[talk] Birthday post + 11 Reasons to watch Inazuma Eleven
AHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh *flails*
kouji_mustang THANK YOU
onkei_kun THANK YOU
kenzy_chan YOU ARE SO AWESOME TwT!!!!! *huggleswuggles*
Thanks aarinfantasy folks XD
LAIFU'KI'Z'HAPPY! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! MAJI DE KANSHA!!!
RAVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Again I only have two things on my wishlist from the previous f-list post XDDD;;;
1. INAZUMA ELEVEN
2. donations
And now for some output...
----
Well, I have a hard time pimping worth beans because I hate putting out spoilers, but it's inevitable with this kind of thing. Because really...
They're all connected~
But for the meantime, here's one slop:
11 Reasons to watch Inazuma Eleven:
1. Level-5 power
2. Super-dimensional soccer
3. HEROIC AND DORKY Characters
4. BADASS AND QUIRKY Characters
5. Girls are win too
6. Pairing goodness
7. BEAUTIFUL Music / Mitsuda Yasunori ftw
8. PENGUINS
9. Seiyuu awesomeness
10. THE DIGIMON CONNECTION (<-personal bias overflow :D)
11. Epic fandom
1. Level-5 power
Inazuma Eleven is originally a VIDEO GAME SERIES. You can squee over the anime or manga or whatever as much as you want, but the original will always be the games and everything else is based off them (more specifically, the handheld ones since the Wii game is a non-canon spinoff for fun).
But even if you can't enjoy the video games (because the US is not worthy yet... please help bring it out of this status :| ), Level-5 deserves the worship. For me, this is where it all originally comes from. The anime and whatnot just propel that in more accessible proportions.~
Inazuma Eleven is created by the same man who created the Professor Layton series. President Hino is THE most on-top game developer I've ever seen. Forget all the people at Gamefreak, Squenix or wherever. THIS man is hot. Even other vets from the industry like Capcom are going: "Before I met Hino, I had confidence in the amount of work I was doing, and even thought that maybe I was the hardest working person in the game industry. But after meeting him, I thought I'm probably not number one."
This man is active with vision.
Level-5's offices are freaking beautiful too.
Level-5. Level-5. Absolutely riveting.
And Pres Hino's stories are full of joy and tragedy all rolled up into one special happening that makes Inazuma Eleven. ♥♥♥
2. Super-dimensional soccer
This is a series where teens play their soccer wearing capes and eye accessories, and angels roam the pitch, and many other odd things happen. It's eyespectacular, gasmic.
THIS IS SUPER-DIMENSIONAL SOCCER.
This is the top reason for a lot of the shounen fans apparently. I'm personally more into the characters being the girl I am XD; Nonetheless, the SUPER-DIMENSIONAL SOCCER needs to be mentioned early on.
From the 2nd game: http://www.mediafire.com/?6im2xc8gz5894ye
Or if you prefer an embedded AMV...
Bluebird (season 2 spoilers, but if you don't know drip about the series then it'll get you an idea of the super-dimensional)
Okay, seriously though. Even though there's a lot of odd bending of the official association football rules, I have learned a lot more about the sport thanks to this series (mostly through researching while translating). It really deepened my appreciation for soccer, and it continues to do so.
And it really has inspired me quite a bit. My dad found a soccer ball left in our yard (people leave a lot of balls in our yard in general ._.) and I've been playing around with it since.~
3. HEROIC AND DORKY Characters
Each team comes in with 16 people (11 in the field and 5 on reserve bench), and with over 25 teams that you see play against each other just in the first two seasons (eps 1-67), that's over 400 characters. That's not even counting the many non-player characters who play such an important role to the series - all the parents and siblings and coaches and supporters... That's also not including the thousands of additional game-only characters. Level-5 is crazy like that.
VAMOS CONTIGO!
Add 3rd season, and you're getting even more \o/
Of course that's too much for any human brain to really care about for a fictional series, so you've got the ones who stand out o>
Endou, the main. No summary can justify what this guy does... And it might hit you right from the start, or take a lot longer to hit you like it did for me. XD Either way, IT HITS HARD AND WITH A LOT OF LOVE.
