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

Feb 9, 2026

janusin

Recommended

i have known inazuma eleven for a long time; it was the first show i watched on tv. when i was a little kiddo, i recall going up the stairs at school while singing the opening. as i got older, i forgot about the show, but years ago, the title popped up in my mind and i began to binge-watch it!

most people think that ie is a show made for people who like football, but i disagree. inazuma eleven is not only a football show, it shows you the value of friendship and how the characters bond while playing. there are a lot of characters ... to love or hate... i believe that inazuma eleven is a must-watch anime. you will enjoy it so much. even if it doesn't look like it, this series has a deep plot.

(my handle is actually the name of one of the characters, janus)

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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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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Jan 12, 2026

Ruxenus

Not Recommended

Funny

Preliminary (26/127 eps)

One of the least worth anime to watch ever, saying as someone who currently has over 2k episodes of various anime series watched while almost always staying focused on what happens since watching anime has been since around 6 years like a passion for me. Though I watched Inazuma Eleven about 13 years ago on a TV channel as a kid with no internet when I didn't know that Japan even exists, and I almost got hooked about it but back then they aired only 26 episodes. In present, I would thank TV director or whoever stopped Inazuma Eleven from getting more episodes aired. Because ... recently I rewatched a few episodes of this series, looked at other openings and peeked at others episodes to see if there are some important points I didn't realize. And what I came to realize is that if I got hooked from 27th episode back when I was a kid, it had quite a risk to influence my personality and goals to become worse and less respected in future. Personally, from all anime series when I had no internet like Bakugan, Pokemon... only Doreamon has a possibilty of being less worth (according to rules on my account) than Inazuma Eleven. But I don't even know if I even saw first episode of Doraemon and licensing issues made even first 20 episodes of Doreamon difficult to find in chronogical set so I can't add it to my list in appropriate way and my memory is quite worse about it anyway, so that leaves Inazuma Eleven.

Let me share non-spoiler details on why this show is worthless especially for people who have objectives in life or just want to be 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 this story 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 muscles, bones and maybe even organs in the specific way. Don't expect a hidden more complex explanation than this because teams have different powers from each other that are strongly based on "unnatural matters" or something like that as if they were close to god, but it doesn't make sense for world-building because humans who don't play football can't use techniques for other kind of activities in their life. Additionally, it seems you can never use other people's techniques unless they are from 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 and his team. The story detail holes are uncountable. The only true value from this story I caught, which 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 no matter how dangerous it becomes, his way of 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. I would never recommend this anime to people who have 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 = unoriginal scenes that reference casual 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 maybe even have to put 2/10 for art, because characters' random and unrealsitic head, hair and eye shapes don't help too.

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, also basically each opening has the most lazy design of all openings collections I've ever seen in this industry, only the 3rd opening is a little rare. Almost everything about sound in this show is low quality, low effort work. Music enjoyers would get ill if someone forced them to listen to these songs and soundtracks when they don't feel like it. Also, who would say they like underage low quality girls with women voices singing like in a bar in ending 1? Maybe I am not an active music learner to have a professional knowledge in this aspect, but if you ever consider these soundtracks as one of the bests, then I think most of professional musicians would give sort of opinion that you have a very bad taste in music. Sound effects are just the final reason why this score is the lowerst too, balls always making jet sounds, and the suspense sounds are so overused that nobody can see them as funny in the way this season is edited.

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. Two 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. Yuuto, seemingly the one who matures a little more effectively than all kids, sees nothing wrong in that for a very long time. From all I know about Inazuma Eleven, 90% of side characters you'll see will never get even a small complex story aspect. Truly, sometimes you may think that a preschooler created these character 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, but you would rarely find them relatable in any sort of way considering that they never discuss what happens in their world where football alone is 3 times more artistic than all other spheres of life.

5. Enjoyment 4/10.
This rank of enjoyment is higher than any other aspect, because this anime somehow kept on going (it looks like the last Inazuma Eleven arc from anime was added in 2018 but somehow they decided to come back with a new game in 2025) and was never said to get cancelled. Maybe if I put much more work to analyze the entertainment aspect of this series, I would say that show has some sort of small reason to be enjoyable. But I will never say that it's not addictive. It is addictive but it specifically hooks kids more than adults of course for reasons that won't help them behave calm and safely when needed in reality. When I watched it 13 years ago, the most enjoyable scene was the preview on the end of 26th episode. Preview being the most enjoyable from the whole show? Almost all anime fans don't even see previews as remarkable. Of course I would not score this aspect higher in public when most plot twist happen before a team of a most important character of a match almost loses. None of characters we learn about don't need training at the first place if they try completetely new moves, which they come up with during a match, always effectively while expressing that they are very exhausted. 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 series would be more valuable than Inazuma Eleven. At least you can have much better expectations for Haikyu!! or Blue Lock which are already made in a way to have aspects that teens and adults would find close to their spirits too. To kids, most of you will feel a regret and a little of cringe someday if you watched over 10 episodes actively, 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 knowing that there are probably many series appreciated by adults that you would rate lower than Inazuma Eleven especially if you think it's one of the best series.

Final conclusion: only kids can enjoy Inazuma Eleven, and creators made a mistake to put no care in most characters' stories while putting hundreds of them with random aesthetics. But I understand that it was made in times when some rare people did not care about how many public critics they would encounter on their way. So even if it's the worst anime on my list, I don't mean that I want it to be cancelled or less available. Some people got a great nostalgia from it and I can see how they may have rare personalities for which remembering the spirit of this show itself gives them hope, but the majority of us won't learn almost any of valuable threads of an use in real life from watching this show. Getting addictive into this series has a small possibility to get you to act in front of others like someone stubborn in casual situations for no reason at all.

If you still don't understand my way of thinking here, then basically I rank anime by a scale of what in my opinion is worth to watch and not by to which extent they managed to make me feel good. On this account I'm mainly trying to recommend people anime series that are reletable in logic in some way to reality and which will teach some serious or comedic knowledge and attitudes in order to be a mature, adequate and respected person worldwide. I hope this review is a great example on series that I consider far away from being objectively worth to watch. I'm not trying to show you that it's wrong to like the entries I rated as very low, but making you aware that most people will probably be influenced in a negative way by these when they encounter difficult matters in real life while reminiscing of such series as this one as "very good objectively".

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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