Sports Anime: The Favorites, the Blahs, and What Defines Them

Time for a master post about my favorite anime genre! I already wrote about how sports anime first earned my favor, so I won't repeat myself. You can check out old posts on the topic if you want. This post will deal with current favorites, as well as those that are, well, blah, and how I tend to judge them. If you haven't tried any good sports anime, I hope you'll check out a few of the titles I mention in this post.

New Prince of Tennis fits under blah, but boy, it was good to see
Echizen and the rest again. And he looks good in more modern
visuals (from ep. 1).

Obviously, not all sports anime are created equal. After watching about 15 of them (including currently airing titles), I know what I look for in sports anime. Some, like Kuroko's Basketball, win my favor through decent character development, great suspense, and smooth animation. Others, like Area no Kishi, fall flat. Still, I've become just enough of a fan girl to welcome all new sports anime into my watching list, with only a few qualifications:

1. It must not be ecchi or otherwise distractingly offensive. Thus, Wanna be the Strongest in the World never made it near my watching list. I'm pretty sure the creators of that show were more concerned with anatomy than pro wrestling, anyway.

2. If it's a sequel series, and the earlier seasons aren't legally available online, I probably won't watch it. Sorry, Haijime no Ippo Rising.

3. It must be available on one of my preferred viewing sites. My entertainment budget is small: Crunchyroll subscription + the occasional book/movie/etc. And anime isn't the only thing on my birthday list.

4. If sports only take a small role in the anime, it must win my attention through other avenues. Suzuka, for example, got my attention a few years ago because of the track element, but lost my attention after a few episodes. I can't remember much about it, except that it was only available dubbed on Hulu.

5. I trust my fellow Anime-Planet users. If they only give an anime 1-2 stars on average, I probably won't try it--even if it's a sports anime.

Once a sports anime gets on my watching list, it won't easily get kicked off. For example, Area no Kishi, or Knight in the Area, continues to sit on the list, over two years after it started airing. I still have four more episodes to go. At an average rate of one episode a month, I should be done by the end of summer. The only character I care for at all in the show is the main one, Kakeru. It's not his fault that I've lost interest in his story or that some of his friends annoy me. Unfortunately, my affection for Kakeru comes mostly from my sense of duty.

When I don't care much about the characters in a sports anime, we have a serious problem. Even one very good character can save a show from hitting the bottom of my list. Dear Boys, for example, has Aikawa. For those of you who don't know, Aikawa is a little like Kuroko in size and personality, but with more presence on the court (and much less presence in my heart). Aikawa makes me smile as I remember his show, which otherwise bored me.

So, what makes a sports anime good? I've started a list of traits shared by anime I enjoy.

1. As already mentioned, good character development is vital. Usually, as in The Prince of Tennis and Kuroko's Basketball, many of the main character's teammates and opponents are as fully developed as he is. In fact, I almost know more about some of Kuroko's friends than I do about him. But, sometimes, as in Initial D, one character is enough to gain my love.

2. Similarly, the characters must play off each other well. Imagine Ace of the Diamond (Daiya no Ace) without the catchers, Miyuki and Kris, prodding the pitchers into shape. It wouldn't be nearly the show we've come to love.

3. Animation is key. Yes, I realize this applies to any animated production. But the way basketball players move in Kuroko's Basketball enchants me. I love watching how Kagami and the rest handle the ball with flowing agility and elegance. Same goes for the newer anime, Haikyuu!!, which comes from the same studio. Even if I didn't care about the characters, I'd enjoy watching them play.

As a side note, I've enjoyed Ping Pong: The Animation this season, even though it's rather ugly at first glance. The animation is very different than anything else I'm watching... but I like some of the angles and action sequences anyway.

4. I enjoy good pacing and edge-of-my-seat suspense. When shows get this part right, I'm worked up like a football fan during Superbowl. When shows get it wrong, I imagine it's like when your favorite football team is have a really lackluster, bad game. For example, New Prince of Tennis tried to capitalize on the character development from the first 170 or so episodes. But this new, 13 episode series fell completely flat in the pacing and suspense department. An important match was squished into a single episode. If I didn't already love the characters, I'm not sure I'd have enjoyed it at all.