KIDOU. This guy is sooooooooo special. And not just because he plays soccer wearing cape and goggles, lol. Or that he's got amazing dreads. Or his amazing voice for a 14-yr-old
Or Gouenji with his in-what-shounen-series-have-I-seen-that-hairstyle-before, and his also amazing for a 14-yr-old voice
Together, these three make the unstoppable Inazuma Break trio, taking over your anime magazine covers \o/
4. BADASS AND QUIRKY Characters
Well, just about all the characters are heroic and dorky (except the ones who are meant to not be so), but you have a ton of badass ones too. And quirky. 8D; You just have to watch the details to see where those qualities show up for some of them. ;D
FUBUKI with Miyano Mamoru's hotness (from game 2)
AND TACHIMUKAI WHO CAN NEVER GET ENOUGH ENDOU-SAN
TACHIBANANANANANANANANANA Shinnosuke. Yus
Okay more seriously, there's more to him of course :P
By the way... IKEMEN (bishies), THEY'RE ALL OVER THE SERIES it's just that there are less attractive people around them too, because OMG not everyone is realistically attractive like they are in most people's superficial view of the ideal anime >_>
Randomly, there's a move in the game called Ikemen Up!! with these guys for starters:
^ Every fangirl's husband
^ Tsunami is the craziest awesome-est guy with pink hair ever
^ Badass guys and their tulip-shaped cowlicks
^ It's amusing to tick off this one
^ Old guys too
^ And old guys on the more attractive side
CAN NEVER HAVE ENOUGH
OH and you have NORMAL people who garner lots of fans too, BECAUSE they're normal. It's lulz.
HI THAR HANDA \o/
Can't forget the traps. They will not escape your eyes no matter how speedy they are on the field. ANGELS ROAM THE PITCH.
The series is full of cute cute cute glimpses of things a viewer could easily overlook, because the DETAIL (see fandom section below for more on this).
I've barely even touched the surface of the fun characters in this series. There's just TOO MANY and I'm flooding the page with enough pics as it is, so I'm just gonna leave the pics here for now.
What I REALLY wanted to say about all these guys (including the heroes, the quirky ones, the girls, etc), and it took me a while to get the thoughts together in my head, to find a way to express it without spoiling things...
Of course there are all sorts of outrageous things that'll take the characterizations out of reality like super-dimensional soccer and the crazy occurrences, but even within that, Level-5 manages to seize my love.
The characters in this series clutch at my heart like the biggest, kindest hug ever.
I'm not talking about fandom here, that's... yet another dimension, lol. What happens in the fandom really doesn't explain even half the heart throbbing I've gotten because of this series, although there are a lot of fandom works that do an awesome job of letting me remember it.
If you're familiar with other sports series like say Ookiku Furikabutte, you'd have an idea of what I mean when I say "THESE KIDS ARE TOO NICE" on occasion. THEY REALLY ARE. This fact didn't even hit me until Fubuki came along, and then when I started paying some real attention during rewatching, I suddenly started seeing all sorts of other places that make me go "$%@*#! Why aren't kids this nice in reality." Of course it's just a distant longing, but omggggggggg. This is the beauty of a general audience series like Inazuma Eleven. It's targeted for children, but Level-5 knows what they're doing and has made sure it's appealing for both children and adults alike. And the strong message the series gives reaches all ages as well.
My heartttt, it won't stopppppppp
Hmm I thought I was going to stop with the pics. Didn't work.
5. Girls are win too
I love all of the girls in this series, which I definitely cannot say for much anime these days.
Ed 6 -
EVEN THAT SCARY PIERROT LADY in a scary scary scary way, fortunately you don't see her in the anime afaik XD She seems to only exist for the gag factor anyway.
6. Pairing goodness
In d-s-unit's useful way of saying it, this series has more shippable pairings than you shake a stick at.~
All my personal biases and fandom contribution included, I ship a little too many pairs in this series for my own good. Lots of male x male, straight and female x female ones too~ I tend to be a purely OTP (one-true pairing) person where I'll only find one pairing in a series appealing enough for me to dig through fandom for it. And I watch a LOT of anime and don't bother with the fandom with most of them. The only other series I've ever gotten NEAR this many awesome shippings is Onmyou Taisenki, but with the vast amount of AWESOME characters in Inazuma Eleven, the fun is just multiplied that many times more.
