Video Game / Inazuma Eleven

Little boys and girls and super-dimensional soccer.

"This is super-dimensional soccer!"

— Mamoru Endou, after the next episode preview

Inazuma Eleven is the hit football/soccer multimedia franchise from Level-5, spanning multiple games and other related media. It follows the story of Mamoru Endou (or Mark Evans, if you prefer the dub names), the spirited goalkeeper of Raimon Junior High's nearly-disbanded football team consisting of only seven members. Although Endou inherits his deceased grandfather's goalkeeping skills and love for soccer, his teammates are somewhat less motivated. Things take a drastic turn when legendary ace striker Shuuya Gouenji moves to Inazuma Town. Desperate to recruit more members before the school shuts down the soccer club and also hoping to participate in the celebrated national Football Frontier tournament, Endou tries to convince Gouenji to join his team. However, Gouenji's arrival has also caught the attention of Teikoku Academy, the champion of Football Frontier for 40 consecutive years, who then proceeded to arrange a "friendly match" with Raimon.

Part of what made Inazuma Eleven special is that the franchise takes the most mundane of things like soccer, turns it upside down, and cranks the absurdity to its most logical extremes. Soccer shots that form fiery tornadoes, summoning penguins for additional power, soccer tackles that defy the laws of physics, team-play tactics running on Rule of Cool and so much more, all while playing completely straight as if everything is at stake. This has since become Level-5's trademark, as it has been appearing in other franchises.

Inazuma Eleven series (The Mamoru Endou Saga)

• Inazuma Eleven (Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS): Raimon Junior High was once known in the world of competitive soccer, with their team — the titular "Inazuma Eleven" — being considered as legends. Now, with the school's soccer club in danger of closing down, free-sprited goalkeeper Mamoru Endou and his ragtag group of seven other soccer players ended up recruiting Shuuya Gouenji in hopes of recruiting more members for the celebrated national Football Frontier tournament, unknowingly caught the attention of Teikoku Academy, the champion of Football Frontier for 40 consecutive years, who then proceeded to arrange a "friendly match" with Raimon...
• Inazuma Eleven 2 (Inazuma Eleven 2: The Threat of the Invaders in Japan)(Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS)^note Comes in two versions: Firestorm (known as Fire in Japan) and "Blizzard'': Following their victory at the Football Frontier, Raimon Junior High was suddenly attacked by an unknown group who uses soccer to wreck havoc across every school in Japan, with Endou and the Raimon soccer club barely able to survive the attack. Wanting to figure out the reason behind these unprovoked attacks across Japan, Endou and his friends must travel around the country in search of potential players capable of tipping the scales to Raimon's favor and save Japan from utter destruction.
• Inazuma Eleven 3 (Inazuma Eleven 3: Challenge to the World in Japan)(Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS)^note Comes in three versions: Lightning Bolt (known as Spark in Japan), Bomb Blast (known as Bomber in Japan) and Team Ogre Attacks (known as Ogre in Japan): With Raimon defeated Alius Academy with the fate of the world at stake, a brand-new challenge awaits Endou as the school was invited to participate in the Football Frontier International, in which Raimon was picked to represent Japan as they go up against other soccer teams from other countries. Fortunately, they are not alone as many familiar allies all coming back to form "Inazuma National", the one soccer team that will shake the world of soccer to its core, unaware of the sinister threats looming in the shadows...

Inazuma Eleven GO series (The Tenma Matsukaze Saga)

