Inazuma Eleven

While other schools in Japan compete for the title of being the best soccer team in the country, Raimon Middle School's soccer club, Inazuma Eleven, struggles to rise from the verge of being disbanded. The grandson of Inazuma Eleven's first generation goalkeeper and captain of the team, Mamoru Endou, takes the challenge of kicking the long neglected club back into shape. To do this, he'll need a little help and more than a little luck.

Mamoru Endou finds hope in the hands of Shuuya Gouenji, a brilliant young player who has given up on soccer. Mamoru is determined to get Shuuya and other new recruits to join his team, no matter what the cost. Is his passion and determination enough to treat the ailing club? Or is there no more hope for the team?

Endou, Mamoru Main

Takeuchi, Junko Japanese

Gouenji, Shuuya Main

Nojima, Hirofumi Japanese

Kidou, Yuuto Main

Yoshino, Hiroyuki Japanese

Fubuki, Shirou Supporting

Miyano, Mamoru Japanese

Kiyama, Hiroto Supporting

Mizushima, Daichuu Japanese

Afuro, Terumi Supporting

Sanpei, Yuuko Japanese

Kazemaru, Ichirouta Supporting

Nishigaki, Yuka Japanese

Fudou, Akio Supporting

Kaji, Yuuki Japanese

Tsunami, Jousuke Supporting

Sakaguchi, Shuuhei Japanese

Midorikawa, Ryuuji Supporting

Kodaira, Yuuki Japanese

Akiyama, Katsuhito Director

Mima, Masafumi Sound Director

Tsuda, Naokatsu Episode Director

Fujimoto, Jirou Episode Director

Reviews

Jun 9, 2024

C0ckstar

Recommended

Insanely good epic fiction construction.
A never disappointing story considering a non-exhaustive main character. Epic masterpiece everyone should watch it at least 0.5 times!!
If you do not enjoy it then your opinion must be slightly wrong -_-.
The anime strongly advertises a never surrender position while mantaining a considerable fast pace throughout the story.
Solid developed characters with a strong team spirit. Not as much plot twists as in Neymar's career but still good to give it a go!

Some crazy abilities are revealed throughout the series and team spirit is unrivaled! Of course that there are some stepbacks from the original goal but what makes this series unique ... is how they get over those same stepbacks together and stronger as ever.

Extremely epic content!

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Jul 30, 2024

Nezzuji

Mixed Feelings

Just as Pokémon has done, Inazuma Eleven undoubtedly marked the childhood of many kids from the 2000s. Many of us probably watched the episodes on TV when we were younger and had a great time. But with a more mature perspective, is Inazuma Eleven really that good?

The first saga of "Inazuma Eleven" is composed of three arcs/seasons:
-1: Royal Academy/Football Frontier | EP 1 - 26
-2: Alius Academy | EP 27 - 67
-3: Football Frontier International | EP 68 - 127

Let's start with the first 26 episodes. If you only know Inazuma Eleven from a distance and have never really been interested in it, this is ... probably the part you have in mind. This large introductory arc revolves around the Royal Academy, allowing us to discover the characters, their personalities, and the universe. It’s a solid introduction.

The second arc is based on the Alius Academy. This is probably the most important arc in terms of character development, both in mentality and skills. There are many new characters and techniques, but paradoxically, this is the arc I liked the least. Discovering new characters and their techniques was quite enjoyable, but the "battle" against the Alius Academy felt endless. It seemed like they wanted to stretch this arc as long as possible to allow significant character development, but the story with the Alius Academy didn’t progress. Whenever they managed to defeat "the best team of the Alius Academy," an even stronger team would appear, and then another one, and even after defeating them, it would turn out they hadn't given their all in the first match. This endless cycle diminished the enjoyment of an arc that otherwise brought many delightful new elements.

Finally, the third and last arc, the Football Frontier International! This was by far my favorite arc. You can feel all the character development from the previous arc, and also the improvement in the level of their opponents. Overall, the work gives more importance to team strategies. Each team has its own way of playing and approaching matches, making each match different. For example, the Qatar team in episodes 73-74 plays to exhaust the protagonists as much as possible in the first half, even if it means conceding two goals, before catching up in the second half by relying on their superior endurance. This original play style is representative of the diversity seen in almost every team in this arc, ensuring the experience never feels repetitive.

