change in weight would just look like the character was a little off model again.

I know a few football players who did lose 10 pounds at one practice (the average is around 4 btw) however those guys are huge and have to gain it back by the next practice, otherwise they are not allowed to practice period. and he is losing what appears to be around 20 pounds, and gaining it back that is nuts.
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