• Inazuma Eleven GO (Nintendo 3DS)^note Comes in two versions: Light (known as Shine in Japan) and Shadow (known as Dark in Japan): It's been ten years since the victory of "Inazuma National", and the rules of soccer has drastically changed, where only the strong survives and that soccer has been heavily regulated by an organization known as Fifth Sector. Newcomer Tenma Matsukaze tries out for Raimon's soccer club and ended up stirring a revolution as he and his new team fights to bring back soccer to its former glory.
• Inazuma Eleven GO: Chrono Stones (Nintendo 3DS)^note Comes in two versions: Wildfire (known as Neppuu in Japan) and Thunderflash (known as Raimei in Japan): Returning to Raimon Junior High after playing around with some kids on one fateful day, Tenma was shocked to discover that his friends and basically everyone in the school has forgotten about soccer, as if it never exist. An encounter with a mysterious person named Alpha reveals the truth: soccer has been heavily weaponized in the future, and thus, an organization called El Dorado has been sending assassins like him across time and space to erase soccer from existence. With Tenma being the only one with memories of the old timeline intact and an unexpected help from a kid from the future named Fei Rune, Tenma must travel across time to bring down El Dorado and save soccer before it disappeared for good.
• Inazuma Eleven GO: Galaxy (Nintendo 3DS)^note Comes in two versions: Big Bang and Supernova: The Football Frontier International Vision 2 (FFIV2) is been held, and it's time when all youth soccer teams from different countries can finally compete in the tournament. However, "Inazuma National", the representative team of Japan formed by Tenma, have only eleven members... and eight of them are entirely new to soccer, leaving Tenma, Shindou Takuto and Tsurugi Kyousuke as the seniors trying to keep this inexperience team together. Against all odds, this unlikely team barely able to win the tournament, only for a shocking truth to came to light: the FFIV2 is just a front for the selection progress over who will represent Earth as the "Earth Eleven", eleven soccer players who will go up against actual aliens in the Grand Celesta Galaxy, the galactic tournament where failure results in the destruction of the representatives' planet.

Inazuma Eleven Ares series (The Asuto Inamori Saga)

• Inazuma Eleven: Ares (Inazuma Eleven: The Scales of Ares in Japan)(Anime-only): In an Alternate Continuity separate from the first three games, Alius Academy's unprovoked attack on Raimon Junior High never happened, resulting in Endou and the Raimon soccer team not strong enough to qualify for the Football Frontier International and the team disbanding as the result. The story instead follows Asuto Inamori, an aspiring soccer player from a small rural island who, along with his soccer team, head to mainland and became Raimon's new "Inakuni Raimon" soccer team, one who would finally tip the scales back to Raimon where it truly belongs...
• Inazuma Eleven: Orion (Inazuma Eleven: The Seal of Orion in Japan)(Anime-only): Following their victory during the Football Frontier, Raimon's "Inakuni Raimon" team are more than excited as they are picked to represent Japan for the forthcoming Football Frontier International, where stronger opponents from around the world gather for the chance to claim the top prize. With the help of some allies, both familiar and new, Asuto and his friends are ready to take on their greatest challenge yet... even as Asuto stumbles upon a much darker plot when he reunites with his long-lost father.

Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road series (The Unmei Sasanami Saga)

• Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road (Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road of Heroes in Japan)(Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, PC^note via Steam, iOS, Android): Set 25 years after Raimon's historic victory in the Football Frontier International, Unmei Sasanami, a young soccer player who was mentally scared to play soccer, tries out in Nagomuhara Junior High as the new manager of its newly formed soccer club. Things take on a rather interesting turn as his path towards building his team's "victory road" clashes with that of Haru Endou, Mamoru Endou's son.

Spin-offs

• Inazuma Future: A mobile phone game co-developed by Roid about Endou's great-grandson Kanon. It seems to have entered Development Hell as it was not released when promised.
• Inazuma Eleven Strikers (Nintendo Wii): A multi-player spin-off, trading off the tactical RPG experience to become purely a sports game; additional elements such as training through mini-games and Relationship Values between each player were also included. It had Early-Bird Cameos of characters from GO, and got an Updated Re-release.
• Inazuma Eleven Striker 2013: A sequel game to Inazuma Eleven Strikers, updated up to the point of the inclusion of the cast and mechanics from Chrono Stones.

Movies

• Inazuma Eleven: The Strongest Army Ogre Attacks: A movie that retells the events of the first game/season and is loosely based on the plot of the version of the Inazuma Eleven 3 with the same name.
• Inazuma Eleven GO The Movie: The Ultimate Bonds Gryphon: The second Inazuma Eleven movie, the first GO movie, and the only movie to be canon to the anime.
• Inazuma Eleven GO vs LBX: Little Battlers eXperience W: A Crisis Crossover movie between the Inazuma Eleven and LBX: Little Battlers eXperience franchises, released in Japanese cinemas in December 12, 2012.

