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Whump Focus I: Manga Soccer Edition - Supplementary Material Volume 1

In the previous episode of Fly’s Adventures Through Anime Soccer for Children:tm:, we took a look at the finale of the first arc of Captain Tsubasa. At the end, I promised we’d take a look not at the second arc of the manga, Boys Fight, but at content the original anime adaptation of CT from the early 80s added compared to the manga/the most recent anime adaptation I used for screenshots. I’ll also be providing additional notes on aspects I wanted to develop more, but couldn’t in the summary.

From this part, screenshots will be from Shinji’s scanlations of the manga and the French dub of CT ‘83 as it’s available on YT (which is just the Japanese raw with the old French dub on top of it, to the point censored-out scenes are left in there undubbed on YT lol).

Most of this post will be about filler episodes from the old anime and some tidbits of mine, so let’s get to this. Make sure to read the first two parts, since I’ll assume you’re caught up with the context presented in those. But first...

A foreword for future CT-specific Supplementary Material episodes

The two first arcs of Captain Tsubasa have been adapted a total of four times into anime: the first anime from the 80s, a series from the 90s named Captain Tsubasa J, one started in 2001 nicknamed “Road to 2002″ (after a much later arc than where we are) and the 2018 adaptation by David Productions (yes, the JoJo guys) I’ve been showing you all so far. The thing is, among those, I’ll only be showing you the first and the last: “Road to 2002″ is an absolutely awful adaptation of the manga (as it skips over things such as an entire arc of the manga) and J is, uh... Well, if someone knows where the 34 first episodes of CTJ are, I’m willing to take them, even raw. Only the three first episodes and episodes 35-52 are available anywhere afaik (at least, they do have subtitles). As much as I’d have loved to see how they adapted a bunch of scenes I’ve shown y’all here, I just can’t.

CT has a very tumultuous adaptation history (that is frankly more interesting than the manga itself), so while I’ll try to show you all as much of its anime series as possible (you’ll possibly see footage from CTJ for the World Youth arc, which is... something else even compared to now, I promise), I can’t guarantee showing you much more than manga screencaps and 2018 ‘shots for the most part.

Okay, with that out of the way, we can get back to what this post is actually about.

"It’s no such big deal, I’ll survive” - an eleven-year-old playing soccer, about his ankle injury

The first actual thing I want to talk about involves showing you one scene I cut from my summary in the 1st part because CT 2018 didn’t bother with it (well, it did, but it’s a slightly underwhelming version of it). As faithful as the rest of it is (despite its modernizations for the sake of a newer audience), one scene from the Furano-Meiwa match was slightly edited, so let me show you the original half-page:

Thanks Shinji for the free pages, it wouldn’t be the same without your work. (CT chapter 38)

If don’t remember it, it’s because I didn’t mention it last time: the 2018 anime has cut this already short dialogue down to someone asking Matsuyama (who is standing during this exchange in the 2018 version) if his leg was alright, to which he says it’s not a big deal and urges everyone to keep up the pace in the 2nd half. Just so you picture it, here’s the 2018 version of this scene:

Doesn’t hit quite the same vibe, doesn’t it? (CT 2018 ep19)

Ironically, as far as I know, CT 2018 is the only adaptation to alter this scene in this way, since even the newer remake of the manga by Kunikazu Toda has this scene stay more or less be the same:

I’ll get to talk more about this manga in a bit (CT Kids Dream chapter 11)

I’m sorry for the very low-res picture here, I had to take a photo of my own copy of the manga. That’s also why it’s in French, but in case you were concerned for the dialogue, it’s more or less the same as the half-page I showed before. Just in case, here’s a quick translation of all dialogues here:

“You do see that you’ve been injured by Hyuga’s tackle!”

“I’ll be fine... It’s just a scratch!”

“Stop it with those little things and instead think about keeping up the pace in the second half!”

“Y... Yes!”

With this tidbit out of the way, let’s get to the first course of this post: a small chunk of the filler content of CT ‘83.

Running in the 80s (it’s like the Initial D song except in the clip there’s Jun Misugi almost having a heart attack in the background)

The first anime series ran for 128 episodes and was concurrent to the manga (which was published from 1981 to 1988), so a bit like One Piece and Detective Conan, they had to come up with a bunch of filler. Most of that filler took the shape of additional scenes in the middle of episodes, especially matches, and that’s why Meiwa-Furano lasts like 3 episodes there instead of 1 like in the 2018 series.