Pairings that have pinged my heart at one time or another off the top of my head now:
Fudou/Kidou
Someoka/Fubuki
Tsunami/Tachimukai
Hiroto/Endou
Gouenji/Endou
Kazemaru/Endou
Gouenji/Toramaru
Gouenji/Fubuki
Genda/Sakuma
Genda/Kidou
Genda/Fudou
Burn/Gazel
Tobitaka/Karasu
Mark/Dylan
Hiroto/Midorikawa
Tsunami/Otomura
Tsunami/Touko
Anything in the Break group~~~
And moar:
Ichinose/Domon
Ichinose/Aki
Ichinose/Rika
Kogure/Haruna
Rika/Touko
Anyone/Endou
Teres/Edgar
Can I keep going? ABSOLUTELY. For longggggg lengths. 8O~~~ If I keep going I'll start running into massive spoilers from pairing names that ... are spoilers just by existing, because the long-term goodness of this series stretches that far wide.~~ Most of these pairing names are probably spoilers anyway, but UNF.
7. BEAUTIFUL Music / Mitsuda Yasunori ftw
Mitsuda Yasunori does the background music for this series, including both game and anime. If you're big into the RPG scene at all you should know this composer name >__> He tweets about how he has a Raimon uniform and that he wanted to wear it during one of his Inazuma Eleven recordings XD~
Also the opening and ending songs are all filled with dorky and CATCHY love for the series, and not just some random pop song contracted to suit the series by a mere tie-up. T-Pistonz + KMC and the Berryz Koubou girls are even players in the games. XD;
Inazuma Eleven discography - I'm still saddened I can't find my CD disc for the 1st anime OST, my mom did something with it when I left it in the van and I don't know where it went since T___T;
8. PENGUINS
It's not just soccer, by any means. Penguins are super-dimensional too.
'nuff said.
I will leave it to you to discover all the fun the fandom has with these wonderful creatures from the show. ♥ Or you can just bug me on IRC or such because I keep a pixiv tag solely about Inazuma Eleven's penguins, and it has provided me with lots of entertainment XD;
9. Seiyuu awesomeness
Here's where I bounce around about something probably only 10% of my f-list cares about (and generally the 10% best part of the f-list ;D~). But seriously, seiyuu is one of the biggest reasons why I care about ANY anime, because I have a HUGE aural fetish.
But mostly.
JUST LOOK AT THE CAST LIST IT'S FULL OF HOT VOICES EVERYWHERE~ Btw, I personally filled out about 98% of that list -.-;
My favorites?
Nojima Hirofumi - Tohma in Digimon Savers, his voice makes me melt all day long, and his real life personality cracks me up in good ways. I stalk his Twitter and squeal when he talks about Inazuma~ And his 100+ retweeted bump for T-Pistonz + KMC~ And his blog!
Yoshino Hiroyuki - This guy has done a LOT of work in his voice acting career and his hot deep voice for Inazuma is what I like best. He did also happen to have a role for Digimon, but it was for the Savers PS2 game which doesn't get much exposure. XD; ANYWAY this guy doesn't have a Twitter (yet), probably because he's too busy obsessing over soccer in real life \o/ His fanboy audio commentary in the 2010 World Cup cracks me up with joy. ♥ And onkei_kun and I are planning to sub some fun videos of him actually playing with a bunch of other seiyuu. Ace Striker Yocchin~ ;D
Kaji Yuuki - Unlike most of the famous seiyuu world, Kaji is right about my age which is what pulled me to him in the first place, along with his actual voice of course. XD His Fudou Akio character in Inazuma Eleven is his manliest I've heard, everyone should see it. XD~~~ He only briefly shows up in 2nd season but he's on the main team in the 3rd. It's such a waste that just about all of his roles in other anime/drama cds/etc are in his happy-go-lucky or just high-pitched voice because he sounds soooooooooo hot when he goes low. Anyway, until Fudou's role, you've also got his first role in the series as Ichinose Kazuya who shows up much earlier in the series. It's total lulz when the players face off with each other.
Kaji hasn't gotten his chance in Digimon yet, but he REALLY wants to (as he said during one of his Face!! sessions), and him singing braveheart for Hyakka Seiran is enough to capture my heart from his love for Digimon as well.
ANYWAY I STALK HIS TWITTER FOR INAZUMA ELEVEN LOVING TOO orz AND HIS BLOG. Along with Shimono Hiro-tan!
Hurrrr, and I can just keep going on and on~. THESE GUYS REALLY NEED CHARACTER SONGS \o/ so much that I have a separate post for it orz
AND IS THIS SERIES AWESOME OR WHAT-- Now we have "Mata ne... no Kisetsu" sung by the Inazuma All-Stars characters, and an upcoming Character Song Book (album CD)! Inazuma Eleven ftw!
