by Riichiro Inagaki (story) and Yususke Murata (art), 189 pagesThree things to know here:
1. Eyeshield 21 is all about football.
2. Football bores me to no end. Its only role in my life is as background noise to food-induced comas on Turkey Day.
3. I wish I owned the entire run of Eyeshield 21.
That's the short version. Here's the long one (with apologies for unchecked squee):
Shorty Sena has lived his whole young life protected by his big-sisterly neighbor Mamori, but when he gets to high school he decides he needs to man up and make a fresh start. As he shops around for a suitable club to join, he attracts the attention of some bullies, a species with which he sadly has much experience, having run enough forced errands and run away from enough confrontations to have developed his natural instincts for speed and coordination--gifts he's only ever seen as bully buffers. But as fate should have it, his latest successful mad dash through a bustling crowd has been observed by one with a great appreciation for those "golden legs"...and who has no intention of letting them get away from him.
Senior quarterback Hiruma is a mad, crafty young man with a dream. He and his gentle giant of a lineman, fellow senior Kurita, want more than anything to get into the Christmas Bowl. But to do that, they need a proper team, and not just the usual substitutes Hiruma "recruits" (via blackmail and / or large automatic weapons) from other clubs for game days. What he needs is a secret weapon....
And so, poor Sena finds himself the third member of the Deimon Devil Bats. To keep his identity secret from any rival sports clubs that might try to steal him away (and from over-protective Mamori, who would make him quit if she knew), Hiruma has Sena just pretend to be the team manager but wear a tinted visor and go by the name "Eyeshield 21" whenever he takes the field as a running back, รก la Clark Kent. Coins flip, whistles blow.
And that's it. The boys play football. Of course, it's football with no foul rules. And hyperbole manifests as reality on a regular basis. And time-clocks must run in an alternate dimension to accommodate all the analysis from the stands and internal monologues on the field. But it's all part of the fun. They play, they train, they win, they lose, they learn. They dodge bullets and hang out in their ever-expanding club room. New players, each with unique skills and a personality to match, are recruited. Teammates become friends, feared rivals become respected mentors, and the once insignificant underdogs become a force to be reckoned with.
By this volume, the Devil Bats have made it to the center stage they've striven toward for so long. Pairing up with their counterparts from past opposing teams, the boys train up to the last moment as Hiruma shouts from his duck-taped Segue / oxygen tank combo (he's trying to speed-heal a broken arm--don't ask). Then, before they know it, it's kickoff time.
Unpredictable. Laugh-out-loud hilarious. Embarrassingly moving (I once teared up in the middle of Good Year while waiting for them to replace a blow-out--me, trying not to cry, over a football manga, in the tire shop). And drawn with such finesse that the reader can identify individual lead characters from their hands alone.
Eyeshield 21 may not make me much more excited about real world football, but it has made me cackle at the television as I think how much more fun it would be if the Devil Bats were to take the field instead (I wouldn't want the RL players to stay--they'd only get hurt). What would Hiruma do?--I would give up pie to see that. Pie.
No comments:
Post a Comment