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Deimon's been through a lot...that's no understatement. Between the first match against Oujou, the Taiyou/NASA back-to-back games, Death March, the Tokyo semi-finals/consolation match, and the whole of the Kantou regional tournament, there have been some viciously powerful opponents. My question here is: which team gave them the most trouble? Don't base any of this on skills/members of Deimon, but simply the desperation and chances of victory, etc. Possibilities include:
- Cupids. Yeah, I know it's probably stupid to bring them up, as the match only lasts a couple of chapters, but the odds were certainly stacked against them. They were using newbie Sena, a player who had NO experience on the field, for an all-or-nothing play. He couldn't even use his super-lightspeed pace at the time. In any case, it's a victory and a barely-achieved one at that, so it's on the list.
- Poseidon. Certainly it was a last-second victory with very difficult odds. It was the first time that they relied entirely on Sena's last run to win, not to mention his Devilbat Dive. Komusubi did some pretty crazy shit too, knocking away a guy double his height. A lot of that match was to show that people with small bodies can use that as their own advantage, but it was still extremely (and surprisingly) close in the end. Hell, I'm pretty sure everyone thought that, once Sena blew past Kakei with the newly-developed Devilbat Hurricane, it was already over. Well played on Murata-sensei's part.
- Spiders. Their first victory with a kicker, and only because of that kicker did they win. Indeed, although the desperation of the win wasn't as direct as before, it was mentioned later that Koutarou's missed kick that game, the only one he had ever missed in his entire Amefuto career, was the reason for Bando's defeat. ES21 was the reason for that, of course. Musashi's kick at the same TFP distance was nearly blocked by Bando's own ace, Akaba, but he still managed to hit through the hand-block and secure the three points. Additionally, Sena managed to break past his normal limitations and use his super-lightspeed pace continuously. I'd say this game rates lower than most in terms of how close the game was, though.
The Kanto tournament is surely where the most probable answers lie. The tournament of supermen housed a few real badass teams:
- Naga. Actually, this is where my vote goes: between the super-prodigy Agon, the super-genius Ikkyu, the super-worker Unsui, and the super-elite Yamabushi, this team had reached the Christmas Bowl for the past nine years (might be off a little: point is they're an insane group...probably the closest to Kantou's version of Teikoku). Deimon really pulled some insane and barely-gained touchdowns...all FIVE of them. I don't think there's been a match where every single one of Deimon's touchdowns were notably nigh-impossible to reach. Let's go over all of them:
--- Yukimitsu, a man with no experience on the field at all (like Sena against the Cupids) manages to pull a surprise touchdown at the beginning of the second half. Hell, even when the Option Pass was used correctly, both Agon and Ikkyu had already caught up to him: essentially they lost because they underestimated Yuki's tenacity to score. Honestly, I think he caught the ball by a significant amount of luck at the end.
--- Juumonji breaks through a scramble for the fumbled ball (that Sena happened to block just by looking at Agon's reaction) and runs the ball to the end, making his difficult last step cross over the goal. Now, maybe it's just me, but I could have sworn that Juumonji's knee hit the ground prior to lifting his leg to make another step. I'm pretty sure that any contact on the ground besides hands and feet (like a knee) should be a down, but meh. (See here for picture.)
--- Monta's WTF steal from Ikkyu. To be honest, I can deal with him grabbing the ball precisely against Tetsuma for a better grip, and I can deal with him aiming for a one-handed spear-grab against Sakuraba, and I can even deal with him besting Kisaragi's Ptera Claw with sheer willpower. But for him to grab where Ikkyu was putting the ball by reaching for it in mid-air just felt absurd to me. How long were they going to float in the sky like that? Monta doesn't have god-speed impulse, and I don't think they could have been in the air for longer than a second or two. Well, whatever, he caught it with a trick even better than the Devil Backfire.
--- Sena's victory against Agon, directly. Basically he fought off Agon with one hand and sped away at the end, SOMEHOW predicting Agon's movement and smacking him down on the helmet. However, I remember that Agon was able to notice Sena that time when Agon was putting the moves on Mamori, and he hadn't seen him. I'm guessing it's a slight mistranslation in the chapter, but I'm blaming this one on Agon's rage. Sena did good, it just felt like he had a particular advantage in this specific VS.
--- Hiruma managed to make a touchdown in spite of Agon's chasing. It's very inspiring of Murata-sensei to add the fact that shaving 0.1 seconds off Hiruma's dash allowed him to score and all, but there's no way Agon was basing his speed solely on last year's data. It's not like he couldn't have caught him, or at least the pictures didn't give me that impression.