Let’s talk more specifically about what bothered me during my viewing. First of all, it’s important to note that Inazuma Eleven targets a young audience. When we were kids, it suited us just fine, but with the perspective I have now, the humor and morals conveyed by the work won’t resonate with adults. I’m not sure if we can call this a flaw since it was part of what made Inazuma Eleven so impactful for many of us during our childhoods. However, I feel that aiming at a young audience sometimes gives the creators a pass to include narrative conveniences and perfectly illogical elements.

Let’s start with the techniques. The biggest flaw I see with the techniques is that instead of learning new techniques to adapt to more situations, they learn new techniques to replace the previous ones. For example, Mark Evans (Mamoru Endou) goes through: God Hand, Majin the Hand, Fist of Justice, Megaton Head, Hammer of Fury, God Catch... I’m probably forgetting some, but each of these techniques replaced the previous one instead of giving Mark multiple techniques to handle different situations.

Additionally, the simplicity in the progression of techniques, like G2, V2, etc., is problematic. When a technique becomes too weak, it suddenly evolves in the middle of a match. For instance, when an opponent manages to get past Mark’s "Hammer of Fury," later in the match, Mark will evolve his "Hammer of Fury" to "Hammer Of Fury V2" to stop the shot. Then the opponent evolves their technique to XXX V2, and Mark evolves his to XXX V3, and so on. This endless progression is ridiculous; one of Darren Lachance’s (Tachimukai Yuki) techniques even reached G5.

Despite these issues, I still had a great time watching Inazuma Eleven. However, as an adult, the main flaw is the target audience. I didn’t feel particularly engaged with what I was watching; I didn’t really experience any emotions other than the joy of seeing characters I loved watching as a kid, but that’s just nostalgia. Objectively, for someone discovering the series now, it wouldn’t have the same impact. The connections between episodes are minimized to cater to the young audience, so missing an episode isn’t a big deal, which makes it hard to build a stable storyline.

If you watched the series when you were younger, I recommend it for the nostalgia. It’s enjoyable, colorful, and cheerful, and you’ll have a good time. If you’re new to the series, give it a try. It’s not something that will make you want to binge 15 episodes a day; you can easily watch an episode here and there without losing track of the story.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Aug 21, 2024

Ruxenus

Not Recommended

Funny

Preliminary (26/127 eps)

Edit: 300 episodes of various series later and there is actually some anime less worth watching, still, I think the visible public score for Inazuma Eleven of 7.70 is too high for its educational, logical and satisfactory value (even in nostalgia) and I would only accept it without writing a review it it was less than 7 and that's why I wrote this review in the first place, because you shouldn't depend on the score showed right at clicking on the title if you read this.


The least worth to watch anime in my tierlist as someone who currently has 1,445 episodes of various anime series ... watched. I watched Inazuma Eleven about 10 years ago as a kid on TV with no internet, and back then I felt a shame that they showed only 26 episodes on the TV channel. In present, I would thank TV director or whoever stopped Inazuma Eleven from keep on going. As an adult I think if I watched 27th episode back then, it could make me become so silly in life. Personally, from all anime when I had no internet like Bakugan, Pokemon... only Doreamon has a possibilty of being more useless than Inazuma Eleven but I don't even know if I even saw first episode of Doraemon so I can't add it to my list in appropriate way, that leaves Inazuma Eleven.

So since Inazuma Eleven might always be the worst anime on my anime list, let me get to details why this show is completely not worth for people who have objectives in life or just want to be the best/smartest/most mature:
1. Story 3/10.
First episode - first exciting matc- uh sorry I mean: kids probably without magic just lost to kids with actual magic and villain team trainer drives his hugee sci-fi truck into losers' football school leaving everything in ruins. If that wasn't ironic enough, keepers of peace in the world can never do anything about that. That's prologue to us, you probably don't want to hear more silly stories from this show, so let me get to overall story now. As I mentioned there is a villain who is a manager for Teikoku - a team that is said to be the best football team in Japan, the villain's goal is to destroy all football schools in Japan or even the world, so that his team will always be the best. The main character Endou Mamouru from Inazuma Eleven team gathers all friends for the match against team Teikoku. Boring? Well, they have magical techniques to handle the soccer ball... they just need to learn to use their organs, muscles and bones in the specific way. Don't expect a hidden more complex explanation than this. Additionally, it seems you can never learn other peoplet's techniques unless they are your family. Most people I talked about are just kids, because for some reason adults don't play football in this universe, except Endou's grandfather. The story detail holes are uncountable. The only true value of the story I caught that is still too common is to fight for your dreams, but it's just said by a main character who wants football to live forever, his argumenting is too simple anyway.

