By Riichiro Inagaki and Yusuke Murata. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialized in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz.

First of all, I apologize, as I never reviewed Volume 33 when it came out. It’s very hard to review a lot of sports manga when they’re mid-game, much for the same reason it’s harder to review fighting manga when the entire volume is one long battle sequence. FOOTBALL HAPPENS. That is all. Suffice to say things have not been going well, and at the start of this volume it is 41-16 Teikoku.

Of course, Deimon has been here before – in almost every single game, in fact. So now it’s time for our heroes to do what they do best, and come from behind with incredible skills. It’s the sort of thing you can only really pull off when your volume number is in the 30s, as this one is. We’ve been following Sena and company for years now, and we know all their strengths and weaknesses. We want them to succeed desperately. And so when Sena finally gets past Yamato and scores, despite the ludicrous ‘Devil Fourth Dimension’ name (what is it with shonen manga and calling their attacks?), we cheer with everyone else. We cheer even more when you see some mismatches working out, like Taki blocking Yamato to score a safety, or Yukimitsu following his route and scoring a touchdown. Once again, hard work and dedication are shown to be the things that lead to victory.

And victory is what we get here, as the Devil Bats win the game on a tense final 60-yard field goal attempt by Musashi. Hiruma knows there’s a next-to-nothing chance of making this – but doesn’t care, as he, Kurita and Musashi are the original Devil Bats, and he will have faith in his teammate. This is a very heartwarming scene, especially when we see Hiruma screaming at Musashi about how heartbroken “Kurita” was about his leaving the team a year ago, and see in the “what really happened” flashbacks that Hiruma is talking about himself. The kick itself is pure motion picture, hitting the bottom crossbar before going in.

As with all shonen series with huge casts, things aren’t perfect – Karin is completely forgotten, and we’re left with the feeling that once the authors conceived of “the quarterback is a woman!”, they didn’t have any other ideas of what to do with her. And then there’s the last chapter. Honestly, I was expecting the manga to end here. We’re at the Christmas Bowl. The entire focus of the manga has been about the Christmas Bowl. They have never mentioned anything else. And so suddenly seeing Yamato come by and talk about the Youth World Cup, with teams from all over the world competing, really smacks of editorial intervention, of Jump telling them to stretch things out a few more volumes. Yes, I know that we wanted to see Sena battle Panther again, but come on, he hasn’t been around for over 20 volumes. I still feel it should have ended here.

Still, this is an excellent volume, showing all the most common traits of Jump manga and milking them for all they’re worth. And who knows, perhaps the next 3 volumes will be filled with an even more awesome finale. We’ll find out.

By Riichiro Inagaki and Yusuke Murata. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialized in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz.

Here, at last, we reach the Christmas Bowl. Of course, we can’t get there without more INTENSE TRAINING. So the main named characters of every other team in the playoffs to date (excluding Agon, who’s off being a giant dick) are there to beat the crap out of everyone in order to make them stronger. Shin’s chasing Sena in square roots to improve his cutting speed; Riku’s attempting to give Ishimaru a personality… and teaching him to run faster; Kid and Tetsuma are improving Yukimitsu’s ability to run routes; Akaba and Taki… are being giant idiots together; and the linebackers just get the crap beaten out of them.

But the focus here is Monta, who is having a crisis of faith now that he knows he’s battling Honjo’s son. He briefly goes so far as to quit the team, leading to he and Sena getting into a fistfight. This is the most stereotypical shonen section of the manga, with the character designs looking straight out of Hajime no Ippo, and the resolution, with Monta finally able to let go of the past (and Honjo’s baseball glove) is utterly cliched but works well here. (We also get a great gag of Monta breaking Hiruma’s cellphone… one of Hiruma’s *170* cellphones. “What are all those for?”)

And so, finally, the Christmas Bowl. It’s snowing, too, how appropriate. Everyone seems to be showing up. Jumonji’s father, still convinced he’s an illbred thug but willing to watch his son play football; Sena’s parents, who bring their cat (wtf?); and Hiruma’s father, who is merely seen as a menacing shadow. Their are giant snow sculptures of the mascots, Suzuna and company are in cute Santa outfits, and we’re all set.

Of course, Teikoku are a little less eccentric than the other teams we’ve met. Hiruma can’t even find a good idiot to manipulate. And we also get to see them in action for the first time, including Karin. Karin and Sena are compared here, noting their essential meek shyness and their similarities in not wanting to do football initially. Unfortunately, once again ES21 has a good idea that’s slightly flawed in execution, as it’s made clear in flashbacks that Karin simply doesn’t want to be there. She has great skills, and she’ll use them when asked to, but she’d much rather have nothing to do with football. Whereas for Sena, football was a means to show him a better path in life, and he loves it now. I wish the creators hadn’t drawn Karin sobbing during practices; it’s meant to be funny, but just shows that they’re forcing her a bit.

The game itself reads like all the other games in this series have; Deimon is outclassed in almost every way. Teikoku has vowed they’ll shut out Deimon, and nothing here seems to make us think that that outcome is in doubt. (On the other hand, Ishimaru doing the Rodeo Drive was pretty cool.) We’re finally at the point where Deimon may actually lose; it wouldn’t be the first shonen sports manga to see the team fail in the championship and end with them vowing to come back even stronger. I suspect Deimon still has a few tricks up their sleeves, though. They certainly won’t be shutout. We’ll have to wait till October to see more, though.