Manga Review: Sayonara, Football #1 by Naoshi Arakawa
Fourteen year old Nozomi Onda has the best technical skills on her school’s soccer team. She trains harder than any of the other members, and has a true passion for the sport. But since her school doesn’t have a girls’ soccer team, Nozomi had to join the boys’ club. And while she can practice with them, girls aren’t allowed to be in official games.
And to be fair, there’s a bit of a point to that. While Nozomi is the most technically skilled player in the club, she simply doesn’t have the size or muscle mass to handle physical contact from her male teammates. Even her younger brother is already the same height and a bit heavier than her! The coach is thrilled to have Nozomi around to spur her teammates to better efforts, but the league’s rules are firm, even if she was bigger.
Nozomi understandably is put out by this restriction. From her perspective, it’s unfair to bench the best player just because of biology. And honestly, she only must play in one game to meet her purpose. Y’see, the boy she trained in how to play soccer in elementary school is on the team her school will be playing first in the upcoming tournament.
Yasuaki “Namek” Tani used to be a bit of a wimp back in the day, but he’s had a serious growth spurt. At age fourteen, he’s already a good five, six inches taller than Nozomi and still filling out. He’s also become kind of sexist, pointing out that boys’ soccer is about physical ability and he’s surpassed Nozomi in that category just by being biologically male. He feels safe belittling her skills because he knows that the rules forbid her from playing against him in a legal match.
So Nozomi is getting desperate for the coach to let her play in the tournament, rules be damned. Her attempts to bribe or persuade the coach take up most of this first volume.
This series is by the author of Your Lie in April, a popular but heartbreaking manga. It’s relatively short, but almost immediately had a sequel, Farewell, My Dear Cramer that takes place a couple of years later when Nozomi finally gets to a school with a girls’ team.
There’s a bittersweet feel to this series; the coach and Nozomi’s male teammates are well aware that the situation’s unfair, but they’re also aware of the potential damage that could be done if the rules are not obeyed. It’s a more realistic take than many sports manga (and the author shows his research.)
The art is expressive and the soccer scenes are good. There’s surprisingly little male-oriented fanservice, we see more of the boys in a locker room scene.
There is a major production error in the US release–the back cover blurb is for the first volume of the sequel, not this series! If you’re looking for the story of the other two girls mentioned, you’d be disappointed.
Tentatively recommended for soccer fans-a lot will depend on whether the ending is satisfactory.
There’s going to be an animated series based on “Cramer” which seems to include “Sayonara” as a flashback; here’s an ad for it.