These anime got it right:

From Kuroko's Basketball 2, episode 21. Kuroko continues to
prove that you shouldn't underestimate the scrawny kids, and
Production I.G. reminds me why it's the only studio on my A-P
<3 far.="" list="" so="" td="">

Kuroko's Basketball
- My Superbowl analogy applies five times over with this one. See my February post about it for an example. I can't wait for another season to air. I think we'll finally get to see Kuroko's old captain in action. He kinda scares me, more than a dude with pink hair should.

Ace of the Diamond
- Eijun, an earnest young pitcher, has contagious passion, and he's fun to watch with the pitchers. But I also like the honor paid to his sempai, both by him and by the creators. The upperclassmen on the team have admirable solidarity, and I'm glad we get to see that.

Giant Killing
- This one is about adults, and they definitely won't let the young'uns from other anime beat them with their passion... okay, yeah, it's time for me to re-watch this. It's been a very long time since I saw it. Looks like I haven't used this for a Rewind post yet, so I'll harvest screenshots when I start this up again.

Big Windup
- This one isn't fresh in my memory, but I'm still confident recommending it, and I wish the second season was online. Maybe I'll give in and buy it.

Prince of Tennis
- This introduced me to sports anime. It might be over-the-top for some people, but the characters and matches really are fun... and, again, it introduced me to the genre, which puts it just barely below Naruto in sentimental value.

Currently airing jewels (these haven't aired a full season yet, so are counted separately):

The volleyball captain informs Hinata and Kageyama that
they can't participate in the club until the can act like
teammates (ep. 2).

Haikyuu!!
- From Production I.G., the same studio that brought us Kuroko's Basketball, we have an anime about... volleyball. Hey, that's something different. And very fun. The animation is as wonderful to watch as that in KuroBas. The characters delight me, especially Hinata Shouyou. He's cute. He could compete with my dog for cuteness, and since I'm very biased toward my pup, that's saying something. But he's also an interesting young player -- singleminded, trusting, and usually confident, although his nerves can get in the way. I like his dynamics with Kageyama.

Baby Steps
- Not as lovely to look at as Haikyuu!!, but it's the first good tennis anime to cross my radar since The Prince of Tennis. The main character, Eijun, has an analytical approach to tennis, a lot like Inui from PoT. But, unlike Inui, Eijun is a newbie at the beginning of the show. Also, his eyes got all sparkly in episode 7, and Inui was never innocent enough for the sparkly-eye thing.

Tsukimoto's friend, "Peco," playing in the first ep. I don't like
him, but his character fits well with the anime's style and themes.

Ping Pong: The Animation
- This is the oddball on my watching list. It's different in almost every way, starting with the visual style. Then there's the sport... who'd have thought you could make an interesting anime about
ping pong? The characters are different, too. Tsukimoto (aka Smile), never smiles. He lacks aspiration, even though he's an amazing ping pong player. The supporting cast is a bit off-klter, too. This anime will never be my favorite, but I enjoy its uniqueness. 

I enjoyed these, but they're not high on my recommendation list:
Cross Game
- I don't remember this one well enough to recommend it too highly, but it was very good. I enjoyed it even before I made a habit of watching tear-jerkers. Guess that means I'd like it even more now.

Eyeshield 21
- Very fun, but too over the top to recommend to anyone who doesn't already love Prince of Tennis or other school sports anime.

Initial D
- Okay, so I loved this, although I still haven't seen Fifth Stage (come on, Crunchyroll! Funimation! Somebody, please make this available!) But the animation isn't exactly pretty, and I guess it's not super fresh in my memory.

Bamboo Blade
- I don't remember this one very well. But I liked it, and it's about girls. No other sports anime on my list can make that second claim, although I recall girls playing a fairly large role (without being exploited for ridiculous fan service) in Cross Game.

This one is gaining more favor:
Yowapeda
- I'm not a hug fan of Yowapeda (Yowamushi Pedal), but it's gaining on me. You'd think that I'd like it better, since it's a racing anime, and I loved Initial D. But it just hasn't clicked with me the same way. Still, it's earned its way out of the last list.

