Eyeshield 21 initially had me curious because of its premise; outside of the US and Canada, works of fiction that feature American football are next to non-existent, if not straight up unheard of. A lot of the people who liked the show/manga, much to my surprise, were also people who weren’t even remotely interested in sports anime and often mentioned just how utterly fun the whole ordeal was.
Fast forward a few years and the show faded from mainstream anime attention, having a cult following of loyal fans but otherwise largely forgotten. While randomly scrolling, I ended up marathoning 14 episodes, finding the show immensely entertaining but due to real-life happenings, ended up putting it on hold.
Eventually, I marathoned the anime, read the manga (from the beginning, no less) in the space of 5 days.
If there’s one sentence to sum up Eyeshield 21, it’s that it’s earnest, loveable and endearing; the manga never pretends it’s something it’s not, and not once while watching or reading was I ever disinterested or bored. It’s charming and incredibly fun to read, and everything meshes together to create a near-perfect experience with something for just about everyone.
The characters are varied, well-developed and likeable, with the manga humanizing all the opponents the main characters face and focusing on their struggles as well as the heroes. The manga’s incredibly funny and touching, and there’s no sense of mood whiplash.
This is also thanks to the incredible artwork, which does an amazing job in showing off attractive and interesting designs to all the various characters, making them easy to recognize and appealing to look at at the same time. Matches are intense and captivating, and there’s no sense that the manga is ever dragging its feet.
The one flaw the manga has (which carries over to the anime) is the presence of some…questionable, racist stereotypes. While exaggeration is something this manga does incredibly well and falls into narm charm, there are moments where it also falls into unfortunate racist stereotypes, especially a particular dynamic early on between a black player and a white coach. While the manga by no stretch of the imagination glorifies this, this can be an issue for some people.
This manga/anime is fun, energetic, engaging and above all something that just about anyone can enjoy. I cannot recommend this highly enough.
