From the back cover:
After playing an incredible and inspirational match against their cross-town rivals, the gang at Josui Junior High is now fielding queries from players who want to join their team. One of these hopefuls is Yuki Kojima, the team’s pretty manager. She’s not only cute and sweet but she’s also an awesome soccer player, to boot. Slowly but surely, Shou is surrounding himself with a bunch of all-star athletes… now all he has to do is find a coach!
Review:
These stories all relate to the aftermath of the game in the last volume. My favorite bits were actually near the beginning, especially a two-page spread reacting to the outcome of the game that is completely free from dialogue. A fun new character called Daichi is also introduced, and he has a distinct way of talking that was nicely preserved in the translation.
Suffering, however, were the longer soccer blurbs that come between some chapters. One of these was talking about a match played in “Soul” (Seoul). Nice one, dudes.
The second half of the volume is not all that great. The team gets a coach after a kinda stupid flashback chapter where we learn why the primary candidate (Sou) was reluctant to take the job. It includes the following ridiculous quote:
“I didn’t understand before. And I became scared of having a deep relationship with others through soccer.”
That’s really the main issue with Whistle!. I like the cast, and I like the story, and I like how the matches are drawn and all of that. But when the dialogue just gets too goofy like this it really deals a blow to my enjoyment of the title.
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