Woohoo! I finally finished watching the Whistle! anime. *sigh* It was so thrilling! I LOVE sports anime/manga! Too bad it was only 39 episodes long. (Why is it that the really long series just drag on and on until you wish they would end, but the series you wish would go on for longer stop too soon?)
Also, I don't know if it was my Media Player, or my computer or what, but the fansub was majorly out of sync! It was a good chance to practice my Japanese, I guess, though, since the sound was way ahead of both the animation and the subtitles. =P Besides, it's a sports anime, so a lot of the on-field action didn't really require too much translation.
But anyway, the point is, this series is awesome!! It's been a while since I finished a series feeling totally revved!! Even if you're not a soccer fan in particular (goodness knows I didn't know much more than the basics of the sport before I started watching) you should still be able to appreciate the series!!
I'm SO glad Viz picked up the manga and is publishing it as part of it's Shounen Jump "line" (for lack of a better word)! So far they've got 2 (out of 24) volumes out. But let me tell you, I've already read those two volumes at more than a couple of times over!! Soooooo good! *sigh*
Maybe part of the appeal for me is that soccer is probably the sport closest to hockey in terms of the teamwork involved and the speed and flow of the game (although hockey's probably a bit faster with the relatively small ice surface combined with the added speed of skating vs running). I just love sports that rely so much on teamwork.
Anyway, if you're interested in downloading the fansubs, they're available through Bittorrent at http://bt.downloadanime.org:6969/. Be prepared to leave it running for a while, though! It's split into two packs: episodes 1-20 (3.60GB) and episodes 21-39 (3.32GB). I can't even remember how many hours it took me to get it all--but it was worth it!
