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.

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

The Devilbats are right in the middle of the Christmas Bowl finals, and they’re in big trouble. As we saw in Volume 29, Gao succeeded in breaking Hiruma’s arm, and he’s out of the action. Now Sena is the quarterback. Can the team find a way to win with Sena at the helm?

Well, no, in fact. But at least he keeps things going. Sena has a steep learning curve, and can’t pass worth a lick, but that works to the team’s advantage, as the defense for the Dinosaurs can’t figure out where his wobbly passes will end up – only Monta can. And of course a mere throwing arm is not going to keep Hiruma out of the game for long.

And so the volume goes, being an excellent example of classic sports shonen. I suspect that fans of actual American football go nuts reading this series, which plays very fast and loose with the rules and regulations of actual football. But who wants a realistic football manga? We want BEYOND THE IMPOSSIBLE!

Hiruma has to come back because Hiruma is the series. Yes, Sena is Eyeshield 21, and technically the hero, but Hiruma is the driving force. In the character poll that came out the volume before this one, he won 1st place handily. He’s a magnificent bastard who wants to win more than anything. At one point late in this volume, the Devilbats telegraph that Hiruma will throw a long pass. Marco is disbelieving, but Gao just nods. “No. He’ll throw with a broken right arm. He’s that kind of monster.” And yup, he does.

I don’t worry too much about spoilers in shonen sports mangas, because in tournament arcs like this, you know that the only place the main team is going to lose will be in the final, if then. (Actually, Japanese sports mangas have a surprising number of titles that end with our heroes’ defeat, and a vow to come back next year and TRY EVEN HARDER.) Much like all their previous games, the Devilbats fall way behind early, then score in bunches to catch up. Sena is a ‘mobile quarterback’, Monta defeats the Ptera Claw, and even Jumonji manages to pick up a fumble and return it for a score.

And we finally get Marco’s backstory, showing how driven he is to win. His story is tied into the Kansai region’s team, who we hear about here for the first time. They’ve won 25 years in a row over Tokyo’s team, and will presumably be our heroes’ opponents in the Christmas Bowl. And they’re so blindingly good at everything (especially recruiting away from other teams) that Marco loses sight of football being fun and starts to focus on winning at all costs. Maruko’s sad realization of this is quite touching. (I also nominate Marco and Maruko as one of the more confusing romances in shonen. No wonder he calls her Maria.)

The best part of the whole volume, though, may be set in the infirmary where Mamori is trying to get Hiruma to stay put and not go play football with a broken arm. Hiruma simply says “Third question: Fools in the NFL often play with a broken bone. True or False?” We then flash back to Volume 2, where Hiruma said he would ask Mamori three questions, and if she got any wrong, she’d have to obey him. After she got two right, he just changed the subject. Now he asks, and when she answers ‘false’ to try to get him to stay there, he calls in his bargain. Great use of what seemed like a simple gag in the very early days of the series.

This series is nearing another climax, and this has been one of my favorite volumes to date. As an example of shonen sports in one of its purer forms, you can’t go wrong with Eyeshield 21.