In nearly every touchdown (Monta's excluded) Agon was there to almost stop them. Hell, every time he probably SHOULD have, if we were looking just at the probabilities. While this was an amazing match, it was riddled with close calls that were simply too close to be as believable as most of the touchdowns in the series. Also, what happened to Sena's leg problem? It seemed to vanish once he knocked the ball out of Unsui's hands and only came back when they were looking at the possibility of overtime.
In the end, this is the only match that left me at the end of one chapter thinking, "Holy crap, they actually lost when it mattered." Mind you, they didn't, but it was that close of a match in my eyes.
- White Knights, revisited. For me it's the second-most hard-fought victory for Deimon for a couple reasons. The Everest Pass is simply unreachable normally (and, should Sakuraba master the overhead catch, unreachable regardless). And, of course, there's the perfect player. I think it's feasible how Sena managed to beat Shin in the final run, but keep in mind it was JUST enough to pass over Shin, not to continue onward. The TFP ended up being pretty important for a good portion of the match as well. In general, this match was really fun to read because not every single play was cut-and-paste: there were quite a few times where they'd just show a few frames of the players moving and trying different tactics and whatnot, which gave the manga a very nice flow....very nice indeed. As dire as this game was (not even Hiruma knew of a way to counteract the Sagittarius), it wasn't dire enough. Later on it's implied that the teams keep scoring points off of each other like it's nothing.
- Dinosaurs. Very-much a sink-or-swim match. Gaou's ability to perform a killing blow left Deimon without a passing game for the most part (although Hakushuu never had a passing game to begin with, which felt like more than a coincidence), which turned the match into a very primitive one. The newbie QB only worked for so long, and Sena barely beat Marco in a VS battle (like with Shin, only enough to get past, not to keep running). The only time I felt like they may lose was when Hiruma was knocked out, but once Sena became QB it dashed my doubts away. Even with Hiruma gone I could have imagined Deimon pull a victory out of their asses, so it wasn't that hopeless in my opinion.
Teikoku is probably going to be the closest match ever (we don't even know if they will win...the whole point of the manga has been to reach the CB, not to win it), but in the meantime I think we should settle on the toughest victory that isn't the climax of the story. (By the way, I wrote the most on Shinryuuji because that's who I believe gave Deimon the hardest fight. Essentially I put my own reasons in that description.)
- Cupids. Yeah, I know it's probably stupid to bring them up, as the match only lasts a couple of chapters, but the odds were certainly stacked against them. They were using newbie Sena, a player who had NO experience on the field, for an all-or-nothing play. He couldn't even use his super-lightspeed pace at the time. In any case, it's a victory and a barely-achieved one at that, so it's on the list.
- Poseidon. Certainly it was a last-second victory with very difficult odds. It was the first time that they relied entirely on Sena's last run to win, not to mention his Devilbat Dive. Komusubi did some pretty crazy shit too, knocking away a guy double his height. A lot of that match was to show that people with small bodies can use that as their own advantage, but it was still extremely (and surprisingly) close in the end. Hell, I'm pretty sure everyone thought that, once Sena blew past Kakei with the newly-developed Devilbat Hurricane, it was already over. Well played on Murata-sensei's part.
- Spiders. Their first victory with a kicker, and only because of that kicker did they win. Indeed, although the desperation of the win wasn't as direct as before, it was mentioned later that Koutarou's missed kick that game, the only one he had ever missed in his entire Amefuto career, was the reason for Bando's defeat. ES21 was the reason for that, of course. Musashi's kick at the same TFP distance was nearly blocked by Bando's own ace, Akaba, but he still managed to hit through the hand-block and secure the three points. Additionally, Sena managed to break past his normal limitations and use his super-lightspeed pace continuously. I'd say this game rates lower than most in terms of how close the game was, though.
The Kanto tournament is surely where the most probable answers lie. The tournament of supermen housed a few real badass teams:
- Naga. Actually, this is where my vote goes: between the super-prodigy Agon, the super-genius Ikkyu, the super-worker Unsui, and the super-elite Yamabushi, this team had reached the Christmas Bowl for the past nine years (might be off a little: point is they're an insane group...probably the closest to Kantou's version of Teikoku). Deimon really pulled some insane and barely-gained touchdowns...all FIVE of them. I don't think there's been a match where every single one of Deimon's touchdowns were notably nigh-impossible to reach. Let's go over all of them:
--- Yukimitsu, a man with no experience on the field at all (like Sena against the Cupids) manages to pull a surprise touchdown at the beginning of the second half. Hell, even when the Option Pass was used correctly, both Agon and Ikkyu had already caught up to him: essentially they lost because they underestimated Yuki's tenacity to score. Honestly, I think he caught the ball by a significant amount of luck at the end.
