3
4
1
1
5
2
1
3
1
2
1
episode 1 rugby team > writing team
I should have left this the second that the rules of the game were steamrolled over for vibes. referees ignoring dangerous tackles and everyone treating the victim as if they're at fault rather than sending off a player who should know better than launch into a neck-breaking tackle? leaving a player with a potential concussion or spinal injury on the floor and letting the game continue while they're unattended? schoolboy rugby is an inherently dangerous sport and the complete disregard for the most basic precautions was laughable and decades out of date.
then we have our superstar, the noble idiot. his idiocy is also decades behind. does he not have insurance? did he not read anything on the internet about his own sport and players from other nations? are the sport administrators completely divorced from reality? with that fundamental issue on which the story is based making no sense, the rest of the plot is very much the roof of a very shaky house of cards.
this is a story that should have been great. an underdog coach in an underdog sport takes on a bunch of underdog high schoolers to take over the world. but the flaws in the storytelling are just too huge to overlook.
I detested every single adult character. the kids were there doing their job, being kids, and every single adult was either a lying sack of trash, weak, incompetent, violent, or psychologically abusive. and at the core was the principal, a person who was so weak that her pending retirement surely also was decades behind.
worse, almost none of their motivations even made much sense. by halfway through, most of them were just doing evil by numbers. the plot demanded a movement in a certain direction so fetch the magenta crayon of evil for that.
if I have a good thing to say it's that the team was entertaining, well-characterised and, along with Seo Ujin, contained the only actors to come out of this with merit. there are moments where the sun just peeked through the clouds of tropes, unintentional parody and plot devices, but they were simply too rare to make this more than mediocre.
then we have our superstar, the noble idiot. his idiocy is also decades behind. does he not have insurance? did he not read anything on the internet about his own sport and players from other nations? are the sport administrators completely divorced from reality? with that fundamental issue on which the story is based making no sense, the rest of the plot is very much the roof of a very shaky house of cards.
this is a story that should have been great. an underdog coach in an underdog sport takes on a bunch of underdog high schoolers to take over the world. but the flaws in the storytelling are just too huge to overlook.
I detested every single adult character. the kids were there doing their job, being kids, and every single adult was either a lying sack of trash, weak, incompetent, violent, or psychologically abusive. and at the core was the principal, a person who was so weak that her pending retirement surely also was decades behind.
worse, almost none of their motivations even made much sense. by halfway through, most of them were just doing evil by numbers. the plot demanded a movement in a certain direction so fetch the magenta crayon of evil for that.
if I have a good thing to say it's that the team was entertaining, well-characterised and, along with Seo Ujin, contained the only actors to come out of this with merit. there are moments where the sun just peeked through the clouds of tropes, unintentional parody and plot devices, but they were simply too rare to make this more than mediocre.
Was this review helpful to you?
