AFTERTHOUGHTS
The plot of this chapter is quite simple. Anyway, there are some important resemblances with the series, as well as some definite patterns that will repeat in the complete story. Here I plan to list the ones I have found. If someone disagrees or finds more, feel free to write and I will add your comments here!. Send message to : [email protected]
TARO TSUBASA. Well, it is evident that the author liked that name, that's why he gave it to Misaki (who has a suspicious physical resemblance with the author, specially with his glasses on). Maybe that answer of "The Commentator calls him Tsubasa because it's shorter" had to have been actually "I had just got used to use Tsubasa as a surname" thanks to this initial short story. Besides, maybe he wanted to have a character more soccer-centerd like, and this way created two in which one (Taro Misaki) would be the sensitive, sociable, open party. One thing we know by this chapter zero, at least, is that the two were one in the beginning...Now they just think like one ^^
GENZO WAKABAYASHI. He hasn't changed. Just the sentimental side of him was taken off from this original. But the provocative, cynical, presumptuous, adorable Super Goal Keeper is the same. Maybe the hair is a bit more decent in the normal version than in this 70'es-like one...
RYO ISHIZAKI. It's him! It's just he himself. The bath-house, the character, the charisma, every single thing you find in this one. And like it was shown in the final game against Toho, or in the final game of Shin, against Germany, he is the one who faces Tsubasa to tell him what he thinks: "Move, you're our captain!", but also "don't push yourself too far!". As when he said: "We are here, we are your friends and want to help you!" (vs Toho) or "Tsubasa you are the only one that can lead us to our dream, to the victory! Stand up and fight!" (vsGermany). Here he acts as the captain, maybe that's why Takahashi-sensei made him the first Nankatsu Captain afterwards.
AKI YAMAZAKI. This is a Sanae a FAAAR BIIIT MORE LUCKY than the true Sanae. Funny thing, that one of the main reasons of that fight between Genzo and Tsubasa is her. That changed in the normal series, she was just a supporting character with a lot of scenes for her, at least. But this challenge for her is not ignored in the manga. In book 36, in the last chapter (one I translated years ago and sent to the mailing list of CT) Tsubasa had to fight with a guy called Kanda (in the anime he was changed for a glassed individual who was supposed to be a photographer and disappeared soon after some chapters) for the love of Sanae, who was 100% for Tsubasa. Anyway, this challenge served for him to take the courage or the brains to confess to Sanae that he loved her too. (^^At last! No soccer ball was present in that scene!)
THE USUAL INJURY. Always present, of course. Dramatic as usual, in the worse moment, in the worse conditions, in the same leg...
THE RAIN. Takahashi always makes it rain in the most dramatic games: Shimada, Musashi, Farewell game to Misaki, France, this one...Of course, that gives extra doses of dramatism and besides, that decides this precise game when the ball slips from Wakabaashi's gloves, as it does later in the series (without rain) in Nakanishi's hands (vs Naniwa), when he breaks his pride and his imbatibility record thus showing Wakabayashi is better than him, and also in Wakashimazu's (vsToho) when everybody thought he'd been able to stop the famous Drive Shoot.
NEVER GIVE UP SPIRIT. Tsubasa's spirit. In this case, he's fed up of losing. In the series, Tsubasa won't know the meaning of "losing". In both cases, Tsubasa doesn't really know the meaning of "team work". Here, his best friend was a keeper whom he had to score; in the series, because he'd had no friends to play with before his arrival to Nankatsu.
CHAPTER ZERO: Just a note, but this is not the true name of this chapter, of course, but I use it because I find it a fact: this chapter is a prototype somehow. In the Netto Special, as it was probably in the beginning, its name was just "Captain Tsubasa". I could have called it just "The original Captain Tsubasa story", without that of the zero chapter, but then someone could thing it was a real story that happened in real life, and as far as I know, it isn't, no matter how much resembles Tsubasa's story with that of this japanese soccer player who played in Italy and also in Spain, having had a trayectory similar to our hero.
More comments? Feel free to tell me! I'd love it! Spanish or English, It's fine with me ^^