English Dub Review: Aoashi: “The Truly Weak One”

Overview: Togashi’s (Marcus D. Stimac) differences with Junior Youth team members comes to light along with his rocky history with Takeshima (Austin Tindle), Kuroda (Ry McKeand) and Asari (Mitchell Stephens). 

Our Take: The greatest aspect of discovering who the truly weak one is that there are none. There is no definitively right answer about how one should play soccer with the show offering a supremely intelligent open ended viewpoint in looking at different approaches. Togashi’s past as a young kid trying out for the Junior Youth Esperion team paints an interesting picture of the different values between him, a try-out, and the players raised from the program like Takeshima, Kuroda and Asari. Togashi’s way of thinking is to get as many goals as humanly possible while they are more pragmatic and tactical in their playing style of winning the game, as a whole, by any strategy. 

Each way of thinking is valid with their own merits but also simultaneously have their own drawbacks as well, showing the unique diversity in ways of thinking on how to approach a game. With that said, therein also lies the strife between them that is engaging in how fascinatingly contrasting their thought process on the field goes, both during their childhood and present day team.  

Tachibana finally gets the drive to fight against Musashino. His encouragement of the team is an uplifting and gratifying team moment and is genuinely earned in inspiring the others with doing the strongest thing he could in admitting his own weaknesses. Takeshima still remains at odds with Togashi’s scrutinization of their goals but, inspired by Tachibana, took an important lesson from Togashi nonetheless. It makes for a deeply intricate building moment in being forthcoming about one’s own mistakes, setting the stage for even more character driven development and internal struggle amongst the team as they come together and practice their butts off to play Musashino.