I need to expand on this part of the post because my mind won't stop until I do so. At least to add Nakamura Yuuichi with his too many roles in this series XD~
10. THE DIGIMON CONNECTION
Although most of that connection comes through the seiyuu selection as mentioned right above. XD Other Digimon seiyuu in the mix are Takeuchi Junko (Takuya - Endou), Orikasa Fumiko (Ruki - Aki), Kugimiya Rie (Ikuto - Toramaru), Miyahara Nami (Wallace - Kogure), Kamiya Hiroshi (Kouji - Baddap), Kozakura Etsuko (Puppetmon - Kamezaki Kappa in ep 100, lol)... I'm sure more are to come further down the line.
Oh, and the Inazuma Eleven manga, although it only very loosely follows the original game story - it's drawn by the mangaka for Digimon V-Tamer, Yabuno Tenya.
And this might just be me but Inazuma Eleven feels more like Digimon than Xros does~ x_x Evolution resides in the heart and soul, and it's so strong in Inazuma. It's made me cry both in despair and in gratitude. In a way I never thought a series besides Digimon could do.
THE BEST STUFF IS EVEN BETTER THE NEXT TIME YOU WATCH IT. In other words, this series just keeps giving me new discoveries every time I watch it~
I'm personally having oodles of fun just screencapping things that catch my eye although it's almost all just the less serious stuff XD; The joy of everyday life is important too. Really, the characters, more outlined in the character sections earlier tell more of this end.
Also, it took me FOREVER to realize this, but some of the scriptwriters Inari Akihiko (the guy who mostly does match episodes) and Yamada Ken'ichi (Teikoku expert) had done a significant amount of scriptwriting for Digimon Savers as well. WIN.
All in all, anybody who knows me decently also knows how much heart I take into the Digimon series I love, and it extends into this lovely series from LEVEL-5 in a similar fashion. It is pure win.
11. Epic fandom
This fandom takes many of its ties from mostly the epic parts of Digimon, Pokemon, Hetalia fandoms and the like - mostly in the Japanese of course XD; I'm not so sure why but some of English Pokemon fandom seems to be in this too but I don't have many good experiences with the superficiality of the English Pokemon fandom with few exceptions. You can ignore that majority at least :D
Either way, there's a good portion of fandom that's serious and will produce all sorts of heart-touching works, and another good portion of fandom that'll produce gag that sends me reeling in the best laughing exercise I've had in years. Sometimes, they overlap each other.
Searching イナズマイレブン (Inazuma Eleven) on pixiv will land you lots over 100,000 pics of fanart madness. Searching イナイレ[腐] (Inazuma Eleven fujo/yaoi) will get you about a quarter of the way there. And of course there are some of the amazing artists who don't even need to use the tags and the fandom finds their work somehow and get crazy with the bookmarking count. A particularly useful and epic tag is the InaIre Bookmarked 1000+ Times tag, which is still missing some submissions to be honest.
A few even make it to 10000 times bookmarked. Yeah.
You can look through my bookmarks if you can handle all the gay in it~ *runs*
The usual イナズマイレブン search on nicovideo will get you plenty of epic fan videos as well.~ A lot of them have been copied over to youtube so you could search there too, although I don't really take the time to do that personally. There's a lot of extra junk on youtube.
Epic AMVS:
Bad Apple - Fubuki
Dramatic - Team America
Sore de ii no desu ka - Burn/Gazel AMV
Eiyuu - 1st season~
Zankoku na Tenshi no Thesis - 1st and 2nd season Yes, someone made it work with this freaking old song AND IT'S REALLY GOOD
Uso - Fubuki
Crack:
Nojima Hirofumi - a rather different Gouenji
The White Meteor Fidio 64
Miyasaka + Bakemonogatari Ed parody Which I feel was animated better here than the original in most parts wwww
Aliea playing mario music
Working!! Op Parody
I have a lot more crack saved up in MyList but you'd have to have a good Japanese understanding to get them XD;
There are a lot of videos of just people pointing out awesome things in the series like the parts where Tachimukai wears only the jersey on the top half while he's got shorts on (versus Gouenji) and the positions of where they leave their SHOES in their rooms or omgggg these guys are so detailed. Like this user's series, they're sooo much fun if you can read what they're saying. XD I also love her Inazuma blog because she has all sorts of nice things to say about the series. SO MUCH LOVE <3 ~ Again, it's like how I go around rewatching and screencapping things that catch my eye, though I still have some organizing to do.~
Extra plugs for inazuma_11 and ryuu_rogue XD
SO the final message is WATCH WATCH WATCH
kouji_mustang THANK YOU
onkei_kun THANK YOU
kenzy_chan YOU ARE SO AWESOME TwT!!!!! *huggleswuggles*
Thanks aarinfantasy folks XD
LAIFU'KI'Z'HAPPY! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! MAJI DE KANSHA!!!
RAVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Again I only have two things on my wishlist from the previous f-list post XDDD;;;
1. INAZUMA ELEVEN
2. donations
And now for some output...
----
Well, I have a hard time pimping worth beans because I hate putting out spoilers, but it's inevitable with this kind of thing. Because really...
They're all connected~
But for the meantime, here's one slop:
11 Reasons to watch Inazuma Eleven:
1. Level-5 power
2. Super-dimensional soccer
3. HEROIC AND DORKY Characters
4. BADASS AND QUIRKY Characters
5. Girls are win too
6. Pairing goodness
7. BEAUTIFUL Music / Mitsuda Yasunori ftw
8. PENGUINS
9. Seiyuu awesomeness
10. THE DIGIMON CONNECTION (<-personal bias overflow :D)
11. Epic fandom
1. Level-5 power
Inazuma Eleven is originally a VIDEO GAME SERIES. You can squee over the anime or manga or whatever as much as you want, but the original will always be the games and everything else is based off them (more specifically, the handheld ones since the Wii game is a non-canon spinoff for fun).
But even if you can't enjoy the video games (because the US is not worthy yet... please help bring it out of this status :| ), Level-5 deserves the worship. For me, this is where it all originally comes from. The anime and whatnot just propel that in more accessible proportions.~
Inazuma Eleven is created by the same man who created the Professor Layton series. President Hino is THE most on-top game developer I've ever seen. Forget all the people at Gamefreak, Squenix or wherever. THIS man is hot. Even other vets from the industry like Capcom are going: "Before I met Hino, I had confidence in the amount of work I was doing, and even thought that maybe I was the hardest working person in the game industry. But after meeting him, I thought I'm probably not number one."
This man is active with vision.
Level-5's offices are freaking beautiful too.
Level-5. Level-5. Absolutely riveting.
And Pres Hino's stories are full of joy and tragedy all rolled up into one special happening that makes Inazuma Eleven. ♥♥♥
2. Super-dimensional soccer
This is a series where teens play their soccer wearing capes and eye accessories, and angels roam the pitch, and many other odd things happen. It's eyespectacular, gasmic.
THIS IS SUPER-DIMENSIONAL SOCCER.
This is the top reason for a lot of the shounen fans apparently. I'm personally more into the characters being the girl I am XD; Nonetheless, the SUPER-DIMENSIONAL SOCCER needs to be mentioned early on.
From the 2nd game: http://www.mediafire.com/?6im2xc8gz5894ye
Or if you prefer an embedded AMV...
Bluebird (season 2 spoilers, but if you don't know drip about the series then it'll get you an idea of the super-dimensional)
Click to viewOkay, seriously though. Even though there's a lot of odd bending of the official association football rules, I have learned a lot more about the sport thanks to this series (mostly through researching while translating). It really deepened my appreciation for soccer, and it continues to do so.
And it really has inspired me quite a bit. My dad found a soccer ball left in our yard (people leave a lot of balls in our yard in general ._.) and I've been playing around with it since.~
3. HEROIC AND DORKY Characters
Each team comes in with 16 people (11 in the field and 5 on reserve bench), and with over 25 teams that you see play against each other just in the first two seasons (eps 1-67), that's over 400 characters. That's not even counting the many non-player characters who play such an important role to the series - all the parents and siblings and coaches and supporters... That's also not including the thousands of additional game-only characters. Level-5 is crazy like that.
VAMOS CONTIGO!
Add 3rd season, and you're getting even more \o/
Of course that's too much for any human brain to really care about for a fictional series, so you've got the ones who stand out o>
Endou, the main. No summary can justify what this guy does... And it might hit you right from the start, or take a lot longer to hit you like it did for me. XD Either way, IT HITS HARD AND WITH A LOT OF LOVE.
