History Manga / MaiBall

** Chapter 37 shows a reference to the Japanese national women's football team winning the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup, which inspired Makishi to play football. In addition, her favorite player from the Japanese team is Sawai, who may be based on 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup MVP Homare Sawa. And coincidentally, her current coach Makie Komukai, who also once played for the Japanese national team, may be based on center-back Saki Kumagai, who scored the game-winning penalty kick against Team USA to give Japan its first Women's World Cup championship.

* ForeignExchangeStudent : Franklin International School's two foreign players [[UsefulNotes/Russia Dütè Serbanov]] and [[UsefulNotes/Serbia Anya Nibenvić]].

* PowerCopying : Mai has the ability to copy another player's abilities, but her version will be weaker than the original. This explains why she was able to pick up football so easily despite never having played in an official match before. After training for so many years with Kunimitsu, she was able to copy his skills subconsciously. However, she ended up being only at least half as good as he is, only surpassed by [[TheAce Reika]] who has just played football for only ''two months''.

* XMeetsY : Manga/CaptainTsubasa with a girls' high school team.

** Kunimitsu is definitely this. A two-time [=MVP=] in the Japanese under-15 national tournaments and considered one of the best junior male football players in the country. As a high school boy he is able to carry the Kijikita boys' football team to dominance, and at the same time coach a ragtag bunch of cute schoolgirls into a formidable team capable of beating the best teams in the region, even beating more seasoned coaches with far more experience than he has, one of them even ''once played for the Japanese national team''!

* HugeSchoolgirl : Center backs Saki Benio of Kijikita (who stands at 181cm or about 5'11") and Takenou of Kuryuin (who clocks out at 190cm or about 6'3").

* OpposingSportsTeam : Kijikita has faced four opponent teams so far, but the previous year's regional finalists [[TheRival Kijinan]] and [[UnnecessaryRoughness Kuryuin]] best fit the archetype. Nevertheless, most of the characters from the opponent teams so far are likeable, and they easily make friends with the characters from the hero team after their matches.

** Chidori stands at only 138cm, but she is one of the best players of Kijikita who carried the team to victory at least once. She also has a SuperpoweredEvilSide which allows her to do [[Manga/KurokoNoBasuke Kuroko Tetsuya-style]] misdirection moves at the cost of not being able to talk to her teammates.

* PowerCopying : Mai has the ability to copy another player's abilities, but her version will be weaker than the original. This explains why she was able to pick up football so easily despite never having played in an official match before: after training for so many years with Kunimitsu, she was able to copy his skills subconsciously.

** Chapter 37 references the Japanese national women's football team winning the 2011 FIFA World Cup, which inspired Makishi to play football. In addition, her favorite player from the Japanese team is Sawai, who may be based on 2011 FIFA World Cup MVP Homare Sawa. And coincidentally, her current coach Makie Komukai, who also once played for the Japanese national team, may be based on center-back Saki Kumagai, who scored the game-winning penalty kick against Team USA to give Japan its first Women's World Cup championship.

** Franklin plays a highly defensive formation designed to get as many possessions as possible and tiring out the opposition.

''Mai Ball!'' combines intense girls' football matches with FanService focusing more on the lower body in a healthy balance, allowing viewers to follow the series for both the story and the fan service equally. And unlike many sports series, the {{Opposing Sports Team}}s are portrayed more sympathetically and with more honorable characters, even going as far as giving characters from those teams ADayInTheLimelight.

* OpposingSportsTeam : Kijikita has faced four opponent teams so far, but the previous year's regional finalists [[TheRival Kijinan]] and [[UnnecessaryRoughness Kuryuin]] best fit the archetype.

* IdenticalTwinIDTag : Kijikita twins Aoi and Akane Shimagawa have blue and red eyes, respectively. In addition, as revealed in later chapters, [[TooMuchInformation Aoi's bust is 0.2 cm bigger than Akane's, while Akane's waist are 0.2 cm wider than Aoi's]].

* IdenticalTwinIDTag : Kijikita twins Aoi and Akane Shimagawa have blue and red eyes, respectively. In addition, as

[[caption-width-right:350:[[UsefulNotes/TheBeautifulGame]] has never been this [[{{Moe}} beautiful]].]]