Meh and Blah:

Dear Boys 

- A bit boring, but decent. I enjoyed some of the episodes, especially near the end. But I felt that the negatives outweighed the positives, as I explained when I first finished it.

Area no Kishi
- Too much drama, too much annoying "comedy," and too much of that opening theme music stuck in my head. On the positive side, interesting moves and game play occasionally appear between beach episodes (I'm exaggerating, of course -- the majority of episodes aren't on the beach. They must make room for festival and hot springs episodes... okay, still a slight exaggeration). Yes, I plan to finish this. I'm too stubborn for my own good.

Conclusion

There are still some great sports anime I'd like to see, including the long-running baseball anime Major. Fifteen shows (and several hundred episodes) don't make me a genre expert... they just make me a bit of a fan.

Stay tuned for more in-depth posts about sports anime. I have a couple ideas that may appear throughout coming weeks. And comment if I didn't mention one of your favorite sports anime - especially if it's available somewhere like Crunchyroll or Hulu, so I can watch it. If it's not, maybe you can make a good enough case to move a DVD set to the top of my birthday list. Maybe.

Rewind: Eyeshield 21

Eyeshield 21 taught me most of what I know about football. That's no surprise, since I can say the same thing about The Prince of Tennis and tennis or Chihayafuru and karuta. In the middle of each episode, framing the commercial break, there's a "football clinic," where a character gives the audience information about everything from how to score points to what a tight end is. It's very educational.

Sena races past an opponent that managed to get him
not just to be angry, but fierce. It was an impressive feat.

Like many shounen anime, Eyeshield 21 mixes suspense and character growth with utter silliness. I enjoyed all 145 episodes when I saw it a couple years ago, but only because I knew better than to take it too seriously. Every character's main traits are exaggerated. The main character, Sena, is a weakling who can run ridiculously fast, a result of years of running from bullies. His team's captain, Hiruma, is a delinquent who runs the high school through intimidation and blackmail. Hiruma has a locker full of guns and always has one on hand to use as convenient. Mamori, Sena's older childhood friend, is ridiculously over protective of him. I barely even know where to start with her, actually. Of all the "childhood friend" characters I've met over the past four years, she's probably the most annoying. Step back and let Sena be a man, for heaven's sake! Scratch that, just give him enough room to breathe. That alone would be an improvement!

The list goes on. Physical and personality traits alike are ridiculous in scope, and you have to accept that in order to enjoy the comedy. Same goes for setting and plot.

I laughed a lot as I watched, but that's not all that kept me interested. I wanted Sena and his team to succeed. I wanted them to grow, to exceed their limits, and to overcome their opponents. I wanted to watch Sena catch up to rival running backs and leave them in the dust. Episodes ended mid-game, leaving me in suspense, and I quickly clicked on the next one.

More came from Eyeshield 21 than humor and suspense. Even the silliest sports anime naturally lends itself to musings about diligence. I ended up using Eyeshield 21 as an example in the second half of this blog post, although I hadn't set out to write about anime. It spurred continued reflection and sports anime analogies, so I had to post the rest of my musings next day, in a post called "Perseverance and Sports Anime." These anime helped me to process something about myself that I already knew, but hadn't dealt with.

It's difficult for me to outright recommend Eyeshield 21. The animation isn't anything special. Nor is the story, for that matter. From what I remember, it's simply fun. If you loved The Prince of Tennis, you'll probably enjoy Eyeshield 21. It has a lot of similarities, which I outlined in my recommendation on Anime-Planet. Beyond that, there's little to say.

Advice from Anime: Join a Club

Clubs are a powerful presence in school anime. Some creators use clubs as an excuse for a harem or borderline harem anime. Those have little appeal to me, but even school club anime without a polarized male-female ratio don't always keep my interest. And then there are anime like Chihayafuru, which wouldn't be the treasures they are without their clubs.

All of these school club anime, mediocre and excellent alike, get one thing right: clubs are a great way to meet people. Thus, if I can give one piece advice to incoming college freshmen, it's this: join a club.

