The Shrine

I recently revisited this series, and I noticed that in the Japanese/Chinese boards this is hailed as 'realistic', like comparable to Slam Dunk which basically only requires 5 of the top 10 NBA players of all time all went to the same 4 high schools (this is an extremely low bar for impossible scenarios in the world of sports). Is it because American Football is basically not watched anywhere outside of USA? I mean to me Eyeshield 21 barely makes more sense than Prince of Tennis. I'm pretty sure the stuff like Shin just choking/impaling people would be totally illegal, or the fact that they've guys who can literally ran through 11 guys in front of them. Or that having a good arm is apparently not a significant factor for a quarterback as long as you got the brains. I mean, Tebow at least can run and he's got God on his side to make up his lack of passing ability, and even that didn't work out too well.

I'm almost wondering if it's because Asia is usually not a powerhouse sports nation that we have so many sports manga being popular, since most people have no idea if it's right. I know when Slam Dunk came out the author said he was pretty sure most of his reader have never heard of basketball which is why he wasn't sure if it was going to be successful. I mean, I remember seeing an argument that went like this:

A: "Soandso in this manga is supposed to be an all-NBA talent, but for some reason only scores 20 PPG in high school and that makes no sense!"
B: "Do you think real life is like manga??? I bet even Michael Jordan would have a hard time scoring 20 PPG in high school."

Of course, we know even totally scrub NBA players, heck even weak division A college basketball players can do this trivially in high school basketball. But most people agreed with the B here. So I guess maybe Asians just think in American Football you can just choke your opponent until they pass out? Or is Eyeshield 21 is supposed to actually be representative of American Football? I'm pretty sure Sena and Hiruma both would've had their career ended the first time they get tackled/sacked.

Hajime no Ippo actually taught me about Boxing and various boxing styles/techniques, and even training methods are actually used by real boxers.

I'm not really sure what Eyeshield 21 taught me, I thought a lot of it was nonsensical heh.

I don't care if a manga is realistic. Prince of Tennis is one of the more entertaining sports manga I've read and none of these guys are remotely human, but I don't get why people think something like even Captain Tsubasa is realistic (you don't simply dodge the entire team in soccer). I do have a problem when people can't seem to get the basic strategy/rules of the game right. For example nobody would be surprised if someone in POT destroyed the earth with a tennis ball (Tezuka wiped out the dinosaurs with a forehand after all), but you can't have a guy dual wielding rackets like the latest arc (this is completely illegal). I mean look nobody would be surprised if someone can dual wield or even use 6 rackets at once like the main character of Sengoku Basara does with swords, but the rules says you can only use one racket.

In fact what bothers me the most about ES21 is that you've all these guys who are talk about how important it is to have brains in American Football and then they wouldn't go for a 2 point conversion with like 3 minutes left in the game that'd put them up by 7 or 3 instead of 6 or 2. Then again, Shin said it's okay to score only 1 point in American Football as long as the opponent scores 0, so I guess that probably tells you about how much the author knows about American Football.

I particularly hated the girl quarterback (Karin) at the end, who can't throw or run or even had a brain, but apparently is the best quarterback on the best team in Japan, and then it turned out she couldn't possibly even make second string all-Japan team. I don't know if Tebow came into prominence before ES21 got to that part, but literally the only way that part could've made sense was if Karin had God on her side too. I mean seriously her special power is that she can lob the ball really high in the air really slowly? Can she even put a spiral spin on the football?

As a side note, I think it's funny while the title is called Eyeshield 21 and Hiruma is the hyped character throughout the story (always talking about how his nonsensical strategy works), the best player on the Devil Team is actually Monta. Bud Walker flat out said Monta is the strongest man outside of the Pentagram, and honestly in terms of offensive capability he's only below Bud Walker, Clifford, and Panther (the other two guys don't play a real offensive position), so he's pretty much the #4 in the world. Even though his physique is a bit weak, current NFL rules pretty much prevents you from touching the receiver, and Monta can sense where the ball is without looking. So, he's the guy with the best chance of making NFL. Even if he doesn't make offensive team, he'd be a very good onside kick specialist since he can sense where the ball will bounce on an onside kick as well.