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Reviewed by Park Cooper The latest volume of soccer manga Whistle! certainly didn’t disappoint, though if you opened it and flipped through it, you might have thought it would. “You know what they did this issue? Played a game of soccer,” I told my wife after it was done. And yet it elicited an out-loud “Wow!” from me while I was reading it. The Wow came from our team big guy (size matters a lot in soccer—but both ways—little guys can be some of your most useful players) getting red-carded—not to be a jerk, but because the only way to stop a shot that he could tell was gonna go in was to kinda accidentally also kick a kid in the shins. A penalty... but not one he thought would also get him thrown out of the rest of the game. So he’s pretty mad about that... and madder when he finds that they’re playing better now that he’s gone. But when a spectator points out that they’re playing better because they’ve been spurred on by his noble sacrifice—it changes his whole perspective about what it means to be on a team. But not in a PREACHY way where they go on and on about it. That’s not the POINT. The POINT, as in ALL sports manga, is about THE LOVE OF THE GAME. And that’s not lost here, as Dear Old Gang fights hard against a team that has love and righteousness in their hearts much as Dear Old Gang does, with each side’s special moves (but not over-the-top ridiculous moves—I’m looking at you, Prince of Tennis), amazing teamwork, and star characters, like the other team’s kid who used to play basketball but has converted to being a soccer noob—yet his body’s instincts are so good, he starts moving to successfully block you even before his brain actually registers you’re about to get past him if he doesn’t. You know, the usual collection of qualities that make Whistle! a standout manga even when all they do is play a really intense game of soccer. If you like sports manga at all, you will like this one. If you haven’t tried sports manga yet... well... sports manga are just fighting manga with lots more rules... and often with rather more characterization. Does that help? Comment on this review of Whistle! v22 on the Manga Life Forums. |
6 October 2009
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