Area no Kishi Ep 14: Fuelling Frustration

Kakeru fails to get past his opponents as he struggles to succeed and understand the ‘Mystical Feint’. After failing a number of times, the coach finally subs him out. Kakeru as result gets frustrated and angry with himself.

Impression:
This episode wasn’t anything impressive, I was slightly annoyed that we weren’t able to really see Kakeru’s frustration on the field after making the mistake over and over again. Then when he was substituted and frustrated about it, I couldn’t feel for him at all. Oh and did I mention that, while the episode was called, ‘The Mystical Feint’, it wasn’t about it, nor did it focus on it whatsoever. How pointless is that?!
Kakeru should’ve kept his mouth shut. I knew the minute Hibino showed up, something bad was going to happen. Not physically, but I had a feeling Kakeru was going to slip something or accidently reveal his trump card. No surprise that Hibino still is angry about Kakeru tearing his ligament. He kept his head cool in the beginning and it looked as if he had somewhat forgiven him (not necessarily, but moved on in a sense so that he wouldn’t hold him down).
We’re not given very much information on Tsujido as they didn’t let us see what sort of “ridiculous” play that made them win. I am under the impression that they are super aggressive, they taunt their opponents to take advantage of penalties, and they are probably a powerhouse which would allow them to kick and score from quite a distance.
From my past experience, for the defensemen to be pulled up past the centre line is a huge gamble. There are two ways to look at this: (there’s probably more, but this is what I have in mind)
A) They may not have the fastest defensemen but they are confident enough they can score a goal without turning the ball over
B) Their defensemen has both the speed and stamina to sprint back if the ball is turned over
Most of the time, it was the latter. But the key to this is the stamina. If they don’t have that, being fast won’t be considered as advantage, or a threat.
Finally, for the past few weeks, I’ve been keeping my mouth shut about this… but I now I really just need to spit it out already!
The animation quality is driving me nuts. I hope that that more significant matches will be better because right now it’s only making me cringe, and it’s not impressive whatsoever.