Days

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Days is among one of the best sports manga that have been published and I'll do my best to explain why. I am not a big football fan but I do know the game and I really enjoy related manga. Area no Kishi and Ao Ashi are also great reads.

This manga finished end of January. I read it mostly in Japanese since English chapters are slow to come. Intermediate level is enough to understand all dialogues.

The story starts without anything spectacular with the protagonist Tsukamoto Tsukushi, weak nice guy, no skills, nothing outstanding. In contrast, deuteragonist Kazama Jin (gotta have something to do with the ... author being a fan of the Iron Fist Tournament I presume) is a genius, good looking and talented at everything he does. The story starts nicely by introducing them and how they got to be great friends at Seiseki (their high school) and how a ghost like Tsukamoto started to change day by day, thanks to his friends and his "addiction" to football.

Now the art is rather good, mostly on the realistic side but sometimes it's not up to par. It seems more cartoonish in the beginning but then gets more detailed and despite the myriads of characters popping up, it is still possible to distinguish them without giving strange hair colour. And this is great in my book.

As for the characters, that's the soul of this manga. We have Tsukamoto the weak guy with a power boost cause it's a shonen manga but his evolution is nothing crazy like his father's genetics allow him to have superpowers on the field. No, the guy is definitely hardworking, faces many hurdles, becomes disheartened and then gets back up again cause that's how you move forward. Going the distance. Kazama on the other hand is a genius and have less issues on the skills side. But nobody's perfect. Like family. Then we have Mizuki, the good looking Seiseki football team captain. The guy is an idiot, can't speak for himself and only started playing football in high school as a sub. Turns out he's a beast, genetically gifted, a powerhouse on the field and already recruited by Kashima Antlers to join them after graduation. But that's not all, there are many beasts in Seiseki: Usui a center back genius who's the vice captain, Kimishita a midfielder with supreme accuracy for freekicks or even Inohara the fearless goalkeeper. But that's only for Seiseki. Then you have other schools, Saku High which is kind of a nemesis to Seiseki, Ryouzan, Seikan... and they all have at least one beast in their team, national level pro football beast. Can't have it too easy for Seiseki.

So why such enjoyment? Because it's not over the top as a football manga. Mizuki isn't crazy strong as to score by himself against any team. There's strategy in the story, and it's strategy developed by a girl, the manager Ubukata Chikako. She wanted to be a novelist and got criticised for her work, fell down and got right back up thanks to Tsukamoto's perseverance on the field. She's got real acumen for football and spends hours watching rival games to develop something for her team, unlike the real coach who's a bit useless on this front. So you have a fairly realistic story, a bit of drama but not too much, great characters and if you like football you will surely enjoy it. Another thing on Tsukamoto: the guy has no talent for shooting but somehow becomes a forward with his friend Kazama. Now that's interesting to me.

Thanks for reading.

I know this manga has not been fully scanlated yet (last time I checked only first volume) but I just bought all released volumes yesterday and I am in thirst of talking about how satisfied I am with DAYS. For the start, I am indeed a fan of Yasuda Tsuyoshi's (especially Over Drive *sob*) works, but soccer really never become my thing. I did following some soccer series in the past, however only Giant Killing and this series that was able to give me a real enjoyment of the sport.

On the beginning you might think that the premise is not that original and some of ... the elements were already done by some manga in the pasts. However, I think the one who made me can't stop reading it is the characters (and its development). Tsukushi the main character, with support from eccentric and sport-genius Kazama, seems started as a typical weak and small MC which later surprisingly growing into a realistic outstanding player. And 'outstanding' here does not means that he has to be good in soccer; he got his own way. He is seriously a fresh character, who has a unique trait that can motivates his team mates. He is not that much of help, but the team needs him. And it does not look odd at all.
The Seiseki soccer club is of course a bunch of genius players, but they are also really stupid and hilarious. Moreover, each of them got relatively enough show time to make you feel attached to them. And unless you care, all the guys are good-looking, just not in the bishounen way.

I would not say anything about the art. It's perfect.

And yes, I really recommend you to start reading this and let's hope that the scanlation will be a lot more active soon.

Now i know that 10/10 is a really high score, and I’m not very confident that I’d be able to provide a constructive review, but to anyone that’s come across this series, give it a chance. Even if sports isn’t your thing or if soccer just isn’t your sport, still, give it a chance. Because, at least for me, it did not disappoint,

So, starting with the story. It’s simple, there’s a fateful meeting between two people that were, in normal circumstances, unlikely to become friends. Because of Tsukushi’s honest and hard working personality, he kept his promise to a stranger, Kazama, that helped him ... from bullies. Through Kazama, he experienced soccer, the joy of running around and playing with everyone. Then coincidentally they end up being classmates at their first year of highschool, at a prestigious school that has a great soccer team, and things take off from there.

Well not quite as easily though. Tsukushi, unlike many other sports protagonists, doesn’t have any special innate ability. I guess, his hard work and dedication to play soccer with his friends can be seen as an ability. But physically he’s weak, unfit and not even fast. Yet through his sheer will to want to RUN, he somehow motivates everyone around him and overcomes everyone telling him to basically quit on the idea of playing soccer. His climb to greatness is in no way easy, it’s very slow and some readers might even find it frustrating. But, that’s where Days does it right. Tsukushi isn’t the only focus, his isn’t the only growth we see. We see him not only influencing those around him but being influenced by the others too.

In Days, we truly see Seiseki’s strength. The ones that play in the matches, their time to shine definitely comes. Another thing about days is that similar to some sports series, we follow a team that’s already strong. We don’t see a roughly assembled team winning through adversary, we see an already established team growing even stronger, and that is just amazing. It’s just unbelievable how awesome it felt to see everyone on the team come together and not only show their existing strength, which was already pretty high, but somehow get even stronger through the matches.

It’s not easy, and they face a lot of mental turmoil along the way. But seeing Seiseki come together as such a strong team, it’s just hard to not fall for their awesomeness. All the characters have their own strengths and are so much fun to watch. The opposing teams are also great, and getting invested in them is easy. Rather it’d be hard not to like them.

The art is great. The matches are generally easy to follow as well. Visually there isn’t any issues.

Overall, i would say this is a really genuine character driven series. When they win it doesn’t feel unbelievable. It was so easy to get very emotionally invested in the series, and there was one particular moment that made me cry like a f*ckn baby. I regret not reading this series earlier, but at the same time I’m glad I remembered about it even after so many years after first watching the anime back when it aired. Hands down, at least to me, one of the best sports series ever.