If most of the filler in this series was just adding content based on a single panel of the manga, there also were downright filler episodes and one of them is going to be of specific interest to us: episode 37, “The Super Miraculous Long Shot” (I have to say, the French dub’s title, “Until My Last Breath”, was far more epic). This episode, in Ye Olde Anime, is the last of the Musashi-Nankatsu match (which started in episode 30) and its title refers to Tsubasa’s final shot against Musashi... which is funny, since the episode really is about Misugi. For the first eight minutes or so, this is the exact same as CT 2018 episode 22: Musashi loses against Nankatsu, Misugi tells Tsubasa this was a great match, and he asks Yayoi to help him to the bench. That’s when this series takes a massive detour with Misugi collapsing.

Welcome to the 80s, everyone. (As a sidenote, those guys is yellow really are Musashi’s players: their jersey is just bright yellow instead of white like it’s become in later official material. I’m not sure of when that change occured, but it seems to have happened before or in 2001).

Long story short, Misugi loses consciousness and is driven to the nearby Oizumi Hospital (which you’ve somewhat seen in the 2nd summary, since that’s where the hospital shots of Misugi, Yayoi and his mother I showed there are set).

I like that vintage ambulance. My paramedic friend would probably get a kick out of analyzing that image though.

For some reason, two entire soccer teams have managed to squeeze themselves into a single hospital corridor, so Musashi and Nankatsu’s players are all waiting in front of Misugi’s hospital room for whatever news they can get. After some time, the doctor/Misugi’s cardiologist (his design is almost the same between 83 and 2018, so I think he’s supposed to be the same guy) tells the whole gang Misugi’s heart has reached its limits due to overexertion, so he absolutely needs to rest. His teammates really want to see him, which the doctor is reluctant to let them do, and Tsubasa says he’ll wait as long as it takes to pay him a visit (and so do Yayoi and Ishizaki... not sure why for Ishizaki, but the compassion is appreciated, I suppose).

I didn’t get to to talk a lot about Mrs. Misugi in the 1st part, but God, this woman is a Beloved Smother in the making in this version (it’s far less clear-cut in the manga). She tells everyone to fuck right off from her son’s room, saying “from the beginning, Jun was never able to play soccer, how many times did I tell him?” and that she’ll never let him play the sports ever again. Her husband tries to reassure the kids outside, saying his wife is a little troubled (a little? Sir, your wife cries whenever her son steps on a soccer field) but urges everyone to at least give Jun a day to breathe.

We cut to Nankatsu in their dorm room discussing the upcoming finals and who they’re going to be fighting for (Misugi and Matsuyama, mainly, because the former is recovering and the other is close to Misaki), Yayoi opens the door.

New scene with Misugi and his mom. He asks where everyone is, she tells him they all went home (gee, I wonder why).

Hospital rooms were just made differently in the 80s.

When he tells her he had something he really wanted to tell Tsubasa about, she urges him to stop thinking about soccer and to think about his... surgery instead. Oh, right! CT 83 added a surgery subplot that was never in the manga. Anyway, he tells her he’s satisfied with the match and will now do whatever she wants him to, but first, he wants her to leave him alone for a moment. She says she trusts him and does just that.

Back to Nankatsu, we discover Yayoi is just telling Tsubasa Misugi’s entire (filler) backstory: he spent a lot of time alone with a soccer ball because he was very ill when he was younger, and also lonely because he’s an only child (which, afaik, isn’t contradicted by manga canon). We get a little flashback of Misugi fleeing from an examination room as his parents try to catch up to him:

The dialogue on top of this scene is incredibly violent for a kids’ show: “playing sports with such a heart is like suicide”. I was surprised even the French dub kept the comparison to suicide in. That’s the sort of things they usually smoothed out when rewriting scripts.

Plot twist: Misugi’s gone missing from the hospital (how? Yes). It takes like 15 minutes for anyone to deduce this kid is actually in the soccer field, contemplating said soccer field. Nankatsu and Musashi’s players (along with Misugi’s parents) find him in the end, he explains why he’s here. Ishizaki says something along the lines of “God’s unfair, a lame guy like me has no issues, but you’re the Prince of the Fields and you’re sick” (which is, uh... something).

The episode ends (for us, at least) on Misugi telling everyone he’s accepted to go through with the surgery. A quick flashback shows us when he spoke with his parents about it, where we also learn the operation is risky but has a chance of success anyway. And that’s where I’ll stop for old episodes, since most of the time, they’re just added scenes here and there, and not even whump stuff - but I really wanted to tell you all about how the series tried to extend on Misugi’s heart condition (even if it ended up making it make even less sense in the long run which, if you know about CT’s later arcs, is astounding for me to say).