--- Juumonji breaks through a scramble for the fumbled ball (that Sena happened to block just by looking at Agon's reaction) and runs the ball to the end, making his difficult last step cross over the goal. Now, maybe it's just me, but I could have sworn that Juumonji's knee hit the ground prior to lifting his leg to make another step. I'm pretty sure that any contact on the ground besides hands and feet (like a knee) should be a down, but meh. (See here for picture.)
--- Monta's WTF steal from Ikkyu. To be honest, I can deal with him grabbing the ball precisely against Tetsuma for a better grip, and I can deal with him aiming for a one-handed spear-grab against Sakuraba, and I can even deal with him besting Kisaragi's Ptera Claw with sheer willpower. But for him to grab where Ikkyu was putting the ball by reaching for it in mid-air just felt absurd to me. How long were they going to float in the sky like that? Monta doesn't have god-speed impulse, and I don't think they could have been in the air for longer than a second or two. Well, whatever, he caught it with a trick even better than the Devil Backfire.
--- Sena's victory against Agon, directly. Basically he fought off Agon with one hand and sped away at the end, SOMEHOW predicting Agon's movement and smacking him down on the helmet. However, I remember that Agon was able to notice Sena that time when Agon was putting the moves on Mamori, and he hadn't seen him. I'm guessing it's a slight mistranslation in the chapter, but I'm blaming this one on Agon's rage. Sena did good, it just felt like he had a particular advantage in this specific VS.
--- Hiruma managed to make a touchdown in spite of Agon's chasing. It's very inspiring of Murata-sensei to add the fact that shaving 0.1 seconds off Hiruma's dash allowed him to score and all, but there's no way Agon was basing his speed solely on last year's data. It's not like he couldn't have caught him, or at least the pictures didn't give me that impression.
In nearly every touchdown (Monta's excluded) Agon was there to almost stop them. Hell, every time he probably SHOULD have, if we were looking just at the probabilities. While this was an amazing match, it was riddled with close calls that were simply too close to be as believable as most of the touchdowns in the series. Also, what happened to Sena's leg problem? It seemed to vanish once he knocked the ball out of Unsui's hands and only came back when they were looking at the possibility of overtime.
In the end, this is the only match that left me at the end of one chapter thinking, "Holy crap, they actually lost when it mattered." Mind you, they didn't, but it was that close of a match in my eyes.
- White Knights, revisited. For me it's the second-most hard-fought victory for Deimon for a couple reasons. The Everest Pass is simply unreachable normally (and, should Sakuraba master the overhead catch, unreachable regardless). And, of course, there's the perfect player. I think it's feasible how Sena managed to beat Shin in the final run, but keep in mind it was JUST enough to pass over Shin, not to continue onward. The TFP ended up being pretty important for a good portion of the match as well. In general, this match was really fun to read because not every single play was cut-and-paste: there were quite a few times where they'd just show a few frames of the players moving and trying different tactics and whatnot, which gave the manga a very nice flow....very nice indeed. As dire as this game was (not even Hiruma knew of a way to counteract the Sagittarius), it wasn't dire enough. Later on it's implied that the teams keep scoring points off of each other like it's nothing.
- Dinosaurs. Very-much a sink-or-swim match. Gaou's ability to perform a killing blow left Deimon without a passing game for the most part (although Hakushuu never had a passing game to begin with, which felt like more than a coincidence), which turned the match into a very primitive one. The newbie QB only worked for so long, and Sena barely beat Marco in a VS battle (like with Shin, only enough to get past, not to keep running). The only time I felt like they may lose was when Hiruma was knocked out, but once Sena became QB it dashed my doubts away. Even with Hiruma gone I could have imagined Deimon pull a victory out of their asses, so it wasn't that hopeless in my opinion.
Teikoku is probably going to be the closest match ever (we don't even know if they will win...the whole point of the manga has been to reach the CB, not to win it), but in the meantime I think we should settle on the toughest victory that isn't the climax of the story. (By the way, I wrote the most on Shinryuuji because that's who I believe gave Deimon the hardest fight. Essentially I put my own reasons in that description.)