KIDOU. This guy is sooooooooo special. And not just because he plays soccer wearing cape and goggles, lol. Or that he's got amazing dreads. Or his amazing voice for a 14-yr-old
Or Gouenji with his in-what-shounen-series-have-I-seen-that-hairstyle-before, and his also amazing for a 14-yr-old voice
Together, these three make the unstoppable Inazuma Break trio, taking over your anime magazine covers \o/
4. BADASS AND QUIRKY Characters
Well, just about all the characters are heroic and dorky (except the ones who are meant to not be so), but you have a ton of badass ones too. And quirky. 8D; You just have to watch the details to see where those qualities show up for some of them. ;D
FUBUKI with Miyano Mamoru's hotness (from game 2)
AND TACHIMUKAI WHO CAN NEVER GET ENOUGH ENDOU-SAN
TACHIBANANANANANANANANANA Shinnosuke. Yus
Okay more seriously, there's more to him of course :P
By the way... IKEMEN (bishies), THEY'RE ALL OVER THE SERIES it's just that there are less attractive people around them too, because OMG not everyone is realistically attractive like they are in most people's superficial view of the ideal anime >_>
Randomly, there's a move in the game called Ikemen Up!! with these guys for starters:
^ Every fangirl's husband
^ Tsunami is the craziest awesome-est guy with pink hair ever
^ Badass guys and their tulip-shaped cowlicks
^ It's amusing to tick off this one
^ Old guys too
^ And old guys on the more attractive side
CAN NEVER HAVE ENOUGH
OH and you have NORMAL people who garner lots of fans too, BECAUSE they're normal. It's lulz.
HI THAR HANDA \o/
Can't forget the traps. They will not escape your eyes no matter how speedy they are on the field. ANGELS ROAM THE PITCH.
The series is full of cute cute cute glimpses of things a viewer could easily overlook, because the DETAIL (see fandom section below for more on this).
I've barely even touched the surface of the fun characters in this series. There's just TOO MANY and I'm flooding the page with enough pics as it is, so I'm just gonna leave the pics here for now.
What I REALLY wanted to say about all these guys (including the heroes, the quirky ones, the girls, etc), and it took me a while to get the thoughts together in my head, to find a way to express it without spoiling things...
Of course there are all sorts of outrageous things that'll take the characterizations out of reality like super-dimensional soccer and the crazy occurrences, but even within that, Level-5 manages to seize my love.
The characters in this series clutch at my heart like the biggest, kindest hug ever.
I'm not talking about fandom here, that's... yet another dimension, lol. What happens in the fandom really doesn't explain even half the heart throbbing I've gotten because of this series, although there are a lot of fandom works that do an awesome job of letting me remember it.
If you're familiar with other sports series like say Ookiku Furikabutte, you'd have an idea of what I mean when I say "THESE KIDS ARE TOO NICE" on occasion. THEY REALLY ARE. This fact didn't even hit me until Fubuki came along, and then when I started paying some real attention during rewatching, I suddenly started seeing all sorts of other places that make me go "$%@*#! Why aren't kids this nice in reality." Of course it's just a distant longing, but omggggggggg. This is the beauty of a general audience series like Inazuma Eleven. It's targeted for children, but Level-5 knows what they're doing and has made sure it's appealing for both children and adults alike. And the strong message the series gives reaches all ages as well.
My heartttt, it won't stopppppppp
Hmm I thought I was going to stop with the pics. Didn't work.
5. Girls are win too
I love all of the girls in this series, which I definitely cannot say for much anime these days.
Ed 6 -
EVEN THAT SCARY PIERROT LADY in a scary scary scary way, fortunately you don't see her in the anime afaik XD She seems to only exist for the gag factor anyway.
6. Pairing goodness
In d-s-unit's useful way of saying it, this series has more shippable pairings than you shake a stick at.~
All my personal biases and fandom contribution included, I ship a little too many pairs in this series for my own good. Lots of male x male, straight and female x female ones too~ I tend to be a purely OTP (one-true pairing) person where I'll only find one pairing in a series appealing enough for me to dig through fandom for it. And I watch a LOT of anime and don't bother with the fandom with most of them. The only other series I've ever gotten NEAR this many awesome shippings is Onmyou Taisenki, but with the vast amount of AWESOME characters in Inazuma Eleven, the fun is just multiplied that many times more.
