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The Mike Toole Show - Anime in the End Zone




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Brainchild129



Joined: 09 Aug 2011
Posts: 307
PostPosted: Mon Feb 04, 2019 12:12 pm Reply with quote
And here I thought it was going to be the Maxter Gundam from G Gundam. It's got the helmet & pads and everything!

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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 2530
Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey
PostPosted: Mon Feb 04, 2019 12:23 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
the titular handsome young football star inevitably turns out to be a bloodthirsty alien in disguise, which Ken readily murders. Hey, I don't think that's a legal move in football!


Maybe the writer for Chargeman Ken were inspired by Team Astro, an over-the-top baseball manga that was running in Shonen Jump during that time, as that series never had any qualms about outright killing characters during its baseball games.

As for Eyeshield 21, it really has an odd placement, in terms of popularity with English-speaking anime fandom. Sentai gave it a go with DVD boxsets, but stopped at four sets, or 52 episodes, because of low sales. However, if you look at CrunchyRoll's catalog, the anime hovers generally around the 150th to 160th most popular anime on the site. Sure, that's not exactly a high number, but it's still above more recent anime, like Gamers!, Harukana Receive, Kino's Journey, Magi, Keijo!!!!!!!!!!!, or Basilisk: Ouka Ninja Scrolls. Also, considering how much anime CR has in total, maintaining a spot in the Top 150-ish year after year isn't bad at all. It shows that the series is continually keeping viewers' interest, even to this day, but at the same time it seems like few would actually be willing to continue supporting it on home video.
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docsane



Joined: 30 Jun 2013
Posts: 53
Location: Boston, MA
PostPosted: Mon Feb 04, 2019 12:31 pm Reply with quote
I just wanted to point out here that we see Johnny Rico playing football in the first episode of the 1988 Starship Troopers OVA, no doubt to set the stage for an Earth that is 100% American culture, even in the Philippines.
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Codeanime93



Joined: 28 Jul 2017
Posts: 599
PostPosted: Mon Feb 04, 2019 2:23 pm Reply with quote
Ah, 8 Man After, I actually think the use of American Football will probably be the only thing I remember about it save for it's awful theme song. That was a really boring and lackluster anime. I remember they basically turned future Japan into future Detroit from Robocop and football players were turning into rage beasts or something due to cyborg parts.

I do apologize to any fans of that OVA by the way, I know some do probably like it due to nostalgia. I forgot major parts of it after I watched it because it was pretty boring.
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Top Gun



Joined: 28 Sep 2007
Posts: 4563
PostPosted: Mon Feb 04, 2019 5:46 pm Reply with quote
At this point I'd take even the weirdest Japanese take on football over that travesty of a game last night.
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zawa113



Joined: 19 Jan 2008
Posts: 7357
PostPosted: Mon Feb 04, 2019 7:20 pm Reply with quote
I feel like Mike is failing to convey just how amazing an experience the Cipher OVA can be. Now, I like the manga, it's a good character study that is incredibly 80s. But the OVA? It took the "incredibly 80s" part and just ran off to a bunch of 80s pop music to random out of order scenes from the manga with zero story whatsoever. But, at one point, we see Cipher (the actor doing a football player for what appears to be a god-awful movie) get into an interview of some sort, and omfg, the English in the scene in amazing! It starts by hovering the line between "wow, pretty impressive, this kind of works!" to "what on this blue planet are they saying?" and it's just so so magical! (also, since this is about a twin-switch scenario, they're jointly using the stage name "Siva" for acting, but "Cipher" is the one who actually did the acting for the film, it's 80s nonsense, just roll with it)
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11306
PostPosted: Mon Feb 04, 2019 8:31 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Inagaki also really does his homework on the ins and outs of football—at his panel I went to, he talked extensively about how he'd build formation charts and play diagrams, both to help himself keep the action straight and to help out his artist Murata.

Maybe so, but it looked to me like he took a lot of liberties with the rules (and I don't mean guns on the field). For example, it seemed like on more than one occasion a team would score and still receive the kickoff in the next play rather than being the team kicking off.

Still I loved the series. Probably the only time I'll ever get to see a quarterback sack the opposing quarterback. Very Happy
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FireballDragon



Joined: 17 Nov 2014
Posts: 682
PostPosted: Mon Feb 04, 2019 9:28 pm Reply with quote
Eyeshield 21 is one of my favorite manga ever. I would have never gotten into sports anime or give a semblance of a damn about sports in general if it weren't for that.

Plus it warms my heart to see Murata's work getting more attention through One-Punch Man, along with Inagaki writing for the new Dr. Stone. Can't wait for the anime. Also, did anyone else notice how similar Senku and Hiruma are?
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Denys Lalande



Joined: 28 Jan 2018
Posts: 88
PostPosted: Mon Feb 04, 2019 11:32 pm Reply with quote
If you think having an American-football team named "Black Fighters" is "awkward": Just be glad they didn't do rugby, and introduce the New Zealand national team....
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Wyvern



Joined: 01 Sep 2004
Posts: 1544
PostPosted: Tue Feb 05, 2019 8:20 am Reply with quote
I don't even watch football and Eyeshield 21 is still one of my favorite manga ever. It does a great job making football feel tense and exciting, with genuine "how in the world are they going to get out of this jam?" moments in nearly every game. Games are won on strategy and tricks more than special moves and guts, but the victories always feel earned (and the losses always heartbreaking.) And it does all that while being really fun and hilarious. It also has one of my favorite protagonists ever: Sena starts out as timid, shy and lacking confidence, basically the opposite of the typical shonen hero, and over time we get to see him grow and improve as a person by playing the game and befriending his teammates, a process which is treat with equal importance to the football stuff. Such a great series.

The anime, unfortunately, does an awful job adapting it, with super-cheap animation (even by long-running shonen standards) tiresome filler, subplots getting skipped, and a tacked-on, rushed ending that contradicts the manga's. Oh well.

Gina Szanboti wrote:

Maybe so, but it looked to me like he took a lot of liberties with the rules (and I don't mean guns on the field). For example, it seemed like on more than one occasion a team would score and still receive the kickoff in the next play rather than being the team kicking off.


I might be remembering wrong but I think in those instances a time jump was implied. As in "nothing interesting happened for a little while after that, so let's skip to later in the game when after the Devil Bats have the ball again." In either case, this is another advantage of sports anime: it skips past all the boring parts of the game!
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fuuma_monou



Joined: 26 Dec 2005
Posts: 1816
Location: Quezon City, Philippines
PostPosted: Tue Feb 05, 2019 9:32 pm Reply with quote
docsane wrote:
I just wanted to point out here that we see Johnny Rico playing football in the first episode of the 1988 Starship Troopers OVA, no doubt to set the stage for an Earth that is 100% American culture, even in the Philippines.


Forgot about that. The OVA was pretty terrible apart from the suit designs.
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Jinto-lin



Joined: 12 Mar 2006
Posts: 5
PostPosted: Wed Feb 06, 2019 11:23 pm Reply with quote
Mike im sorry to inform you that the Eyeshield 21 Dub never existed.... Crying or Very sad and im never getting that 15 mins of my life back Rolling Eyes I just dont know how you butcher something soo bad everyone hated it.
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