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There're some Mamoru Oshii book lists on the Internet, but they don't have detailed explanations about the contents. My Mamoru Oshii book collection is far from complete, but I'd like to write some short summaries for each of those books.
I apologize in advance for grammatical errors and misinformation.
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title: 番狂わせ 警視庁警備部特殊車両二課
(Giant Killing: Tokyo Metropolitan Police Special Vehicle Section 2)
release: 01/31/2011
publisher: Kadokawa Haruki Corporation
[contents]
prologue
Kick-off
Catenaccio
Pressing Football
epilogue
[review]
Oshii loves football.
You might be curious why I told it. This novel contains almost nothing but Oshii's thoughts on soccer and strategy. I usually appreciate everything Oshii gives to us, but I have to say that this novel is Oshii's worst fiction I've ever seen.
The story is told from the viewpoint of SV2 third generation. Maybe some people know that third-gen SV2 members appear in the TNG Patlabor series. TNG characters are based on the characters from this novel, so you can call it a beta version of TNG.
Unlike TNG, the protagonist called Akira Izumino is a man.
The story is set in an international football match. An England football team called Manchester F.C. is going to play a game with a Japanese team. No, I didn't write it wrong. It is a fictional football team called "Manchester F.C.", not Manchester United. A manager called "Sir" controls "Manchester F.C." but he is not Fergie. It's super confusing, right? Manchester United does exist in this world, but they're different from Manchester F.C.
Before the game, a bomb threat against Manchester F.C. is uploaded on the Internet. SV2 members are going to guard the team on match day. The SV2 leader called Gotoda secretly sends Akira Izumino to the Japanese opponent team. Akira practices football with other professional players and tries to find out the bomber's trick.
The plot sounds like good crime-suspense, but most of the contents are Oshii's thoughts on football and football strategy. Oshii was thinking "How-to-win" philosophy and football in those days, so he put those materials into the novel.
If you're a super hardcore Patlabor fan, or if you want to dig in Oshii's How-to-win thing, it is recommendable to you. If you're not, you should skip it.
*Oshii put a reference to his Karate master's novel series. Characters from Bin Konno's "Azumi Team" appear in this novel.
