Eyeshield 21 26
Posted: October 10, 2009 Filed under: Eyeshield 21 Leave a comment »Riichiro Inagaki / Yusuke Murata – Viz – 2009 – 37 volumes
Forget About Love reminded me of Hiruma’s threat book, which reminded me I’ve still got two volumes of this series to read. Hiruma’s threat book hasn’t been seen in a long, long time, but I’ll forgive it that since this game with Ojo is pretty epic.
The game volumes are always a little slower and less enjoyable, somehow, but they still rock since Eyeshield 21 is still good at making the games very exciting. The main points in this volume are that Monta has a new, nearly unstoppable catching technique, and Sena has devised a way to delay Shin’s tackles. And… yeah, they play football.
I read for the jokes, mostly, which are few and far between during the games, but still there. At one point, during a particular sappy scene, Hiruma mimicks everyone’s faces and lines to make fun of them, which was pretty amazing. There was one chapter where Hiruma and Ojo’s quarterback make fun of each other during a play by continuously acting angry, and then following it with the line “Is that what you thought I’d say?” as they recover from whatever trick the other has pulled. Hiruma comes out on top, of course.
The cute skits between chapters that are mostly reader questions are still very funny, too. Most of the volume compares characters from Deimon and Ojo on various points. For instance, Sena and Shin are compared on things like social skills (Sena has a little, so he wins over Shin’s zero) and “Neither fight, but if they did, who would win?” (Shin beat Sena by quite a bit here). In Hiruma vs. Takami, Ojo’s quarterback, the stats are things like “number of books owned,” “room tidiness,” “Japanese chess,” “honesty” (neither is at all honest), and “neither goes to karaoke, but if they did, who would sing better?”
I think the game will be over next volume? They have three minutes left, but that rarely means anything in shounen manga. I’m pretty sure Deimon will win, but stranger things have happened, and I’m sure there’ll be some technicality that will allow them to advance to the Christmas Bowl if they do end up losing.