[[caption-width-right:350:TheBeautifulGame has never been this [[{{Moe}} beautiful]].]]

** Many prominent characters in this series are given different image colors as {{Shout-Out}}s to many popular professional and national football clubs in real life. For instance, Reika's image colors are White and Red, the colors of the English national team; while the Shimagawa twins are given the image colors of the two Italian clubs Inter Milan and AC Milan.

* IdenticalTwinIDTag : Kijikita twins Aoi and Akane Shimagawa have blue and red eyes, respectively.

** Makishi stands at only 141cm, and she is a sweeper, the same position as the likes of Mishiki and Takenou. And it shows during the Kijikita-Franklin match, wherein she was able to hold down the much bigger Mai for a good portion of the game.

* RagtagBunchOfMisfits : Kijikita Girls FC is composed of ''exactly'' eleven ''high school freshman girls'' with a ''high school boy'' as their head coach and two assistant coaches who know nothing about football at all.

* ReasonYouSuckSpeech : Reika delivers this to Mai when the latter fails to lead the team effectively and trail 0-2 against Kuryuin.

* NamesTheSame : Seirin High School in this series has the same name as the one in [[Manga/KurokoNoBasuke]], but is in a different region and has a different Kanji reading.

** Reika is pretty much this, bordering on MarySue at times.
** Kunimitsu is definitely this. A two-time [=MVP=] in the Japanese under-15 national tournaments and considered one of the best junior male football players in the country. As a high school boy he is able to carry the boys' team to dominance in the region, and at the same time coach a ragtag bunch of cute schoolgirls into a formidable team capable of beating the best teams in the region, even beating more seasoned coaches with far more experience than he has, one of them even ''once played for the Japanese national team''!
* AcademicAthlete :

* TheAce : The center-forwards and strikers of every football club in the series are often considered the best players for their respective teams, but the more defensive teams like Franklin, Kuryuin, and Kijiyama South (Kijinan) have highly defensive sweepers like Tsubaki Makishi, Mirai Takenou, and Jaina-Airi Mishiki as some of their respective best players.

''Mai Ball!'' is a ''seinen'' football manga by Sora Inoue (''JAM!!'', ''Zero In'', ''Real Bout High School'') currently serialized monthly under publisher ''Young Animal Arashi''. It was first released in 2012, just a year after the Japanese women's national football team won the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup and two years before the Japanese women's junior national football team won the 2014 Under-17 FIFA Women's World Cup.

* HugeSchoolgirl : Center backs Saki Benio of Kijikita (who stands at 181cm or about 5'11") and the '''colossal''' Takenou of Kuryuin (who clocks out at 190cm or about 6'3").

* RagtagBunchOfMisfits : Kijikita Girls FC is composed of ''exactly'' eleven ''freshmen'' with a ''high school boy'' as their head coach and two assistant coaches who know nothing about football at all.

* HugeSchoolgirl : Center backs Saki Benio of Kijikita and the '''colossal''' Takenou of Kuryuin.

* MaleGaze : The FanService in this series focuses more on the [[ShesGotLegs legs, thighs, and lower body]] unlike many {{Manga}} and {[Light Novel}}s which usually focus more on [[GagBoobs the breasts and upper body]].

* PowerCopying : Due to Mai's keen eye for people, she has the ability to subconsciously copy another player's abilities, but her version will be weaker than the original. This explains why she was able to pick up football so easily despite never having played in an official match before: after training for so many years with Kunimitsu, she was able to copy his skills subconsciously.

As football became the second-most played sport in Japan thanks to Manga/CaptainTsubasa, many prominent characters in the series (including characters from the {{Opposing Sports Team}}s) are given image colors as {{ShoutOut}}s to several professional and national football clubs in real life.

!!!Tropes that apply to the series as a whole:

As football became the second-most played sport in Japan thanks to Manga/CaptainTsubasa, many prominent characters in the series (including characters from the {{Opposing Sports Team}}s) are given image colors as {{Shout-Out}}s to several professional and national football clubs in real life.