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READ THE MANGA

This series is a butchered adaptation of my all time favorite manga. Written by Riichiro Inigaki (who later wrote Dr. Stone) and illustrated by Yusuke Murata (who later illustrated One Punch Man), the manga is an absolute masterclass in sports manga. Beautiful art, deep characters, and badass action, this is a manga you'll love even if you hate American Football.

Unfortunately, the anime is not handled well. Studio Gallop (of YuGiOh! fame) is just not equipped to capture the art of Murata or the high pace action of the series. They constantly recycle animation to the point that I have to wonder if they ... thought we wouldn't notice. And the art is a pale imitation of Murata's. The whole show just makes me sad to watch and wonder what if a powerhouse studio had gotten their hands on this series?

The real issue though, is the story. The anime manages to both cut out extremely important scenes from the manga AND adds tons of unnecessary filler. Like, if you needed something to fill the space, maybe start by adapting all the content from the manga first? They even manage to skip the Ojo v Shinryuji game, which is absolutely inexcusable. And in spite of being 145 episodes long, it still doesn't make it to the end of the series, or even an acceptable stopping point. The last 10 volumes (of a 37 volume run) are chopped off of the end. And while not all of that needed to be adapted, they certainly needed to make it to the end of 34 to wrap up the main plotline of the show and most of the subplots. Instead, we get a cliffhanger into a nonsensical minute long epilogue.

Like I said at the top, READ THE MANGA. It's way, WAY better.

It's definitely a disappointing decision that the return of Kinnikuman is a continuation of where the previous anime left off rather than a full remake. The original series isn't even available to legally stream anywhere, and the last part of the anime never even got an official sub, meaning that most people watching this show will not have watched the original and have no legal way to do so even if they're interested. So the circumstances for a full remake seemed perfect. Instead we spend a whole episode explaining all of the stuff we're not going to see (a lot of which looks really cool ... and interesting), before jumping neck deep into a story with characters we barely know. Sure, it's a very long story and the likelihood it would have gotten all the way to this arc was low, but dropping viewers this deep into the story with only a recap episode as context is a much, much worse solution.

The episode itself was just a recap. Which is generally not very compelling anime. And it holds true here as well. It's made a little bit better by virtue that this is all new to viewers like myself, but the breakneck pace makes it hard to appreciate any of the story, characters, or action. In essence, this episode is just a slap in the face to any viewers who actually wanted to see the full story.