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, on the surface, your fairly average shonen justice tournament story. What set it apart are its cast of characters and some of the overall path the plot takes. As mentioned above, Iron Leaguer is the story of sports-playing robots. 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 named Bobby, Pick, Link, Ronny, Carl, Pat and Pete, and their leader Shiruki, who just isn't strong enough. 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.
The first arc of the show involves Magnum and Mach slowly building up the rest of the team. Their first new member is Bullarmor, an American Football robot with incredible power who also has the potential to go into dangerous rages. After that is Jurota Kiwami, a Kendo Leaguer who joins after witnessing Magnum Ace's amazing "44 Sonic" fastball. Top Joy, a basketball-playing robot from America is next, although he originally joins as a spy for the Dark Sports Foundation. Kiai Ryuken unlocks his hidden potential as a Karate Leaguer and becomes a contributing member of the team. The final is GZ, a Hockey-playing mercenary robot who is won over to the Castle's side by their sense of fair play. Together, the group battles their arc villains, the Gold Brothers; Goldarm, Goldfoot and Goldmask
The focus of the show is your fairly basic tournament setting, with a new opponent and new gimmicks every so often. What makes it stand out is that every character is useful and gets their own focus, despite Magnum Ace being the de-facto protagonist. There's a real sense of progression and development to the characters. What stands out strongly here are the Gold Brothers, who end up getting just as much development (if not moreso) then some of the main characters as they end up going from brutal thugs to pseudo-protagonists who actually have to train and work together to challenge the Silver Castles. When you finally get to the final competition between The Silver Castles and the Gold Brothers, you can actually find yourself cheering for the Golds just as easily as the Silvers.
The other two arcs, roughly described as the Scion of Darkness arc and the World Tour arc, follow fairly similar progression, although they're more focused around the dark secret of the Iron Leaguer program then the first arc. The Scion of Darkness arc finds the Leaguers travelling around the world to find "Lost Leaguers" who have totally given up and become (sometimes quite literally) monsters, under the tutelage of not-so-mysterious masked Scion of Darkness. At the same time, they’re looking for Ruri’s missing father. The World Tour arc is a final competition where the team has to battle in unfair challenges in order to claim the title of world champions. At the same time, they have to deal with the mysterious Fighter Brothers, Fighter Spirit and Fighter Arrow, robots whose capabilities far surpass even Magnum Ace.
The OVAs are a little more depressing. They're set post-series and focus around the breaking up of the Silver Castles. The story picks up a year later and the Castles have a new owner, Sheena Mount, who seems determined to force them into Rough Play, and benches almost all the original members. The exception is Magnum Ace, who is acting rather oddly indeed. The Leaguers scatter to the four winds and from there the story develops. It's a bit grimmer, although it keeps the same basically optimistic spirit at the end, and as you'd expect, has a better budget.
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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.
