By Riichiro Inagaki and Yusuke Murata. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialized in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz.
This volume of Eyeshield 21 finishes off the final between Deimon and Hakushuu, and it’s a nailbiter that allows a big moment to most of the cast. Sena shows that he can stand up to Marco’s defense, Kurita defeats Gao thanks to his years of training and his dreams of the Christmas Bowl. (This is shonen, of course dreams are more important than strength). And Hiruma reads situations and changes the plan so fast that your mind simply boggles.
There’s a key bit here where Sena tosses a weak wavering lateral that Monta of course picks right up. Marco notes that he’d assumed that Deimon’s strength is their trickery, and Hiruma’s tendency to do the unexpected and come up with wild ideas. Hiruma does do all that, but the true strength of Deimon is the number of hours they all spent practicing. They can almost read each other’s minds now. This is important for a sports manga because you have to show that the winning team gets there through honest to goodness hard work, just like YOU, young Japanese boy, can!
And so Hiruma is able to tell at the final handoff that his broken arm won’t alloiw him to hand off perfectly to Sena. Sena, who also has a strained arm, notes this as well. So they improvise, and rely on Kurita to ensure that whoever runs the ball in will get into the end zone. Which they do. Deimon wins, they’re going to the Christmas Bowl!
The last scene with Marco was very well done. He’s a mirror to Hiruma, except that another reason for his wanting to win everything was to impress his girl. Well, that’s gone to hell. Still, he underestimates Maruko, who had been watching his dedication the whole time, and notes that if she really hated the way he was doing anything to win she’d simply have quit. So they’re happy, and it’s nice to see one tiny romance in the otherwise chaste Eyeshield 21. (Hiruma may be a mirror to Marco, but he and Mamori won’t be getting together anytime soon.)
And so we get to the awards ceremony, and we see a lingering presence who is identified as Teikoku’s QB. The evil one! The new enemy! And look, he’s a jerk as well, having abandoned his teammates the Spiders just do that he could be on the winning side! And abusing his meek, shy girlfriend! What sort of plot will we…
Oh wait, big fakeout. Yes, the guy is a jerk, but to his frustration, he’s not even fourth string. Teikoku’s QB? It’s the meek little girl. (I assume that you threw your disbelief out the window a long time ago if you’re still reading ES21.) This was a great revelation when it first came out in Jump, a bit less so in the volume itself. It’s just surprising that Sena and company didn’t know Karin was the quarterback, especially since it’s shown they HAVE been researching Teikoku (we see Mamoru cutting all the bits about Honjo’s WR son from press clippings so Monta doesn’t see it and stress out). Especially since Takeru notes Teikoku’s strength is that they’re so good they have nothing to hide.
Still, seeing a meek and shy girl on the football team is interesting, and she’s clearly meant to remind us of Sena. In the end, Teikoku is built up to be unstoppable, but we all know what happens with overconfidence. And Sena ends up proving no slouch either, easily defeating the jerk 4th-string QB in a practice scrum. Oh yes, and Takeru, their star RB? He’s the ACTUAL Eyeshield 21 who was at Notre Dame, and this Christmas Bowl will be about who can keep the title.
A good volume, wrapping up another long game sequence. We should have only a brief breather before the Bowl begins in Vol. 32. As always, the strengths of this series are the shonen spirit it embodies, and the outrageous ideas it contains. And its weakness is the fact that sometimes the writing can’t quite convey these ideas as well as it wants to. Still, definitely recommended.
