English Dub Review: Shoot! Goal to the Future “Training Camp”

Overview:

Kamiya schedules a training camp for the team at the school. He wants to have them work hard, but he also wants to throw old traditions in.

Our Take:

If an anime involves a club or a sport, it’s likely to have a training camp episode sooner or later. The Kakegawa High School soccer team has theirs and it goes about as expected. There’s a lot of practice, a scary story, some pranks, some rules being broken, and a lot of team bonding.

Kamiya tells the boys about traditions from back in the day, such as dressing up as a ghost to scare everyone and skinny dipping in the pool. It’s weird to see an adult skinny dipping with a bunch of high school students, but they don’t dwell on that. The security guard reprimanding Kamiya each night got a laugh out of me. That and the team messing with their coach.

I also enjoyed the team bonding. It was nice to see everyone getting along and having fun together, especially Kazama and Tsuji. They have a nice talk on the field and we finally see Tsuji open up a little. Kurokawa acts a little weird in this episode and I’m sure we’ll find out why soon enough, but the seeds are planted here.

The team also receives their uniforms for the upcoming tournament. Tsuji is granted the prestigious number 10. That number has been retired for some time, but Kamiya says former number 10 players want to see someone else wear it. Everyone agrees that Tsuji is perfect for it.

Overall, I genuinely like this episode. I haven’t been a fan of this show so far, but I think is episode is good. It may be a standard training camp episode, but I like those. I’m a sucker for team bonding and having fun, which is what this episode is all about. If this show had more of this and less pointless melodrama, it would be a solid sports anime. At least we have this one bright spot so far.