I never thought I'd say something like that. I never thought that I would join a club in college. I was sure that school, work, and required hall activities would be all my introverted self could handle. I'm the type who can go weeks without seeing another human being and be perfectly happy. I might enjoy social activities on occasion, but, as a general rule, I need to spend at least twice as much time by myself to recover from social events. When it's really bad, I can't even handle Twitter or Facebook.

Yet even introverts get lonely. When my roommates moved out before second semester, I decided that I'd be purposeful about socializing and making friends. I still didn't plan on joining a club, though. I did not want that kind of commitment. In fact, when a professor suggested that I join a club to meet people, I politely and firmly told him that there was no way I'd have the time and energy for such activities.

Not long after the start of spring semester, a classmate came up to me and said she was going to start a pro-life club. She needed some founding members and officers. I thought and prayed about it for a few days before agreeing to join. Before I knew it, I wasn't just part of a club. I was signing paperwork, agreeing to be the club's vice president! I was the right hand woman. When the president wasn't around, people looked to me for answers. This decision surprised me, my family, and probably some of my hallmates.

Okay, so our club's  not quite all hugs and sparkles like
this scene from Chihayafuru 2. But we're friends, which
is more than we were a year ago.

It was a surprise, but it was a good surprise. I made friends I wouldn't have made otherwise. As a task-oriented, sometimes shy, introverted girl, I find that working alongside someone is a safe, low-stress way to get to know them. And, just like in anime, the founding club members started to hang out outside of club meetings. We went to see a play. We ate together at the dining hall after meetings. The founding president gave me tea and honey when I had a bad cold. Three of us went to a summit put on by the nationwide Students for Life organization. We laughed, talked, and learned together. It was a shorter and less intense trip than the club training trips in Eyeshield 21 or the tournaments in Chihayafuru, and only a few of us were able to go. Yet it was enough for me to experience some of the same bonding that's present in my favorite club anime.

I was surprised by what I could handle. I often acted more like the club secretary than a vice president (and I'm relieved to report that this semester, I am the secretary). Yet I still had a leadership position. I led our club meeting when the president was sick. I was committed to both the general club meetings and short planning sessions. And none of this caused an emotional breakdown. This might seem like small stuff from the outside. To me, it was an incredible step.

In anime, clubs are often used to make self-conscious or loner characters open up and loosen up. People who would never meet become friends. Bookworms and athletes, Type-A students and slackers, class clowns and the painfully shy: all are joined together by one shared interest or goal. I used to think that clubs were for extroverts. Now, I'd almost argue the opposite: clubs are just what introverts like me need to get our healthy dose of purposeful socialization.

So, freshmen, here's a tip: join a club. Participate in a sport, whether you're on the school team or playing intramurals. Help put on a play. Join a small group or Bible study. Find some sort of activity or organization that you'd like to be a part of, and be open to personal growth and new friendship. Dare to step outside your comfort zone. You just might find that it's not so uncomfortable out there after all.

Perseverance and Sports Anime

This post comes from the last hour of the two and a half hours I spent thinking through my habits, lessons on perseverance, and sports anime analogies. I already posted the first part, and today, I’d like to share the rest. I find it interesting that, while I normally have no interest in sports at all, I’ve enjoyed enough sports anime to overflow with analogies when I’m doing some self-reflection.

April 27, 2011

Continued reflection

It’s 4:04 pm, and I want to keep at this until 5:00 if I can, or 4:30 at the earliest. After relating my experiences to Eyeshield 21, more sports anime analogies come to mind.

