Line #1 Headscratchers/InazumaEleven


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3	* Okay, I know this seems like a strange thing to bring up but this just baffles me to no end: Why exactly did [[MediaNotes/PanEuropeanGameInformation PEGI]] feel the need to give the ''GO'' and ''GO: Chrono Stones'' games the same age rating as other 3DS games which are not aimed at children and deal with mature and heavy stuff in them, including: VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIV, VideoGame/PersonaQShadowOfTheLabyrinth, VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorneySpiritOfJustice, and most striking of all, some of the '''''VideoGame/SenranKagura games'''''? What about the content of the ''GO'' games could possibly warrant that high of an age rating? It's even rated higher then all three main series 3DS VideoGame/ProfessorLayton entries , and VideoGame/LBXLittleBattlersExperience. Just...''why''? The Layton games and ''LBX'' deal with much heavier themes and concepts then the Inazuma Eleven ever has, particularly the former. I get that this is a weird complaint to throw out but I just can't understand how the content in Inazuma Eleven was deemed ''more mature'' then the content in Professor Layton, and on the ''same level as things like Senran Kagura and Shin Megami Tensei''.
4	** No idea. My only broad guess is that the soccer matches are rather violent, if you take all of the special moves at face value. Given the violence is between kids in something as casual as soccer matches it might help give the ratings a boost. That's all I can think of. I agree that it is especially odd though, given that all the games have gotten A ratings, equivalent of E, from CERO in Japan. Although this really doesn't count as a headscratcher, just saying.
5	* Why does Mark Evans share the surname of his maternal grandfather?
6	** Because the family name comes from his mother's side, rather then his father's. This is hardly uncommon nowadays.
7	* How does Taiyou play once in a decade in he's in middle school? Does that mean the first time he played with his team was in, like, preschool?
8	** The type of genius player "that comes once a decade" isn't specifically Taiyou, he's just stated to be the most recent case. A better question would be how it's him who has this skill when he's spent most his life hospitalized instead of practicing with a team as it's not a solo sport, but that probably falls under his being a prodigy too.
9	* Throughout the series, we've seen enemy teams that move way too fast to be seen by either our heroes or the announcer, only for our heroes to adapt to the speed, move faster, and process the speed better. And that's all fine and good. The issue is that after this happens roughly 4-5 times, how the hell does anyone watching them play not just see wind as people move faster than the eye can see? Sure, long-time audience members might get used to the speed, but anyone new will be completely lost!
10	* In addition to the above, how is it possible that every international team can keep up/surpass Inazuma Japan, when they never had to train against the incredibly powerful Alius academy? It doesn't help that Gemini Storm and Epsilon were both powered by the Alius crystal. Genesis/Gaia technically trained without the crystal, but they needed to train against Gemini Storm and Epsilon! So how does every other team keep up?
11	* How do people know when they are using a hissatsu technique? I mean, some are obvious, like God Hand and Megaton Head, but there are others like Asoko ni UFO, which people count as a hissatsu, but it could have just been some guy yelling, "[[LookBehindYou Hey look! A distraction!]]" I mean, can they [[LeaningOnTheFourthWall see the words at the bottom of the screen or something]]?
12	** I've always just seen hissatsu techniques as any move that's unconventional in some way to standard, real world soccer. Although Asoko ni UFO is basically just going "Hey, look! A distraction", it's not exactly something you'd expect a soccer player to try and pull off in the middle of a match.
13	* In the first dozen episodes or so, why does Endou constantly default to using Nekketsu/Bakuretsu Punch when settling things outside of official matches? I can understand that God Hand probably takes up more energy, and arguably showing off your best technique at the drop of a hat isn't the best idea (which doesn't work in this situation anyways, since Endou's been using God Hand every match in the Football Frontier and I'm pretty sure that anyone who cared probably knows everything they're going to get from just watching it) but it's just jarring to see Endou get so fired up about defending his teammates' honor and challenging people to one-on-one duels and then skimping out on the defense.
