MAL Link for 'Giant Killing'

Since my recent post about Overdrive seemed to interest at least some people, i figured i would throw this one out there too. Just like Overdrive, the reasoning is because it breaks the typical mold of sports anime by having a more serious atmosphere and avoiding the use of super-human athletes like so many anime tend to feature.

Premise:

The Soccer(Football) club East Tokyo United is in a tough spot, and are on the look for a new manager, thus they bring in Tatsumi Takeshi, a former star player of ETU, who has spent the last few years in Europe coaching. While in Europe he gained a good reputation for his "Giant Killing", or leading much weaker teams to defeat great teams.

Reasons why Giant Killing isn't your typical sports anime:

• Giant Killing takes place in a professional sports league, thus featuring an adult cast.
• The MC of Giant Killing is not the Star player of the team, nor is he he even a player on the team, rather he is the guy coaching the team.
• As aforementioned the players don't have special powers and what not.
• Giant Killing isn't focused on a goal such as winning a championship, or getting through tournaments.
• It doesn't build up an ultimate rival that they have to overcome, like the cliched National Champions of last year, partly thanks to not beinfg focused in a high school environment.

Final Notes:

I recently recommended Overdrive for breaking from the standard format used on sports anime, and i feel this anime did that even better.

If you got turned off from the anime based on the mC not being a player, don't worry, it does develop on the actually players on his team as well.

The final point on my list of reasons Giant killing is different was about how it doesn't build up some cliched rival, but that doesn't mean they don't have to face strong teams, nor does it mean they fail to develop players on other teams.