Area no Kishi or the Knight in the Area is a new soccer anime. The show has some potential in it’s early episodes.
Area no Kishi has some big shoes to fill with greats such as Slam Dunk and Hajime no Ippo. So how is it? It’s surprisingly like Ippo. There is a lot of focus on characters, their history and their overall interactions. This is important in any decent sports show, as the characters are what you fall in love with.
The story focuses on the young Kakeru Aizawa, who is a manager on the team. He took the position due to a traumatic incident earlier, when he used to be a full player. However he’s not terribly happy with his position, but he’s making do to help his brother. His older brother Suguru Aizawa is the absolute star of the team.
We'll let you find out what's happening here.
Overall this setup is less than exciting. But Suguru knows his brother can’t live like this, and slams him into a wall during a confrontation. Suguru is going to get his little brother back into the game, no matter what he has to do.
Some of you may be fans of the manga of this series. As such I can tell you that it gives a faithful adaptation so far. It goes through a few of the less important parts very quickly, but doesn’t break the pacing.
The art is less than stellar unfortunately. In most scenes there isn’t much shading, and the actual playing doesn’t have a visceral feel. If you compare the manga and the anime, you’ll see the difference. The anime just has much less effort put in. As with a billion other shows, this show loses some points for the terribly unfunny and overused girl beats up guy routine. Drama is a strong point for both the show and manga, humor not so much.