14	** It seems logical to assume that certain techniques have different advantages and disadvantages. For example, Majin The Hand is obviously more powerful then God Hand, but as can be seen whenever it's used, it takes a while for it to be pulled off. While God Hand takes less time, but at the disadvantage of being a less powerful defense, and Nekketsu Punch & Bakuretsu can be pulled off on the drop of a hat within a split second. But at the obvious disadvantage of being weak. Although I haven't seen the episodes in a long while to check, it could be that the situations required Endou to pull off a save at the last second? There's also the fact that different moves obviously have different ways of stopping the ball. So, for example, while God Hand is the best in terms of straight out power, Nekketsu Punch would be better if the weakness of the shoot technique you're countering is delivering a direct counter blow to it, rather then just blocking it with your hand. In the same way that "The Wall" works against offense on the ground, but it's weakness is offense from the air. God Hand isn't better in all situations, just because it's got more standard power. Like how when Endou used Bakuretsu Punch against Reize's shot, because he knew that the shot was far too quick to be stopped by Majin The Hand. He only ends up trying Majin The Hand out of anger, and he's right: Majin The Hand wasn't broken though due to it being too weak, but because it was too slow at charging up.
15	** My major issue is just for the out-of-official-games confrontations Endou has with characters like Hibiki or the Mukata siblings. He's the one that challenges them with a "if you can make it in while I'm protecting the goal" challenge and there's no reason for him to be unprepared to use anything other than his strongest techniques when it's a one-on-one showdown.
16	** There is an element of ElementalRockPaperScissors at hand, too. The only moment one would want to use God Hand instead of Majin the Hand is to save strenght (anime) or MP (games) for shots you know you can stop. But God Hand is Earth elemental and weak to Wood shots, so Flame Punch may be weaker but works best agaisnt them because 'type match-ups'.
17	* Why the heck do the characters just stop and talk during the middle of a match? I know that from a narrative perspective, it's to keep the story and character development flowing, but from an in-universe perspective it makes no sense. And why doesn't the opponent ever just steal the ball when this is happening? I understand moments where the ball's gone out play briefly, but there's moments in almost every match where the ball is still in play, but the characters will stop and have a conversation like time has paused around them.
18	** TalkingIsAFreeAction. Happens a lot in sport anime/mangas.
19	* What is the ball made out of, titanium? With all the moves that are performed in the show, shouldn't the ball pretty much burst every time a hissatsu is used? The same applies to the nets. The nets in Inazuma Eleven seem to be the strongest nets in history.
20	** My guess is Cybertronian alloy... the one that reforms automatically after enough time has passed.
21	** We all SEE the Supermoves / Hissatsus as something flashy and powerful, but they are probably nothing more than NAMES. We the audience think we are seeing the ball in flames, but in-universe it's just very strong kicks. YourMindMakesItReal I guess.
22	*** This could be applied to the hissatsus, but the keshins/avatars mixi-max, and soul abilities are all very obviously real things. Characters make clear reference to a person's keshin & soul being an actual thing that they've summoned out of them, that everyone can see. And mixi-max only makes sense as something superpowered. It's true that a lot of the hissatsu techniques seem to be protrayed in a way to implies their symbolic (such as damage being doing to the ball/pitch, despite it being fine a few seconds later), but even these are incredibly inconsistent when it comes to this. There are times when characters see that someone's on their way to mastering a hissatsu after seeing their body emit some kind of energy. And there's also a number of times throughout the entire franchise when hissatsus, as well as other abilities, are used to do things outside of soccer, which a normal kick of a soccer ball wouldn't be able to do.
23	*** Most striking of all against the "it's all symbolic" argument are the moments where this would not make sense in the context of the soccer matches. For example, when Endou is trying to use God Hand to stop Emperor Penguin; the Penguins are forcing at the hand's fingers, and it's only after a short struggle that Endou realizes he can put extra oomph behind stopping them by including his other hand. How in the world can a scenario like this one be explained in the context of realistic soccer? And this is in the very early stages of the series too. The inconsistent nature of hissatu techniques is more so a result of the TV anime trying to apply the game's special techniques into free flow matches; in the context of the game, the hissatsu techniques are applied to cut away animations & gags, and are basically just more likely-to-be-successful versions of ordinary moves you can make (tackle for the ball, shot at the goal, ect). You use up SP to have a higher success chance, the game cuts away to the animation, then cuts back to the normal match flow. The anime included the hissatsus but obviously they're going to look bizarre and out of place when they've interspersed into ordinary free-flowing soccer matches.
