MangaThe greatest sports manga ever... for 27 volumes.
Read reviews on Eyeshield 21 on Crunchyroll. Since he was a child, Sena had been bullied into running errands which has given him superb speed which the American football team captain wants as.
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For the first 27 volumes (up until the end of the rematch against Ojo), Eyeshield 21 is simply the best sports manga ever. It's gripping, exciting, hilarious, packed with great characters, and contains more fist-pumping 'hell yeah!' moments than any other manga I've ever read. It has a fantastic cast, not only major characters like Sena and the infamous Hiruma, but also lesser supporting characters like Juumonji, Yukimitsu, Panther and more. Every match is engaging, but the awesome clashes against the undefeated gods of the Shinryuuji Nagas led by Jerk Jock Agon and the Devil Bat's long-awaited rematch against their personal nemeses the White Knights and 'Perfect Player' Shin are the absolutely pinnacle. It is seriously a masterpiece of the genre.
Then the match against Ojo ends and it all falls apart. I could write essays about how dull, unsatisfying and implausible an opponent Hakushu are, or what a friggin' insufferable Mary Suetopia the Teikoku Alexanders are, especially the series' most appalling Marty Stu Yamato Takeru, a flawless superman who is also presented as a perfect Nice Guy despite the fact that he's frankly a smug, arrogant ass. And by the time you get to the World Youth Cup the entire series has collapsed- while there are some good ideas there like a Japan all-star team containing all the best players we've wanted to see team up for ages, The Reveal of the Mummy Man, and the return of Panther, it's a mess of pointless Filler, terrible racial stereotypes and boring one-note Villain Sues like Clifford and Mr Don (the son of the President of the USA, supposedly strong enough to nearly kill Gaou, a man strong enough to roll a car with his bare hands, with a single blow). By volume 37 you just want it to end and stop tainting your memories of how great this manga once was.
Still, there's really no reason you have to go along with it. While I read the entire series scanned as it came out, I only bought the releases of volumes 1-27 so I could relive the thrills, laughs and tears. I'd recommend you do the same and do what the anime adaptation did- pretend the series ended after the Ojo match.
Oh, but skip the anime itself, though. Adaptation Decay incarnate. It reeks.