of "Eyeshield 21" wearing a helmet with an eyeshield to hide his features. The makeshift team initially takes part in the spring football tournament hoping to win through the strength of their new "secret weapon". However, the extremely weak team is eliminated early by the Ojo White Knights, one of the best football teams in Japan. After Deimon's defeat, the spring tournament is revealed as secondary in importance to the fall tournament, where the teams compete for the chance to play in the Christmas Bowlthe high school football league championship. Hiruma, Sena, and Ryokan Kurita regroup and slowly build a real team from misfits and students looking to define themselves, such as Tarō "Monta" Raimona baseball player who can only catchand the bullies collectivelly known as Ha-Ha Brothers. Other characters slowly join the team, and the series follows the building and growth of the Deimon Devil Bats and its members, and rival teams as they all strive to achieve their goal of playing in the Christmas Bowl. Some time after the Deimon Devil Bats win the Christmas Bowl and they become the best team in the country, Japan begins to gather the best football players to form a team to represent it at the American Football Youth World Championship, where a Most Valuable Player (MVP) will be awarded an NFL contract and $3 million. Team Japan reaches the final against Team America, in which the game ends as a tie, and both teams are declared winners. Both teams are unsatisfied with this and return to the field for their own, improvised "overtime", causing chaos with officials. It is unclear which team wins the unofficial extra period, but Panther of Team America holds the MVP trophy aloft, winning the professional contract with the San Antonio Armadillos. The series concludes with Sena becoming the captain of the Devil Bats after Hiruma and Kurita leave school to attend college. In his final year of high school, Sena is invited to Notre Dame High School. In the final chapter, the main characters are in college or playing amateur-league football while employed. Production Before the series was published regularly, Riichiro Inagaki and Yusuke Murata published two one-shots called and on March 5 and 12, 2002 in Weekly Shōnen Jump. When it would become a serial, the editorial department asked if Inagaki wanted to both write and draw the series, but Inagaki felt he was "so