24	** Actually there are lots of times where the ball actually ends up scorched or burned or something. At least in the games anyway.
25	** Alternate interpretation: maybe the ball is made from HUMAN skin? The same humans that can stand a flaming ball to the face and not catch up in fire?
26	* So after Kageyama's plan to drop the steel beams onto Raimon failed, thanks to Kidou, he's arrested for the crime. But then we hear that he got let off due to "lack of evidence". ...Uh, what? What lack of evidence? The bolts that fell clearly proved the beams had been tampered with, and one of the construction workers even confesses to the police that Kageyama ordered him to tamper with the steel beams. That's both evidence, and testimony. They also had a clear motive: Eliminate Raimon to lead his own team to victory. I don't see how exactly he got let off, especially since, even without all this, the entire thing looks far too set up to be an "accident". The beams fall only on Raimon's side, they fall the very second the match starts, and they just so happen to fall in the exact location that most of the Raimon players would have been at the start of the match. He couldn't have made it look more like a attempted-mass-murder trap if he tried, so why did he get off the hook?
27	** The easy answer is: Kageyama / Ray Dark is a massive KarmaHoudini, for the duration of the first 2 and a half games at least. (He finally gets arrested for good in the third, after the Japan / Italy match.) What lack of evidence? Well, Dark wasn't near the beams at any moment, no fingerprints of his can be found on them, and the worker may have been trying to falsely frame his boss (bear with me here) At the end of the day, the guy KNOWS how to cover his steps.
28	* Why did no one summon a keshin in the original series? I know the meta reason is because the fact that keshins were a new concept introduced in Go, but it seems odd that through the entire original series, no one ever summoned a single keshin. In Chrono Stone we even see young-Endou summon his keshin, Majin Great, when Tenma, Fei and Wonderbot go to the past so he clearly had to the power to do so, but we never see him do it. Nor any of the other characters who would logically have the ability.
29	** It was explained that the reason why Endou had been able to call a Keshin was because his alternate selves had resonated to the Endou Tenma had met.
30	** If you think about it... yes, he did. Many times. Whenever he used Majin the Hand, a proto form of Magic(al) Giant Grandius could be seen. Also Goenji / Axel, whenever he did Bakunetsu / Flame Storm. The better question would be why no Inazuma Go player could use Spirit Armor if most Summoners (most of them Imperials) had grown perfectly accustomed to their keshins.
31	* Was there a specific reason why Daisuke made all his notebooks so damn cryptic rather then just stating how to do the move outright? It seems unlikely he did it so Endou would be able to grow from learning what his cryptic instructions meant, because he couldn't have written them knowing Endou would use them. If anything he probably wrote them just for the hell of it. So why make them so cryptic, what was the point outside of this just be a point device to have character development?
32	** It's mentioned during the FFI that Daisuke had a long-standing habit of just shouting out "random" sound effects and such when he was inspired. He yells out "GAN, SHAN, DWAN" when watching the Inazuma Japan versus Team Garshield match, which inspires Endou to create God Catch, but later mentions that the words didn't really have any particular meaning, and Rococo confirms that this isn't unusual for him. I'm pretty sure that those notebooks were purely personal at their time of creation, and the messy sketches and sound effects were his way of capturing his own flashes of inspiration. Except for Fuyuka's notebook, they weren't meant to teach others, and so Daisuke just never bothered writing them in a "coherent" manner.
33	** There's also the matter than rival teams may try to spy on them / steal the books, as Inazuma 2 proved (Astram Schiller wanted to steal the book in possesion of the Fauxshore's principal.) so it stands to reason that he would try to codify them. It happens again in Chrono Stones (Arion and Fei sneak around to find the Master's Notebook, which details the 'best players in human history'. El Dorado wanted to know who those players were to eliminate them and erase the Second Phase Kids from existence.)