Not very long before watching Eyeshield 21, I watched an anime called Giant Killing, about a low-ranked professional soccer team called East Tokyo United (ETU). ETU’s players grew used to losing during the past couple years. Fans gave up hope, and coach after coach left the team. At the beginning of the anime, two members of ETU’s board search for a former player of theirs, Tatsumi Takeshi. Tatsumi is now a successful coach in Europe, and he agrees to return to coach his former team. One of many challenges he has to overcome is the team’s losing mindset. He knows that if they think of themselves as a team that always loses, they can’t win. He doesn’t berate them for losing a game. Instead, he tells them it’s time to change gears and concentrate on winning the next one. Some might think he acts too lightly considering the situation, but in truth, even his aggravating laidback nature before and after a hard match is carefully calculated to overcome ETU’s losing psyche – and then their losing streak. They learn to switch gears after losing a game. By the end of the series, players and fans alike think of ETU as a winning team. Tatsumi had helped ETU improve not only their skills, but their psyche. If he’d dwelled only on the skill side of coaching, could they have become a winning team? I doubt it. Just like in Eyeshield 21, these athletes had to discard their losing spirit if they wanted to win. Perseverance is a common theme, especially in the sports genre. It’s easy to brush past scenarios like the once I described and not think anything except, “pick a more original moral of the story.” But how often do we actually apply these themes to our own lives? I, for one, tend to brush over them and continue with my anime marathons. I save my thinking and self-application for reading my Bible or Lord of the Rings. I don’t want to turn every anime I watch into a learning experience, but neither do I wish to pass by a good opportunity for self-examination. For one thing, I spend too much time watching anime to let it be pure entertainment. For another, some of these themes are too important to ignore.

I want to learn to defeat my losing spirit, to shake off the failure and focus on winning the next one. Perseverance like Sena’s and ETU’s will come in handy throughout my life; I’d rather build a habit of persevering early on. If I condition myself to put forth effort and overcome discouragement, maybe it won’t be so easy to run away from responsibility.

Easier said than done.

I don’t want to rely only on myself for this, though. Sitting back and praying, “Lord, please make me a good worker” doesn’t sound quite right, either. Instead, I ask God to show me His support and to step in when my own effort isn’t enough. I think the more deeply I believe God loves me and supports me (and even likes me) no matter how often I mess up, the more free I’ll feel to put my failures behind me and push through the challenges in front of me.

In all the sports anime I’ve seen, the main athletes succeed in large part because of their teammates and/or coach. Sena trusted Himura to come up with the right plays for the game. He also had to trust Himura’s judgment in making him the running back ace in the first place. ETU succeeded because their coach knew how to train them and use their efforts and abilities to the best in a game. And in the anime I’m watching now, Big Windup!, the pitcher Mihashi Ren strikes out batter after batter because the catcher, Abe, judges the situation and gives him the right signs. Abe brings Mihashi’s abilities to their best. Without him, Mihashi wouldn’t have the confidence to succeed, let alone the judgment about what pitches to throw.

I want to learn to put forth the effort to overcome all challenges and discouragements set before me. However, I know I can’t do that alone. So I ask the Lord to come alongside my efforts. His support is more vital to me than that of the teammates and coaches in all the sports anime I watch. It’s God’s training regime, game plans, and encouragement that will make my efforts worthwhile. He’s the one I can rely on even when my efforts fail or I fail to put forth effort. He may let me stumble, and even fall, if that’s what’s best. But I know He’ll never forsake me, will never dislike me or feel contempt for me. With God, I can freely move on from my past failures and seize the new day.

Next question to ponder: do I trust God enough to have that confidence next time I feel discouraged?

*Picture from Giant Killing

Pondering Effort and Eyeshield 21

I spent two and a half hours in self examination yesterday. The main theme in my thought process seemed to be perseverance. And since I’ve watched a lot of sports anime lately, I couldn’t keep analogies to anime out of my writing. Once I saw the reference to Eyeshield 21 develop, I knew I wanted to share an edited version here on my blog. I’ll just post the first, longer part of it today, and the second part later. It’s time I came back from my hiatus.

April 27, 2011

2:30 pm

I sit on the deck enjoying some of our warmest weather this year. A cool breeze brushes through my hair now and again, but the sun mostly makes up for it. It feels more like spring every week now.

I can’t believe it’s already April 27^th. I wish time would just stop, or that all my homework would be easily completed. I have to finish in time to graduate – I give myself no other options. But part of me doubts. I haven’t kept up on my projects nearly as much as I should, and I haven’t even touched my Careers course work in who knows how many weeks. When I think about how behind I am, I honestly feel a bit ashamed. I don’t want anyone to know how behind I am. I don’t even want it to be true, but my wishes don’t change reality.

