Eyeshield 21 27

Riichiro Inagaki / Yusuke Murata – Viz – 2009 – 37 volumes

This and Hikaru no Go are just great.  Nearly perfect at what they do.  Much like the newest volume of Hikaru no Go, reading this reminded me of what I like about manga, Shounen Jump series in particular.  As much as I like One Piece, it’s been a long time since a volume has given me as much pleasure as thosee did.  Of course, the story is currently on the boring Alabasta arc, so I guess I should keep that in mind.

Eyeshield 21′s spectacular in every way.  The games are interesting, and seeing the characters switch through a variety of plays with variying degrees of determintion, heroic-ness, and humor, keeps the plot moving even when the games last two or three volumes.  Even the chapter which was just characters thinking to themselves over the course of a few seconds, with no dialogue, was great.  I was very impressed when even Hiruma was getting discouraged, and then wound up pulling off another crafty miracle.  The volume ends with the end of the game, which literally comes down to the last second.

There were two things that struck me as unlikely, though, even for a sports manga.  One was that Monta’s baseball hero shows up.  Now, he showed up last volume, and I forgot to mention it, but it was… just a little too convenient that he seemed to have abandoned his baseball career to become an administrator for the Football Association.  Even more unlikely was the fact that, in this volume, he mentions that he remembers Monta as “that kid I threw my glove to in the crowd all those years ago.”

The second thing is a bit of a spoiler.  Admittedly, not much of a spoiler, because there are ten more volumes and you know how this game will end.  But all the same, let me mark it out here for you.

Spoiler.

Spoiler.

In the last second, Deimon returns a kickoff and scores a touchdown.  The clock has one second on it when the play started, and they literally returned a wonky kickoff for a touchdown, and it was the only time Sena ever got past Shin.  I mean, that didn’t even really happen in, like, Appalachian State vs. Michigan.  You can return a kickoff for a touchdown, but not with one second left on the clock, and not to win the game, and not against a favored opponent like Ojo was.  I’m sorry, Eyeshield 21.

Suspending disbelief, it was still pretty amazing in the context of the series.  The scene wasn’t really drawn out and beautiful like it was at the end of the last game, but the winning victory is always sweet, and the characters really earned it this time.

I also really liked that Ojo’s defeat was shown registering with their players.  Otawara, the big, goofy, often naked defender took it hardest, but even their cool quarterback took it really hard.   It’s things like that, showing that the game was just as important to the other team, that make me like Eyeshield 21 a lot more than any other sports manga except maybe Hikaru no Go, which isn’t really a sport.  I like that the Ojo boys got the cover, and are wearing their Ojo school uniforms.  They sometimes do things aside from playing football..

The art helps immensely, too.  I can’t get over how dynamic everything about it is.  The angles, the way the player’s bodies bend and take hits, everything that’s going on is amazingly clear and easy to read, and all the character designs are unique and really goofy.  It’s just the best at what it’s doing, and it wouldn’t be nearly as good a series without the art.

Some sports manga are an acquired taste, but Eyeshield 21 isn’t.  It’s just really good, and it’s hard to imagine anyone picking it up and not enjoying it unless they were dead-set against it.