at first, I didn't wanna give a chance for this manga.. cus I never like American Football and I thought this manga is gonna be all about tackling people, people got injured with broken bones, rinse and repeat..

boy was I wrong.. it had much more depth in it.. the mysterious Hiruma, weird jokes, cool storyline, and much more.. it's not really the best sport manga, but it is one of the best.. and even if you dunno a thing about american football, there are some guides available throughout the series, so you can still pretty much follow what's going on..

You have to read it

If you're a football fan, you'll have a hard time with the corny name additions to moves we see in replays and in games all the time, the mismatch in weights in positions, the absolute absense of penalties, characters being supposedly NFL-ready but are only HS'ers, and a bunch of other stuff. This really is just nitpicking, though.

ES21 really IS a very enjoyable shounen sports manga and the majority of the characters are lovable. We see Sena grow more and more as a man and watch him destroy just about everyone he faces.

teh best manga eva

Best sports manga (and one of the best of any manga genre for that matter). Absolutely love the character development, story progression, art improvement (Murata a god). Hiruma best

It's as good as all other Jump sport manga. Very entertaining, a lot of humor and non-stop game action and I gave it a credit as the first decent American Football manga. But it has a same problem as all other popular sport: the longer it drag, the worse and unrealistic it is. This is my calculation for all sport manga:
About 100 chapters: awesome - ~200 chapters: it's fine and a bit unrealistic - ~300 bad and ridiculous.
It sometimes is quite racist but I don't mind. Anyway, it's an interesting sport manga even if you know American football or not.

... Last updated on January 26th, 2010, 9:31pm

Well, it's been said by previous comments once again. As they say, it's a very good manga and while unrealistic for an actual football game, especially on a middle/high school level, it's VERY funny and only kinda serious. Maybe for younger audiences but still something I would suggest to everybody. Again VERY funny. I personally don't like sports mangas too much but this one is pretty good.

@ architta..
aww come on,get a break..this is manga,anything can happens
i do play football in my early years,but i didn't complain..since i know that es21 just a fantasy.

Eyeshield 21 is definitely one of the best shounen series around. I love all of the characters, I think they're one of the most developed characters ever made in manga, even the 'villains'. I find myself cheering on for them when they're leading as well as sympathizing with them when they're down in the dumps. The games are really the one to watch out for although the filler in between is also surely not to be missed. Also, ES21 is one of those manga whose jokes and circumstances you will never really get tired of.

If you are an avid manga reader and you haven't read this, you ARE surely and 100% missing out so go download/buy it now!!!

Nothing can get more perfect than this manga. I wasn't very interested in football but this changed me, of course, I only like ES21. This has taught me many things while reading it. One of them was that i wasnt bad at sports, its just that I've never tried and so gave up on it. Then there is the plot and the character that i love. This is the only manga that's not disappointing. Each and every week, i anticipate the next chapter. Truly this is the perfect manga, at least for me it is.