Pairings that have pinged my heart at one time or another off the top of my head now:
Fudou/Kidou
Someoka/Fubuki
Tsunami/Tachimukai
Hiroto/Endou
Gouenji/Endou
Kazemaru/Endou
Gouenji/Toramaru
Gouenji/Fubuki
Genda/Sakuma
Genda/Kidou
Genda/Fudou
Burn/Gazel
Tobitaka/Karasu
Mark/Dylan
Hiroto/Midorikawa
Tsunami/Otomura
Tsunami/Touko
Anything in the Break group~~~
And moar:
Ichinose/Domon
Ichinose/Aki
Ichinose/Rika
Kogure/Haruna
Rika/Touko
Anyone/Endou
Teres/Edgar
Can I keep going? ABSOLUTELY. For longggggg lengths. 8O~~~ If I keep going I'll start running into massive spoilers from pairing names that ... are spoilers just by existing, because the long-term goodness of this series stretches that far wide.~~ Most of these pairing names are probably spoilers anyway, but UNF.
7. BEAUTIFUL Music / Mitsuda Yasunori ftw
Mitsuda Yasunori does the background music for this series, including both game and anime. If you're big into the RPG scene at all you should know this composer name >__> He tweets about how he has a Raimon uniform and that he wanted to wear it during one of his Inazuma Eleven recordings XD~
Also the opening and ending songs are all filled with dorky and CATCHY love for the series, and not just some random pop song contracted to suit the series by a mere tie-up. T-Pistonz + KMC and the Berryz Koubou girls are even players in the games. XD;
Inazuma Eleven discography - I'm still saddened I can't find my CD disc for the 1st anime OST, my mom did something with it when I left it in the van and I don't know where it went since T___T;
8. PENGUINS
It's not just soccer, by any means. Penguins are super-dimensional too.
'nuff said.
I will leave it to you to discover all the fun the fandom has with these wonderful creatures from the show. ♥ Or you can just bug me on IRC or such because I keep a pixiv tag solely about Inazuma Eleven's penguins, and it has provided me with lots of entertainment XD;
9. Seiyuu awesomeness
Here's where I bounce around about something probably only 10% of my f-list cares about (and generally the 10% best part of the f-list ;D~). But seriously, seiyuu is one of the biggest reasons why I care about ANY anime, because I have a HUGE aural fetish.
But mostly.
JUST LOOK AT THE CAST LIST IT'S FULL OF HOT VOICES EVERYWHERE~ Btw, I personally filled out about 98% of that list -.-;
My favorites?
Nojima Hirofumi - Tohma in Digimon Savers, his voice makes me melt all day long, and his real life personality cracks me up in good ways. I stalk his Twitter and squeal when he talks about Inazuma~ And his 100+ retweeted bump for T-Pistonz + KMC~ And his blog!
Yoshino Hiroyuki - This guy has done a LOT of work in his voice acting career and his hot deep voice for Inazuma is what I like best. He did also happen to have a role for Digimon, but it was for the Savers PS2 game which doesn't get much exposure. XD; ANYWAY this guy doesn't have a Twitter (yet), probably because he's too busy obsessing over soccer in real life \o/ His fanboy audio commentary in the 2010 World Cup cracks me up with joy. ♥ And onkei_kun and I are planning to sub some fun videos of him actually playing with a bunch of other seiyuu. Ace Striker Yocchin~ ;D
Kaji Yuuki - Unlike most of the famous seiyuu world, Kaji is right about my age which is what pulled me to him in the first place, along with his actual voice of course. XD His Fudou Akio character in Inazuma Eleven is his manliest I've heard, everyone should see it. XD~~~ He only briefly shows up in 2nd season but he's on the main team in the 3rd. It's such a waste that just about all of his roles in other anime/drama cds/etc are in his happy-go-lucky or just high-pitched voice because he sounds soooooooooo hot when he goes low. Anyway, until Fudou's role, you've also got his first role in the series as Ichinose Kazuya who shows up much earlier in the series. It's total lulz when the players face off with each other.
Kaji hasn't gotten his chance in Digimon yet, but he REALLY wants to (as he said during one of his Face!! sessions), and him singing braveheart for Hyakka Seiran is enough to capture my heart from his love for Digimon as well.
ANYWAY I STALK HIS TWITTER FOR INAZUMA ELEVEN LOVING TOO orz AND HIS BLOG. Along with Shimono Hiro-tan!
Hurrrr, and I can just keep going on and on~. THESE GUYS REALLY NEED CHARACTER SONGS \o/ so much that I have a separate post for it orz
AND IS THIS SERIES AWESOME OR WHAT-- Now we have "Mata ne... no Kisetsu" sung by the Inazuma All-Stars characters, and an upcoming Character Song Book (album CD)! Inazuma Eleven ftw!