34	* Why did Daisuke just vanish to another country without first informing his family, and loved ones? I know they handwave the fact he never contacted them with him joking that he meant to do so, but before he knew it decades had passed, but surely he's not that much a jerk that he'd go so damn long with at least a "hey, by the way, I'm alive". All the trauma that his daughter went through, blaming soccer for his death, the struggle between her letting go of his death and letting Endou play soccer, and all the pain Endou must have felt deep down...and all of it could have been avoided if he had just bothered to pick up a phone. Or write a letter. Or send an e-mail. Or just do something to try and make contact. Passing it off with a joke just seemed strange, and Endou's nonchalant and cheery response to the joke seemed very strange too. I know Endou isn't someone to dawn on the negative things, but surely he should have been ''a little'' upset for him making light of his own jerkish actions like that.
35	** He was a wanted man (not a criminal, but still a wanted man: by Ray Dark. The creep had had a hand in all the other Raimon Veterans' 'accidents', and he was in danger as well.) Phone, e-Mail, postal services... all can be intercepted by sufficiently skilled experts, which Dark owns / has the means to hire. You know? THIS is the one moment in his live his cryptic handwriting would have been useful! Only select few people can read it, right?
36	* In Go, why in the name of everything good are Fifth Sector legally allowed to hold a tournament in which the player can come into danger of serious injury? The Russian Roulette Stadium is just full of things that could badly injure, and even possibly kill, a player: giant pinball flippers and bouncers, sections of the pitch that drop seemingly randomly, huge walls of water and wind that pop up out of nowhere...I get that Fifth Sector is an extremists organization with no second thoughts about threatening the lives of kids, among other things, but that stuff is all behind closed doors. These deadly aspects to the matches are all public. Why is Holy Road even a thing that's allowed to take place?
37	** Humans in this universe are stronger than they seem. See the 'ball is made from human skin' theory up here.
38	** Keep in mind Goenji / Axel is in charge of the Fifth Sector, as the 'Emperor'. He probably made sure those obstacle courses were non-lethal.
39	** Fifth Sector was created to get rid of the Second Stage Children, so they probably were trying to destroy anything to do with soccer, which includes killing good players. Jerks.
40	* In Galaxy, just thinking logically for a moment, how it is possible that this ball sport that follows very specific rules just happens to have been invented on every single planet in the galaxy? It's possible that the same rough idea of a sport involving leather filled with air being kicked around a field came about on all the planets, but it's quite clear that it's the ''exact same'' sport, right down to the details. The possibility that the exact same concept of the exact same sport would have arisen and became a thing on every planet in the galaxy, is so astronomically small that it might as well be impossible. So...how exactly is it that soccer seems to exist on all the planets?
41	** [[MST3kMantra Aliens once visited earth and are impressed of that sport that it becomes a part of that planets world?]]
42	* In Chrono Stone, the Japanese players in the Japan VS America match were so violent that it lead to soccer becoming illegal in Japan. When Raimon travel back to prevent this we see that Beta and her team took the place of the Japanese representatives and played so violently that the match had to be suspended. This is all well and good but...Why didn't anyone notice that it wasn't the Japanese team playing? For starters, this seemed to be an official friendly match; aka a pro level match with adults. Why didn't anyone notice that the Japanese team seemed to be made up of a bunch of young teens? And why did anyone bat an eye-lid when Raimon took the place of the American team? Even if the match did end up becoming extremely violent, surely the blame would be placed on the idiots who allowed a bunch of random kid to play, not the Japanese representatives themselves.
43	** Mind-control. Beta's team used their Sphere Device to brainwash everyone into not noticing the facts. However, controlling the people in front of the TV must have been tough work.
44	* So what exactly counts as a foul in Inazuma Eleven? Because apparently electrocuting your opponent and shooting them in the face with soccer balls, among other things, is perfectly fine, but if you perform a slightly off slide that catches a player's leg, it's a foul. How exactly does this work? We only ever see yellow and red cards a hand full of times in the show, but they're always for a normal rough challenge; albeit one that'd be considered violent by real-world-soccer standards but by the standards of Inazuma Eleven, surely ''electrocuting someone'' is FAR worse.