I think I’ve let myself off too easily. I used to do pretty well in not allowing myself to make excuses for giving less than my best in school. But I think I became a bit egotistical during the latest bout of anxiety and depression. I began to excuse a lower level of performance because of ADHD and anxiety. I put less and less effort into my schoolwork. Thinking about it, I feel lazy.

I could point to my mom and mention how she’s over-sympathized at times and perhaps babied me on occasion regarding any work on my part. But when it comes down to it, Mom holds absolutely no blame for my bad habits. I took advantage of every time she sympathized with me, adding to my belief that I simply couldn’t function, and even that I could hardly help myself. The part of me that refused to make excuses for myself gradually grew smaller and smaller. As I examine this now and type away on my laptop, I realize how much that attitude has changed. Back at the beginning of the school year, I still had an attitude of “I can do it! No excuses; let’s get this work done.” Then, at some point around February, that attitude made a smooth, quiet U-turn. It became an attitude of “I simply can’t function. There are so many deadlines approaching. Before I know it, June will be here. I can’t do this. I have to, but maybe if I take a break, maybe if I go easy on myself for a while, I’ll get better. Maybe.”

First I noticed anxiety come back, then depression. I started a new medicine a few weeks ago, though, and I definitely noticed a change. The depression and daily tearyness alleviated greatly. Even my anxiety is significantly lower. Yet I continue walking in a bit of a fog. I stay up too late (“I’m working on it!” I protest), I watch too much anime, I arrive late to Physics, and I don’t get all my homework hours in. I struggle to focus, but that’s no excuse. The fact is, I haven’t put forth the effort to walk away from temptation and concentrate on what needs to be done.

Effort. I know I need to put forth more effort, so why do I continuously choose to sit on my bed instead? Why don’t I apply my will to what needs to be done? I live a lifestyle of indulgence. I only apply myself to homework I enjoy, and cheerfully help out around the house if it suits me. I take a break and watch anime at my leisure, and can burn through 12 episodes a day without batting an eyelid. Sheesh, I don’t even put forth the effort to maintain my blog anymore! Just two months ago, I wrote blog posts at a fierce rate, and now? Now I’m on an indefinite hiatus, a so-called “mental vacation.” Sure, I was feeling very anxious and quite a bit depressed. All of my journal entries from March through a week or two ago have a rather dramatic, melancholy feel to them. But guess what? I’m feeling a bit better now. Sure, I’m not in perfect shape, but who is? What makes me special, so that I can slack off just because I have a psychiatrist? Everyone has bad days, but most people apply their will to do what needs to be done. They put their wants in perspective with their work.

Perhaps my perspective’s warped. I became used to making allowances for a “breaking” brain. I didn’t work around it – I worked according to it. I felt too teary to work on my Communism project? Fine, I’d write in my journal. I was too anxious to do about anything regarding the real world? That’s okay, I could watch an anime and make up for lost time the next day. This way of living has become a daily habit, and a concerning one. If I continue indulging myself like this, how will I survive in the adult world, with a job? How will I act as an adult member of the family? Scratch that, if I keep up this pace, how will I even graduate?

Even now, temptations pull at me. I want to write a story, or go for a walk, or do anything that means taking a break from applying my brain to the task before me. Part of me wonders if I can overcome this habit of indulging in temptation. Part of me thinks I might never focus on the necessary tasks like a mature adult. I know I can concentrate. I know I can be responsible, and I know I can crank out high quality work. I know I can take pride in all this. But instead, I keep looking at the clock, waiting for it to say 3:30 so I can go on a walk. And then I look at the clock and wonder how I could have wasted so much of my time today before I got to work.

The breeze picks up. I’m feeling a bit cold now, and think I’ll go inside in a minute. I wonder if I’ll go on my walk after all. I know I need to – I hardly get any exercise lately, and Ridgy would love to visit the creek. But it’s cold, and I need to make up missed hours of schoolwork.

