Introduction

Our story begins here...

A manga panel of Mamori, a brunette with a bob haircut, leaning over Sena, a short teenage boy with messy, spiky black hair. She straightens Sena's tie as he yelps in surprise. 'Hey, that's too loose!' she says.

Short, wimpy teenager Sena Kobayakawa has just started his first day at Deimon High School. For him, it's a much-needed fresh start: attending new classes, making new friends, joining clubs, and—at least he hopes—no longer playing gofer for bullies, which he's done since kindergarten. Sena's doting childhood friend, Mamori Anezaki, has always tried to protect him from harm. But now that he's older, he wants to stop relying on her.

Bleach-blond delinquent Juumonji sits on a trash can in an alley, with a cigarette between his fingers. He orders a sweating, frightened Sena, 'Sena, go get me a sweet roll.' His friend Togano, a spiky blond in tinted sunglasses, squats on the ground behind him while he reads a manga magazine. Juumonji's other friend Kuroki, tall and with shaggy black hair, leans on the wall beside him with a cigarette between his lips.

Almost immediately, a trio of delinquents corner Sena and start bossing him around. When he fails to meet their demands, they drag him into a rundown storage shed to beat him up. The trio are interrupted by a fat, burly upperclassman named Ryokan Kurita. Kurita is the center lineman for Deimon High's American football club, and mistakenly thinks that Sena's tormentors have shown up for tryouts. He demonstrates a lineman's throw on them, which promptly scares them off. Sena learns that despite his immense size and strength, Kurita is very friendly and hospitable, and that this shed is the clubhouse of his struggling team, the Deimon Devil Bats.

As Sena hears the roar of a football stadium, Kurita clenches his fist and passionately tells him, 'With all of us united towards a common goal, we utterly collide against our opponents! The moment is ablaze with passion!' As steam wafts from his tea, Sena smiles in curious fascination as he listens.

Over cake and tea, Kurita enthusiastically introduces Sena to American football. The Devil Bats only have two players: him and his captain. Despite their best recruitment efforts, they always need to rely on fill-ins from other sports clubs and rarely win any games. Still, Kurita holds out hope that someday, the Devil Bats will compete in the Christmas Bowl, Japan's national championship for high school teams. Although Sena is too afraid to play such a dangerous sport, Kurita's passion for it moves him and piques his curiosity. Sena asks to join as the Devil Bats' team manager, much to Kurita's joy, and the two become friends.

'OOF!' Sena is suddenly slapped in the face, drawing blood from one nostril. On the floor of the bridge, Sena holds a hand to his injured cheek and looks up to find the delinquent trio--Juumonji, Togano, and Kuroki--standing over him and glaring. 'We've been waiting for you,' Juumonji tells him.

On his way home, Sena gets ambushed by the same three delinquents from before, and they interrogate him on Kurita's whereabouts. As payback for throwing them, they plan to report Kurita to the police, so that he'll be arrested and banned from playing school sports. In the heat of the moment, Sena angrily manages to stand up to them, break free, and escape. The trio chase after him and Sena soon finds himself facing a dense crowd, with nowhere else to run. As his pursuers close in, Sena unleashes an incredible ability that he has developed from years of gofering for and fleeing from bullies: superhuman speed.

He takes off in a flash, nimbly cutting his way through the crowd and leaving the delinquents in the dust.

With a loud SWOOSH, Sena starts running, taking off at top speed. Juumonji and Kuroki nearly trip in a cloud of dust; they both stare, mouths agape. With a FWOOM, Sena speeds past Hiruma, another Deimon student, with demonic features and spiky blond hair. Hiruma's visibly stunned by the sudden zip past him, the convenience store bag around his wrist rustling in the wind.

This incredible spectacle is witnessed by Youichi Hiruma, Deimon High's diabolical shadow tyrant, whom Mamori warned Sena to stay away from. He just so happens to be Kurita's best friend...and the Devil Bats' team captain and quarterback. Hiruma excitedly follows Sena, all while imagining a speedy running back making the same agile moves down a gridiron field and scoring a touchdown. Sena successfully escapes by diving into a subway car, sending the delinquent trio tumbling down onto the subway's empty platform, and into Hiruma's clutches.

As the three delinquents lie in a disorganized heap on the empty subway platform, Hiruma sits on Juumonji's face. With a wide, demonic smile and both fingers pointing in triumph, Hiruma shouts, 'TOUCHDOWN! YA-HA!'

The next day, a terrified Sena finds himself hogtied inside the Devil Bats' clubhouse and dodging Hiruma's gunfire. He forces Sena to suit up in full player's gear, including a jersey numbered 21 and a helmet equipped with a tinted visor. At gunpoint, Hiruma explains that Sena will be playing in the Devil Bats' games as their new ace running back. But to prevent other sports clubs from scouting him, he will have to keep his identity a secret.

Sena is forced to dress in full American football gear, including a helmet equipped with a visor and a jersey with the number 21. Hiruma taps his gun on a desk, eyes downcast and his expression serious. 'During games, you aren't gonna use your own name, Sena Kobayakawa, got it?' Hiruma tells him. 'Your codename will be...' Hiruma looks up and points to Sena with a fanged grin. 'EYESHIELD 21!'

Hiruma then christens Sena with a new, mysterious codename:

Eyeshield 21!

As we'll soon see, Sena is just one of a growing group of misfit students that will join Hiruma and Kurita on a coming-of-age journey into Japan's world of American football. Along the way, he and his teammates will face down strong and fearsome opponents, all while growing stronger as athletes and as people.

To learn more about the characters, check out the Characters page. To learn more about the story, check out the Manga page. Be warned though: these pages will contain unmarked spoilers!