Shin Teikoku - Blog Posts

fraybury

3 months ago

Adding to this post with my analysis of the emotional implications of this scene because it gets even crazier when one tries to visualize from Kidou's POV

Frame of Inazuma Eleven episode 38 of Kidou and Sakuma. Sakuma is standing up after receiving recoil damage of Emperor Penguin No.1 with his hair looks like it's being pulled forward in front of his shoulder. Kidou is looking at him with shocked expression

Frame of Inazuma Eleven episode 38 of back view of Sakuma's head right before he turned his head towards Kidou

You can see that Kidou was standing behind Sakuma in the initial composition of the scene's frame. It then switches to Sakuma's close up, which is more or less should be similar to what Kidou's point of view. So what possibly could be going on in Kidou's mind when it happened?

Frame of Inazuma Eleven episode 38 of Sakuma's close up head fully turning towards Kidou. He's making a smiling expression strained in pain. The frame obviously shows Sakuma's Shin Teikoku design with disheveled hair and his eyepatch not covering his right eye, now shown with a black sclera

The close up of Sakuma's face ends when he fully turns his head, revealing the eye that's normally covered by his eyepatch and the disheveled hair his Shin Teikoku arc design has.

As one can see on the first post, looking closely Sakuma was drawn in a way that makes him look like his original design with the pulled forward hair and the eyepatch covered right eye, it was what Kidou saw!

What Kidou (and the viewers) initially saw was the Sakuma he knew, the one who played soccer together with him, the Sakuma who is his best friend. But something about it is uncanny, until Sakuma's entire face was shown and it was Shin Teikoku Sakuma that Kidou was seeing. It wasn't the Sakuma Kidou knew.

Even if their scope of love in their writings are different (Sakuma loves Kidou, while Kidou loves EVERYONE including Sakuma) Sakuma and Kidou care deeply towards each other. And it was Kageyama's actual purpose in the arc, to not win the match but rather to inflict as much trauma he could on Kidou by manipulating and hurting (mentally and physically) his best friends against him.

Shin Teikoku arc has really good animation and storyboarding in general; this particular scene has cleverly drawn frames where Sakuma's hair was positioned to look like how he normally looks until he fully turns at Kidou and you can see the the black eye

I don't have frames that are of 1:1 comparison but I hope you get the gist