When I say that Wild Striker doesn't bring anything new, the one exemption from that can be with the story. Although you still have your typical sports anime story with following a protagonist (Kyosuke, in this case) and his will to win the national championship. The catch here is that his brother, Kanou Seisuke, is already a superstar that plays for AC Milan, and both of them are polar opposites in every way, shape and form. So Kyosuke is always being compared to his older brother and is expected to follow in his footsteps (well, sort of anyway). That's the overall main theme that the anime always goes back too. However, let me say that there is a lot of plot twists that Wild Striker brings in that really catches you off-guard. It keeps you on your toes and keeps the story very interesting. The matches are also very unpredictable, as Kyosuke's teams suffers plenty of losses throughout the show. There's a bit of romance in here as well, which is actually very interesting to watch.
The animation and art is really brings this anime down a notch. Everyone knows that sports anime has a ton of repeated frames, but Wild Striker really pushes that to the limit as each match, it feels like you're watching the same exact match from an earlier episode, just with a different opponent. A very focal point of sports anime is how the animation during matches is done and because of the poor quality in Wild Striker, sometimes its not that fun to watch. The same thing can be said of the character design. Seriously. It makes me wonder what the budget was for this anime. A bunch of the characters, if you look closely, have the same exactly facial structure, but simply different color eyes and a different hair style. Swap hairs and you'll swap the character. But Wild Striker does provide enough different character designs to keep it interesting.
Before I get too deep into my sound explanation, let me just start off by saying the the first season OP was the best piece of music in the entire anime. It's really nice piece of music that fits in perfectly with the anime and very uplifting as well. The rest of the music ranges from so-so to not all that great. The voice actors bring a lot of emotion into the characters they act for, which really brings a lot of the matches to life.
The characters themselves, I was very conflicted on. At first, I was going to write how they were pretty much unoriginal, but when I sat and thought about it for a few minutes, the characters are actually pretty decent. The anime brings just enough different types of characters to compliment the main protagonists in the show, but as I mentioned earlier, save for a few, they all look relatively the same. My biggest qualm about the characters is that there aren't many opponents that the show heavily concentrates on. Sure, there are teams, but not single opponents. In other words, they'll introduce a rival, concentrate on him for about 4-5 episodes tops, and then after the teams play their match, moves on forward. But I guess that's also a good thing, in order to bring in new people into the show.
Even with all of the negative aspects I mentioned about this show, you simply cannot help but to watch episode after episode because the story is pretty unpredictable. When you think a team is going to win, they end up losing. When you think they're going to lose, they end up winning. Even the storyline itself has a few nice plot twists that you won't see coming. Though the matches do tend to repeat themselves with the animation, they still have some mystifying quality that makes you watch in anticipation. Bottom line, Wild Striker is enjoyable to the max.
When I rank sports anime, I typically think of placing them in one of three tier groups: top tier, middle tier and bottom tier. I would place Wild Striker in the middle tier. It's definitely not the worst thing about there, as its very entertaining to watch. However, the ending may leave you with an unsatisfied taste in your mouth and wanting more. In addition, the lack of detail in character design and variability in animation prevent it from the top tier of sports anime. Nevertheless, its something that's worth your time to check out for yourself.