I may make a more comprehensive guide of added bits and bobs, but I don’t think a Tumblr post is a good format for it, so it’d probably be a Google Doc where I can add things as I find them. This series is very long and I still haven’t fully made my way through it, so I’ll document that as I go along, if I do end up getting through with this project!

As a closing note (for now) on the ‘83 anime, remember when I mentioned it had made injuries more explicit than 2018? Here’s the example I was thinking of:

This is a shot shown after a forward from Meiwa (Ishii, according to CT 2018) tackles Matsuyama again (yes, in ‘83 Furano Elementary wore burgundy socks, which the animators must’ve decided on before they realized they’d have to make someone from that team bleed). In 2018 (and the manga), you don’t get shown the actual injury, only Matsuyama screaming and then getting back up; but 83 took a lot more time to fill in its runtime and you have 30 seconds or so of this kid lying on the grass, crying in pain.

It still doesn’t tell you how bad this injury actually is (I’d be tempted to say “a lot”), but it does show you a bit more expliticely it’s supposed to be his ankle that’s hurt and not his shin as I thought at first (which... somehow makes it worse?). Speaking of which, it actually took me another manga to realize the thing with the ankle. I hope you’re ready for some Meiwa-Furano overanalysis?

A quick detour by the remake manga

I showed earlier a half-page from Toda’s modernized remake of the manga, subtitled Kids Dream. I only planned on showing this one dialogue, but having to rummage through my copy of its 3rd volume again made me realize something interesting about this match: for some reason, and despite summarizing a lot of things, Toda’s manga... actually develops a bit on Meiwa-Furano. To be exact, it gives us more insight into Matsuyama’s mind during the chapter, which the original manga didn’t do as much.

For the most part, and the different artstyle set aside, it’s mostly the same, but some scenes caught my attention; namely, this one:

I completely ommitted it from the summary in the first post, but Meiwa scores their second goal in part because Matsuyama fails a jump due to his ankle injury. That scene happens right after Hyuga scores again and is completely absent from the original manga: in case the French is unclear to you, what Matsuyama is doing here is apologizing to his teammates, then thinking this, hum, slightly concerning train of thought coming from a squishy-faced eleven-year-old:

A sharp pain in my ankle prevented me from countering Hyuga... I won’t make the same mistake twice... I won’t be defeated by a small oochie! I’ll win this match, even if I have to break my leg!!

[A quick aside: I’m saying Matsuyama here is 11 because he should be in 6th Grade, but to stitck to the French education system, the French translation of CT Kids Dream put every 6th-year in this arc in the last year of French elementary school, which is 5th Grade instead. That means everyone is 10 instead in the French translation. Yikes!]

The other notable addition I wanted to make is this one (both pictures are from chapter 12, fyi):

What I’m refering to here is what Matsuyama is thinking, “la douleur c’est dans la tête”, which translates to “the pain’s in the mind”. As far as I know, this is the only version of CT’s 1st arc that has him say such a mantra and I’m unable to check if it’s just the French publication being quirky again or if it’s a legitimate addition specific to this version of the story. The way I see it, it could just be Toda trying to deepen the character a little bit (since Matsuyama gets all of his character development in the second arc rather than the first, which is a rarity among the main characters introduced in the 1st arc), or to add some flavour to the match. This manga’s version of it sure puts more emphasis on Furano than every little other version I’ve seen, even 83 that gives Meiwa just as much spotlight (in Toda’s version, Meiwa doesn’t get more screentime than in the original, if you were wondering).

The inclusion of such a tiny detail is fascinating to me, along with another tidbit: in an earlier scene to this one, we see Hyuga is wearing shin protections, but Matsuyama clearly isn’t (see: the first panel I showed from CTKD). This probably alludes to Furano Elementary’s club being broke as fuck, to be fair; but the devil’s in the details. I don’t know why Toda added such lil’ things in there (nobody asked for them and they don’t add to the plot), but man if I’m not thankful for the added details to feast on.

In case you couldn’t tell, Matsuyama is my favourite character from CT (...just a quick glance at my AO3 and the fact he’s my current profile picture there would give it away, but oh well). I originally planned on ending this post with an insight on what the hell his kid self must’ve thought during this match, but in the end, I decided you guys would be more interested in additional material instead; thus why I took a glance again at my manga copies.

This is it for today’s Supplementary Material! I hope you appreciated the small detour. Next time, we’ll be taking a look at Boys Fight, the junior high arc of CT - it’s mostly going to be about a pesky shoulder injury, but there’s also going to be some more heart illness shenanigans, and even my good friend blood. See you there everyone!