Eyeshield 21 28
December 12, 2009
Riichiro Inagaki / Yusuke Murata – Viz – 2009 – 37 volumes
YES. This volume has a long flashback about Hiruma and how he and Kurita met. It’s been my favorite part of the series so far. I wasn’t really expecting it. I hadn’t thought about how the two met, since I assumed they were just classmates at their old school, and I wasn’t really expecting… an origin story for Hiruma, since he is just a high school student. I was rewarded hansomely for my non-curiousity.
We learn about how Hiruma and Kurita met, and also about how both developed an interest in football, and how the Devil Bats got started, and also how Hiruma’s gambling and coercing habits built on themselves over the years. It’s awesome. It also involves the line “Die, you jovial tub of lard,” which may make Hiruma the greatest character in all of manga. I’m not sure.
It’s awesome. It’s funny, and on topic, and builds up Hiruma and Kurita, and is just everything I love about Eyeshield 21. As I’ve said before, I’m still not tired of reading this series, even 28 volumes in, and it’s because of things like this. This may be one of the single most consistently entertaining series I’ve read, aside from all-time favorites like One Piece and Jojo and the like.
Other parts of the volume look at Gao and the Hakushu Dinosaurs. We’ve learned that Gao causes people serious bodily harm, but we see it first hand in the game with Seibu. The game begins and ends in this volume, which I wasn’t expecting. When a team is built up as much as Hakushu, I expect Deimon to play them, but in this case, I couldn’t imagine the rematch with Seibu would fail to happen. It was a tossup, and I was expecting it to draw out a little bit more. I was quite happy it didn’t, though, because I get tired of games with Deimon sometimes, and I couldn’t imagine how a game with side characters could last and still be entertaining. So… yeah, it’s good that that didn’t happen.
For anyone still reading and marvelling at my amazing writing skills, the one thing that makes me uncomfortable about these parts with Gao is that he’s such a brutal guy. They stress that he plays by the rules, but he is ruthless, and does seriously injure people in ways that football players get injured (broken bones, incapacitated, stuff like that). While Deimon has had plenty of opponents, all of them difficult/eccentric in their own ways, none of them have been truly malicious, which is part of the goofy charm of the series. A dark character like this just doesn’t fit.
December 14, 2009 at 6:51 am
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