Ginga e Kickoff 14 ~ a twisted coach nurtures twisted players

The ironically named Lightning Light.

Ginga e Kickoff episode 14 surprised me. Avvesione had some interesting criticism of Jormungand; in a show that features brutal violence and murders in every episode, the show was very poor in showing the consequences of violence, because the viewpoint characters never suffer the consequences. Without seeing the viewpoint characters suffer, the violence has an unreal quality to it, and is a bit difficult to take seriously.

Somehow Ginga e Kickoff, a show with a much lighter tone that is clearly aimed at kids, showed that it can deliver that kind of impact. In a previous episode we learned that the coach had quit soccer, and turned to drink, when a kid on the team he was coaching suffered a brain injury during play. The brilliant thing here was that we got to see that years later the kid is still suffering from serious visual impairment. Consequences are real; they don’t conveniently go away just because we like the characters. Bad things happen … and it sucks, but life does goes on.

How a show arguably pitched at a more mature audience wasn’t able to pull that off, while a show aimed at kids was able to do it, is a bit perplexing.