2. Art 3/10.
Every scene outside of kicking the ball is going to be so lazy, without deeper object details. Like I would really recommend this anime to people who has never watched anime to show that Japanese artists are different from old american cartoons' artists. Remember this: soccer field = high quality and creativity, any other field = culturally known anime tropes. You may say 'hey maybe art then isn't that bad? Just skip to football match', well the minus about soccer field scenes is that the magical techniques I mentioned before have names, and for magical techinque to work, users have to scream technique's name out loud and have exactly THE SAME animation and camera angles when they perform them! This fact just makes serious people look away from the screen the 4th time they see the same animation. If they didn't put high quality into these techinques then I would have to put 2/10 for art.

3. Sound 2/10.
I'm sorry but I won't even believe if you tell me that Inazuma Eleven OST, openings and endings help you think straight about difficullt problems. Especially if you say that you prefer english dub of the first opening over japanese or that second opening has creative lyrics. Everything about sound in this show is low quality, low effort work. Music enjoyers would get ill from being forced to listen to these songs and soundtracks. Also, who would say they like underage low quality girls with woman voice singing like in a bar for drunk adults in ending 1? Also wow, all the lyrics are really relatable and analitic to the story of the show, nah I am gonna stop with that additional sarcasms from now on.

4. Characters 3/10.
Endou Mamoru is the captain of Inazuma Eleven team and the main character, but not that original, his personality is too close to Naruto, oh yea Naturo's voice actor voiced him too. 2 other main characters are: Shuuya Gouenji - a random quiet and skilled guy who might have schizophremia of his sister and will protect her from soccer ball hitting her; Yuuto Kidou - the captain of Teikoku team, yeah the team whose manager adult destroys all football schools whose teams lose to him, and Yuuto sees nothing illegal in that. 90% of side characters you'll see will never get a complex/deep story, there won't even be flashbacks of the past for most of them. Truly, even a preschooler could create these character designs and their simple stories. The only thing saves it from 2/10 is that characters don't have soulless mimics and you are still able to feel them, just not often enough.

5. Enjoyment 4/10.
This rank of enjoyment is higher than any other aspect, because this anime somehow kept on going (It looks like some future arc ended Inazuma Eleven story in 2018) and never got cancelled. Maybe if I analyzed very deeply, I would say that show is somehow enjoyable but I will never say that it's not addictive, it is and it's more addictive for kids than adults of course for useless reasons. When I watched it 10 years ago the most enjoyable scene was the preview on the end of 26th episode. Preview the most enjoyable from the whole show? Pff, almost all anime fans don't even watch previews, how could anyone explain solidly why would this show be actually enjoyable? The another reason for enjoyment 4/10 is that at least it's different from real life football and that the anime didn't copy any other sport anime, but I'd still rather watch real life The World/Continent Cup Finals over any episode of this show and I don't even like football.

6. Overall 3/10.
To all anime fans, even if I didn't watch enough of sports anime yet, I think almost all sport shows would be more valuable than Inazuma Eleven, at least you can have much better expectations for Haikyu!! or Blue Lock. To kids, most of you will feel a regret and a little of cringe someday if you watched over 10 episodes, but don't worry as you can see I watched this as a kid too, what's important to do about shows you think are bad is to be confident and figure out the smart reasons for why the specific show is bad, smart enough to get majority of people on your side. To adults, don't try to finish a kids show in adolscent period, some people may think about you wrongly if they hear you enjoy watching kids show.
Conclusion of the review: only kids can enjoy Inazuma Eleven, and creators of this show may have not worked hard enough, but even if it's the worst anime on my list, it doesn't mean I want any changes to be made about this show, it's just that people won't learn almost any of valuable threads of an use in real life from watching this show.

I rank anime by a scale of what in my opinion is worth to watch, anime that will teach you some serious or even comedical knowledge/attitudes in order to be a mature, adequate and respected person worldwide, and this anime is the least worth from those that I have watched.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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	Poll: Inazuma Eleven Episode 26 Discussion greenmush - Aug 7, 2010	5 replies	by Ranxomare »» Oct 30, 5:33 AM
	Poll: Inazuma Eleven Episode 25 Discussion greenmush - Aug 7, 2010	4 replies	by Ranxomare »» Oct 30, 4:12 AM
	Poll: Inazuma Eleven Episode 127 Discussion edeswen - Apr 27, 2011	22 replies	by xXyunosiaqXx »» Sep 30, 9:21 AM
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	Poll: Inazuma Eleven Episode 75 Discussion BluaPapilio - Sep 7, 2013	1 replies	by Komlan_6 »» Aug 1, 8:56 AM

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