I need to expand on this part of the post because my mind won't stop until I do so. At least to add Nakamura Yuuichi with his too many roles in this series XD~
10. THE DIGIMON CONNECTION
Although most of that connection comes through the seiyuu selection as mentioned right above. XD Other Digimon seiyuu in the mix are Takeuchi Junko (Takuya - Endou), Orikasa Fumiko (Ruki - Aki), Kugimiya Rie (Ikuto - Toramaru), Miyahara Nami (Wallace - Kogure), Kamiya Hiroshi (Kouji - Baddap), Kozakura Etsuko (Puppetmon - Kamezaki Kappa in ep 100, lol)... I'm sure more are to come further down the line.
Oh, and the Inazuma Eleven manga, although it only very loosely follows the original game story - it's drawn by the mangaka for Digimon V-Tamer, Yabuno Tenya.
And this might just be me but Inazuma Eleven feels more like Digimon than Xros does~ x_x Evolution resides in the heart and soul, and it's so strong in Inazuma. It's made me cry both in despair and in gratitude. In a way I never thought a series besides Digimon could do.
THE BEST STUFF IS EVEN BETTER THE NEXT TIME YOU WATCH IT. In other words, this series just keeps giving me new discoveries every time I watch it~
I'm personally having oodles of fun just screencapping things that catch my eye although it's almost all just the less serious stuff XD; The joy of everyday life is important too. Really, the characters, more outlined in the character sections earlier tell more of this end.
Also, it took me FOREVER to realize this, but some of the scriptwriters Inari Akihiko (the guy who mostly does match episodes) and Yamada Ken'ichi (Teikoku expert) had done a significant amount of scriptwriting for Digimon Savers as well. WIN.
All in all, anybody who knows me decently also knows how much heart I take into the Digimon series I love, and it extends into this lovely series from LEVEL-5 in a similar fashion. It is pure win.
11. Epic fandom
This fandom takes many of its ties from mostly the epic parts of Digimon, Pokemon, Hetalia fandoms and the like - mostly in the Japanese of course XD; I'm not so sure why but some of English Pokemon fandom seems to be in this too but I don't have many good experiences with the superficiality of the English Pokemon fandom with few exceptions. You can ignore that majority at least :D
Either way, there's a good portion of fandom that's serious and will produce all sorts of heart-touching works, and another good portion of fandom that'll produce gag that sends me reeling in the best laughing exercise I've had in years. Sometimes, they overlap each other.
Searching イナズマイレブン (Inazuma Eleven) on pixiv will land you lots over 100,000 pics of fanart madness. Searching イナイレ[腐] (Inazuma Eleven fujo/yaoi) will get you about a quarter of the way there. And of course there are some of the amazing artists who don't even need to use the tags and the fandom finds their work somehow and get crazy with the bookmarking count. A particularly useful and epic tag is the InaIre Bookmarked 1000+ Times tag, which is still missing some submissions to be honest.
A few even make it to 10000 times bookmarked. Yeah.
You can look through my bookmarks if you can handle all the gay in it~ *runs*
The usual イナズマイレブン search on nicovideo will get you plenty of epic fan videos as well.~ A lot of them have been copied over to youtube so you could search there too, although I don't really take the time to do that personally. There's a lot of extra junk on youtube.
Epic AMVS:
Bad Apple - Fubuki
Dramatic - Team America
Sore de ii no desu ka - Burn/Gazel AMV
Eiyuu - 1st season~
Zankoku na Tenshi no Thesis - 1st and 2nd season Yes, someone made it work with this freaking old song AND IT'S REALLY GOOD
Uso - Fubuki
Crack:
Nojima Hirofumi - a rather different Gouenji
The White Meteor Fidio 64
Miyasaka + Bakemonogatari Ed parody Which I feel was animated better here than the original in most parts wwww
Aliea playing mario music
Working!! Op Parody
I have a lot more crack saved up in MyList but you'd have to have a good Japanese understanding to get them XD;
There are a lot of videos of just people pointing out awesome things in the series like the parts where Tachimukai wears only the jersey on the top half while he's got shorts on (versus Gouenji) and the positions of where they leave their SHOES in their rooms or omgggg these guys are so detailed. Like this user's series, they're sooo much fun if you can read what they're saying. XD I also love her Inazuma blog because she has all sorts of nice things to say about the series. SO MUCH LOVE <3 ~ Again, it's like how I go around rewatching and screencapping things that catch my eye, though I still have some organizing to do.~
Extra plugs for inazuma_11 and ryuu_rogue XD
SO the final message is WATCH WATCH WATCH