I’m cold, but I’m not eager to return inside. I spend too much time in my room, on my computer. I need to get out and do things. But by the time I actually feel like doing those things (like the walk today), I realize that I’ve hardly done any work and I need to stay inside. This lifestyle is unhealthy – I know that. Maybe I’ll make myself go to sleep earlier tonight. Maybe I’ll listen to my alarms tomorrow and get started on my day in a healthy manner. Maybe, but the hope doesn’t seem as strong as it once did.

I recently finished an anime called Eyeshield 21. It’s 145 episodes long, so it actually lasted me a few days. And all 145 episodes were available, subtitled, on Crunchyroll. This detail is especially important since my February decision only to watch anime I know are legally uploaded online. Anyway, Eyeshield 21 is about Sena, a first year in high school (that is, a tenth grade student). His whole life, he’s been bullied, always acting as a gopher for the stronger, more assertive students. Overtime, he’s built up amazing speed to quickly get what the bullies ask him to, or on occasion to escape them.

Now that he’d in high school Sena decides to join a club. Through a series of interesting events, he ends up joining the football club, intending to be their manager. But when team captain Himura sees Sena use his phenomenal running and dodging to escape three delinquents, he decides Sena will join the team as the new running back. To keep other sports clubs from persuading Sena to switch to them (and to keep an over-protective childhood friend from pushing him to quit such a dangerous sport), Himura gives him a helmet with a green eye shield and jersey number 21 and dubs him “Eyeshield 21.”

Under the guise of Eyeshield 21, Sena becomes the ace of their small team, the Deimon Devil Bats. That’s a lot of pressure for someone who’s more used to being bullied than playing sports. Sena sometimes bends, but he doesn’t break. He endures harsh training and tough opponents, always improving his already incredible running.

And yet, Sena’s self confidence isn’t rock solid, even by the last dozen episodes. It’s better, but he still gets discouraged. There are times Sena’s confidence drops in a game, and he doesn’t pick himself right back up. It becomes tempting to think, “Come, on, you should be used to this by now! You always overcome the tough opponents! Always! So stop being so discouraged so quickly and concentrate already!” Instead of allowing those thoughts to manifest, I turn to my own life. How often do I give up too quickly? How often do I decide I can’t do something and lose concentration? Am I really in any place to call Sena a wimp?

I continuously excel in my classes. I demonstrated my abilities in a recent team competition related to government, even though we didn’t win. Can I really turn around and say, “I can’t work that hard on my Communist project”? I’m in no place to say I can’t pull together a good paper on Communism, even if it just looks like a jumble of notes and missing hours at this point. Yes, it’s intimidating. But so was that competition. There were times when we brainstormed and struggled with the best approach to a question. Yet we turned out excellent answers. Almost every paper I do, I wonder at some point if it will turn out well. And every paper receives an excellent grade. I can give results I’m proud of. I’ve proven this again and again, just as Sena continuously proves his ability to out run the other teams’ aces. I might not be able to sort my thoughts. I might lose track of time, and I might have done barely half the work I was supposed to yesterday. But just because I fell down yesterday doesn’t mean I have to fall down today.

One of Sena’s rivals and role models, Shin, nailed him again and again with his Spear Tackle. There were a couple of times that Sena stopped believing he could escape that painful tackle, “light speed” running or no. He nearly ran off the field and quit the game entirely the first time he encountered it. But after that, he stood up from each of Shin’s tackles and prepared to try again. When he didn’t escape, he took the details into account, put the failure behind him, and set out to run and dodge even faster the next time. Because of this tenacity, Sena evolved during and between his games against Shin – and he beat him. If Sena grew discouraged during a game, Shin took him out easily every time. But if he held steady and concentrated on his goal, Sena improved during the game and surpassed Shin.

I am not that different from Sena. If I allow my failures to weigh on me and dictate my actions, I continue to fail. I don’t get work done. But if I see what I did wrong, use it to plan my next action, and put my failure behind me, I succeed. I improve.

I want to mature, especially as high school nears its end and my eighteenth birthday approaches. I think maturing means moving forward, and I can’t move forward if my past mistakes weigh me down. It’s time for me to get up, shake off the last “spear tackle,” and concentrate on winning the next one.

*both pictures are from Eyeshield 21