Quote:
Originally Posted by Obelisk ze Tormentor
Some sport series don’t have to end with MCs beating his/her/their main rivals for it to be good and on-point. See the inspiring, massively-praised and successful Hikaru no Go, among others. Also, it’s not just complicated series who did that. A simple sport anime for kids like Ganbare, Kickers! did that too, and there’s nothing wrong with that coz some sport series prefer to focus on the MC’s growth as a goal rather than beating the enemy/rival. So it was never a problem, narrative-wise.
|
In Para 3 of the post you quoted, I specifically mentioned closure does not necessarily mean "beating it" (victory). I hadn't watched Ganbare, but I did watch Hikaru and at least two other anime whose names I've forgotten where the "underdog protagonist" did not win. I even said in other posts that I would be OK as long as it was actually quality this time.
However, it is still the more complex of two options to write and in my (limited) experience requires preconditions like the target being so far ahead that it is really indefensible (even by the standards of such anime) for the protagonist to grow to beat them in the allocated time. In HnG, Akira had been working all his life on Go and Hikaru just started for a year or two. Similarly, the other two anime's "targets" were very strong teams and the Wiki suggests Ganbare is in that mold - it also seems the protagonist team in Ganbare made it the following year (the real closure was just "cut off" by the anime's limited run).
That's a road NOT taken with Darjeeling and St. Glorianna. St. Glorianna is depicted as calmer, but in terms of "player skill" not massively superior.