Whirlwind! Iron Leaguer
| Whirlwind! Iron Leaguer | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Original Manga | N/A |
| Director/Artist | Tetsuro Amino |
| Format | Anime (TV) |
| Made By | Sunrise |
| Episode Length | 24 minutes |
| # of Eps/Volumes | 52 |
Contents
Genre
Sum it up in a Sentence
In a grim future where sports-playing robots are put into brutal and sometimes 'fatal' gladiator battles for the amusement of the fans, a group of robots known as the Silver Castles fighting to bring Fair Play back to the game.
Main Description
Iron Leaguer is the story of sports-playing robots in a pretty bad world. In particular, our cast is the Silver Castles, the worst team in the league. When the series begins, the castles are owned by a young girl named Ruri Ginjo, and are basically the league's whipping boys, since they refuse to engage in Rough Play. Rough Play in the Leaguer world means less "occasionally checking" and more "shoving a drill into your opponent's face.' To make matters worse, the team itself is made up of a group of mass-produced robots and their not-so-talented leader Shiruki, who just isn't strong enough to really be a challenge to rough-playing robots. The closest they have to an 'ace' is Kiai Ryuken, a strange soft-spoken robot who doesn't seem to be good at anything and was shipped to the Castles by mistake. This changes with the introduction of two new team members: Mach Windy, a soccer-playing robot who abandons his Rough-Playing team and Magnum Ace, a mysterious baseball robot who is unmatched in sports prowess. Together, they set out to form an unbeatable team and bring fair play back to the game. At the same time, they have to figure out the mysterious secret of the Dark Sports Foundation, and why it is encouraging such brutal games.
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Personal Opinions
ImpAtom
Personally, I think Iron Leaguer deserves a lot more credit then it gets. Since the show is unsubbed and finding copies of it is difficult, it's not something a lot of people have seen. Yet it has a lot going for it. The main cast is surprisingly well put together and very likable. It has some weak points, such as Jurota Kiwami, who they never quite figure out what to do with, but that's made up for by the fact that the villains function as actual people, and even the Silver Castle mook squad gets their awesome moments. I would say that the second arc of the show is the weakest, as it is almost all filler designed to develop the characters and introduce some of the wackier kinds of Iron Leaguers. The third arc is a bit more touch-and-go, but the eventual payoff in the final episode is awesome.
The animated is a bit budget in places, but that mostly shows in how often they reuse stock footage. There are some pretty major scenes that are reused wholesale, although often in pretty cool ways. The final episode features a huge amount of this, but they do so in a neat enough way that it doesn't feel hugely out of place. Still, if you're the kind of person who can't stand stock footage, it might be a bit annoying. The robot designs are actually by Kunio Okawara, and he's since stated that they're actually his favorite of anything he's designed. I'm not sure I'd go that far, but the Leaguers have pretty distinct designs and a lot of them have really neat little touches that make them stand out.