45	* How exactly does the entire thing with Endou's death work? They travelled back, and made an altered timeline where Endou got 'sealed away' during the Japan VS America match. Then they went back to the present to find that the new reality is that Endou had died in a car crash. This is explained with the fact that, with Endou having 'vanished' during the J-VS-A match, the timeline had to invent some way to write Endou out of existence, so the timeline killed him. Okay, I get all that, but...how does this work? The altered timeline, the one everyone returned from would be affecting the main-timeline. It's explained that at first an altered reality affects the new main timeline, but it cause the timeline to swerve into an alternative version. But if it's left over time, it'll become the main timeline and therefore there'll be no way to erase it. So in other words, the entire thing with Endou's death was the altered timeline. Shouldn't the main timeline have just, you know, used the events of the altered timeline, rather then making them up and inventing a fake death that'll possibly become real? It seems illogical. I know the reason in terms of out of universe is to add suspense to the plot by having the threat of Endou's death hanging over everyone, but logically it makes no sense. The timeline they went back to should have been one where Endou just mysteriously vanished, not one where he randomly died in a car crash.
46	** If you think about it, making Endou missing would just make the whole world go to panic and search parties ensuing to find where Endou was, including the impossible places when it comes to Endou's old friends. Making Endou seemingly dead not only makes his old friends give up, it also stops them from actually discovering the bigger picture of things.
47	* On that note, who does the entire timeline system of "if you leave the altered realities alone for long enough they'll become the main reality" work? What does it even mean by leave then alone long enough? Is it in terms of the perspective of time passage, or the people who altered the timeline, or those trying to fix it or...just how? It doesn't make it clear at all and it's way to vague.
48	* In the movie, is there a specific reason Kanon decided to turn up in the middle of the match and apologize for being late other then to make a dramatic turnabout entrance? He has the ability to travel time, and there's obviously no danger of causing a time paradox because the entire thing is one huge alteration to reality in the first place.
49	* The bad guys from the future in the movie watch Kageyama's plan to try and crush Raimon with steel beams in the past fail (the events in the past are being transmitted to them on a scene as they're "[[SanDimasTime retrospectively happening in conjuction with their plans to interfere]]"). And they seem to act disappointed when it does. How does that work? They're in the future, what they're watching already happened in the past, so obviously the plan failed. Why did they for some reason expect the plan to succeed? Did they forget that the events they're seeing are actually past events and not happening at the same time they're looking at them on the scene? They obviously knew the plan failed after all, because the fact no one stopped Raimon is why they're interfering in the first place. So why the heck did they just think the events of the past would just play out differently for no reason whatsoever?
50	* Another thing about time travelling happened when Perfect Cascade was called to El Dorado so they could defend the HQ against the infiltrating Second Stage Children. Since they are time travelling, they could have picked Raimon off at their leisure and still jump to the very moment they were needed, so why keep Raimon around?
51	* Are hissatsu exclusive to soccer in the Inazuma universe. There are shown to be other sports such as baseball, basketbal and gymnastics. Are they also able to use hissatsu in those sports or only soccer?
52	* Why did Kurimatsu become the captain instead of Kabeyama? Sure, they explained that they chose him because during the match against The Empire he continued to play even with an injured leg, but overall, Kabeyama still did more than him and deserved it more. The main reason is because he's literally the only character who played every match (even Endou missed one, the one against The Empire). He never left the team even once, not even in season 2. Despite being a coward a lot of the times, the fact that he stayed in the team in season 2, despite all the scary fights they had that made even normally stronger-willed characters like Kazemaru ''and'' Kurimatsu (his best friend, no less) leave the team on their own will rather than due to injury, definitely proves that he is braver than he seems.
53	* Related to the one above, since Kurimatsu became Raimon's captain, why didn't he appear in ''Inazuma Eleven GO''? [[TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot It would have been interesting]] to see Tenma meet Raimon's second captain and find out more about the way he managed to lead his team in his final year of middle school, but that didn't happen, so making Kurimatsu the captain was kinda pointless. Again, this could have easily been avoided if they had made Kabeyama the captain in the first place, since he appeared in the ''GO'' series.

Context Headscratchers / InazumaEleven