Keppeki Danshi! Aoyama-kun

We were expecting a football animation. Instead, we received a comedy with some interesting and funny moments.

Aoyama is a soccer star that suffers from a cleaning complex. He hates being touched. He needs to see everything clean. He needs to cook his food. How can a person like this be the center of the attention and one of the youth soccer stars from Japan?

In the beginning, I was waiting to see a sports anime and football matches every time. After some episodes, the football became irrelevant. The story focus on the events full of jokes and actions from the football squad and all the ... persons related to it. The jokes aren't bad, sometimes are silly but are executed smartly. However, there are few moments dull.

The characters are standard as we can expect from this kind of comedy. Aoyama is another guy that is good in everything that he does and sometimes is annoying. Also, he needs to clean everything. His friends are the ones that carry all the responsibility of the comedy. Without them, Aoyama could sink in boredom. Let's thank the other characters for the jokes. Ayoma has lots of admirers, including a person that loves him. The plot mixes everything, football, manga, a love triangle, fights, challenges and maybe some stupid actions. You will laugh at the situations. You will laugh after seeing some epic moments, but after some hours you will forget the fun and will focus on other things.

This kind of animation is fun for the first time, but you aren't going to repeat it.

The art and the music are standard. Do not expect too much from it. It was created to fill the time. At least the art isn't like the ending of the anime.

The sound isn't a big thing. It is standard, and the OST isn't that amazing but does the job, same for the OP and ED.

Finally, yes you will laugh but nothing more. The show isn't a great comedy but has some fresh, hilarious moments. Do not hope to see a competitor for Captain Tsubasa because it isn't. Expect to spend some minutes laughing at the situations, but that's all.

If you are a freak (kidding) that loves sports anime, this won't be the right anime for you. If you are a soccer fan, you will get disappointed and will say "what a waste of time."

YOU. MUST. WATCH. THIS.

Even though it says it's seinen, I believe it is also shonen and shojo, basically for everyone. If you like sports, more specifically soccer, watch this. If you like comedy, watch this. If you like romance, watch this. If you think this is not for you, at least watch the first episode, you might be surprised. I LOVE this anime. The story was so interesting and characters were so interesting and made me laugh so many times! The sound and art was crisp and perfect. Keppeki Danshi! Aoyama-kun is definitely one of my favorites! I think I'm actually in love with ... Aoyama-kun, he's so adorable and cute, and he's not even trying! Overall, I had an amazing experience watching this anime and I hope there is a second season or that I can find more animes similar to this one. So, what I'm trying to say is...

YOU. MUST. WATCH. THIS.

This anime made me feel conflicted in my feelings for it because I really enjoyed it yet had some serious gripes with it. It's hard to put everything into a good review because I'm not a reviewer, this is just a regular viewer take on it, so I'll try to be as coherent as possible. This is just what I thought of it, but somehow it didn't affect my enjoyment so please take my gripes with a grain of salt.

-Spoiler Alert-


I'll start off by saying that Aoyama shines as a main character. He's funny, talented, and overall a somehow very strong character without being too ... detailed. The rest of the football team (minus Gotou) shine best when they're only support characters highlighting Aoyama. Their individual episodes are mediocre at best, though some of the topics handled are unique to a lot of anime I've seen, and overall they don't deserve a lot of main screen time. Heads up, I'm going to talk about Gotou like a main character because she's arguably the most enjoyable of any character. Her love for Aoyama is genuine, her anger and signature weapon is entertaining, and her ability to bring life into this anime is there. I don't think I would've liked this anime half as much without her. As well, the only time I really cared about Zaizen, who's portrayed as some sort of main character but is really only a side character, is during the last 10 minutes of the last episode. Maybe the issue with having a character like Aoyama is that most of the other teammates are useless in any sort of actual sports situation compared to him, and Zaizen is especially useless up until these last moments.

This anime tries to push some sort of idea that Aoyama cares about his teammates deep down by eye contact alone and that never really holds up. It's joked about that he's there for the toilets and the white uniforms only, and it really made me think at the end that was all there is to it. There are really no moments when the anime makes you think they all care about each other as friends rather than just teammates, as most everyone is very selfish in the sense that they're using Aoyama as a way to get to nationals.

Some of the more interesting characters come from people we only see once or twice, like Ozaki. Though it really seemed like they were scrambling for filler episodes despite only having a 12 episode air schedule, which seemed like too little of an amount of time to have to flesh out the characters they already started out with.

I had a huge gripe with the character of Odagiri, not because of any sort of "shipping" issue but because she seemed to be thrown in as some sort of development plot point for Aoyama that really never came to have any lasting effect. The entire time I saw her, I wasn't positive if she was supposed to be a love interest or just solely some sort of outlet for Aoyama to practice contact. If she was going to have a lasting effect, it would've made sense for them to introduce her earlier on in the anime so that we could see that change. In any case, they could've spent that wasted character time fleshing out Zaizen as a good friend, or Gotou as a solid rock for Aoyama to lean on, as both always came off as genuine and trustworthy people more so than the rest of the football team.

I can't say much for the art or sound, as I don't know what would be good or bad, I really don't have talent on that end. If it was atrocious, I'm sure it would've been obvious to me so I guess it wasn't bad.

Overall, if this somehow gets a Season 2, they really have a lot of work to do, as they didn't lay a very solid foundation in the first season.

I still enjoyed it though? Somehow I was still laughing at the jokes and watching along. It's a dumb fun kind of anime, you have to be willing to enjoy it for what it is, which is a whole lot of comedic nothingness.