Eyeshield 21 31

Riichiro Inagaki / Yusuke Murata – Viz – 2010 – 37 volumes

While this is still very, very epic, for some reason I didn’t get caught up in it the same way I did in the ends of some of the other longer games.  Surprising, since this is the very game that will admit Deimon into the Christmas Bowl.  Hiruma is the one that makes the final touchdown, and I was expecting a moment from him identical to the one we got from Sena a few volumes back.  Apparently Hiruma isn’t so sentimental, and little was made of the fact that he was the one that finished it off.

There were some amazing, hard-to-believe plays at the very end.  It comes down to a two-point conversion, and incredibly, Hiruma and Sena are able to communicate with each other and figure out that the play they need to perform isn’t going to work, so things change in a split second and it comes down to Kurita having to take down Gao once and for all.  We knew that was coming, and I was expecting it a little sooner.

I am still very, very amused by all of Hiruma’s tricks.  I absolutely love that their entire strategy is based on the number of things Hiruma may or may not do to fool the opponent.  He tricks so hard that there’s a question about whether he will do a trick or won’t, because you wouldn’t expect the latter, and then what kind of trick he will pull also comes into play.  It’s better when the other team has a character like Marco, a strategist who can go toe-to-toe with Hiruma and thwart him in at least some of his schemes.

I also like the ends of these games because the series does an excellent job of emphasizing that, with every one of Deimon’s victories, the other team is defeated and sits out the rest of the season, and they wanted to go to the Christmas Bowl just as much as Deimon.  A lot of these students are seniors with only one shot left, too, and while it’s not quite the same as the main characters losing, we do get a lot of backstory for all the opponents, and it can still be heartbreaking.

Sigh.  We get to hear yet another team talked up.  One of the things that Eyeshield 21 is bad at is constantly coming up with a “new strongest.”  Each opponent is the strongest possible team they can face.  Ojo has a huge system in place and is the absolute elite.  The Nagas are scary good.  The Poseidons are great, too.  Now the Alexanders have a system in place in their high school that puts even the Big 10 to shame.  I’m… not as excited about the Christmas Bowl, but I’m sure reading it will convince me otherwise.  I suspect more story takes place after that, too, which is a shame because I really hope that Eyeshield 21 doesn’t die a slow Shounen Jump death.

But for now, this is still some fantastic manga.  Play on, Deimon.