---

This series features examples of:

#-D

• 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: On later episodes, they animate the team's van through 3D models.
• Artistic License – Sports: Pretty obviously. Most of the moves performed in the series either defy human limits, go against the laws of physics, or seem to be flat out magical. This is upped with GO, which introduces keshin, physical beings which players summon during matches, and then even further upped in Chrono Stone, and Galaxy, which introduce the concepts of mixi-maxing auras and transforming into giant animals called "Souls", respectively. The rules of soccer are very rarely in enforced properly, especially fouls. This makes the moments where they do follow the strict regulations of soccer stand out quite a bit. Red cards do come up a number of times, as do off-sides, disallowed goals, and players being punished by the officials for hurting people, but it's no where near as often as it should be.
  • Mixed-gender soccer teams were permitted by the Football Frontier Association in Galaxy, and in Ares no Tenbin, something which is something that is typically rare and limited in real life soccer (or most physical sports), both youth and pro.^note This is the case due to a whole multitude of reasons, ranging from the need to make matches balanced with regards to sex-specific averages, to problems with it requiring females & males to share locker-rooms, and the very high possibility of accidental (or intentional) inappropriate contact between sexes during matches. An exception could be made in the case of Ares no Tenbin as some high schools and middle schools do offer co-ed and have 1 to 3 female players if there isn't enough members form a female soccer school team]]
• Accidental Athlete: Tsunami discovered he has a natural talent for soccer after Touko and Rika accidentally kicked the ball at him while he was surfing and manages to defend himself with a powerful kick. Megane even comments about his uncanny athletic skills.
• Accidental Marriage: Ichinose eats Rika's special lovey-dovey okonomiyaki and ends up getting into something like this.
• Accidental Misnaming: Subverted. In the beggining, Goujin's teammates think he gets Fire Tornado's name wrong, calling it Fire Lemonade, and they try to correct him, particularly Hiyori. However, he later reveals he was intending to learn a completely different hisssatsu from the start, which, after several failed attempts, he finally succeeds in episode 26, scoring the winning goal for his team.
  • Seems to be played straight with his father, though. Goujin got the idea to learn it after his father told him about a hissatsu he heard about from the mainland which he thinks is named "Fire Lemonade", but a hissatsu with this name didn't exist at that time.
• Action Girl: Mainly in the second season, where every team from Aliea Academy has at least one girl (though still less than the boys) and there's also CCC Osaka Gals, which is an all-girl team. Touko and Rika (who is the captain of the aforementioned team) are the two girls from the main team. Kinako in Go.
• Adaptation Distillation / Adaptation Expansion: Both. Minor plot points are removed while major ones are elaborated upon.
• Adaptation Dye-Job:
  • In the game, the school uniform of the girls from Raimon consists of a ribbon, skirt and socks of the same colour, which changes depending on the class (e.g.Aki wears green and Haruna wears blue). In the game cutscenes and in the anime, every girl wears a grey skirt, blue socks and either a green or an orange ribbon. The only exception is Natsumi, who keeps the original magenta colour of the ribbon and skirt.
  • In the first games, all members of Raimon except the goalkeeper wear orange socks, excluding cutscenes. In the anime and the cutscenes, only Gouenji keeps the orange socks. Most of the members wear white ones and Kidou wears green ones.
  • All the reserve members for CCC Osaka Gals who appear in the anime had their eye color and hair color changed from their game counterparts.
• Adaptation Name Change: The title itself counts in the European dub. In-game it is pronounced with a long "u", while in other official instances (eg. Nintendo Direct) it's pronounced with an accent on the first "a" (which is closer to how it's pronounced in Japanese).
• Adapted Out:
  • Most of the scout characters are exclusive to the video games.
  • Most of the opponent teams have some reserves that are also game-exclusive.
  • The manga adaptation removed several characters that are part of the story in the game and anime. This includes Shishido (replaced by Tamano Gorou), Haruna, Domon, Ichinose and Fuyuka, as well as Akane and Midori in the GO manga.
• Adoptive Name Change:
  • Kidou Yuuto and Otonashi Haruna are siblings who lost their parents at a young age. They were adopted by different families and changed their surnames accordingly. Their birth surname is never revealed.
  • Ono Fuyuka had her surname changed to Kudou after being adopted by Kudou Michiya (although she was made to believe he was her real father the whole time).
  • Kiyama Tatsuya keeps his surname, but his first name is changed to Hiroto after being adopted by Kira Seijirou due to his similarities with the latter's deceased son.
• Adults Are Useless: Zigg-zagged. The coach's intro episodes often prove to be helpful but this usually dies off near the end. The police also try to help stop the Big Bad but they often require the players doing a lot of the work to do so.
• Agent Peacock: Aphrodi, what with the long hair and eyelashes, effeminate movements, fashion sense, hell, his name. He can also stop hissatsu techniques with one hand without using any hissatsu of his own, and he isn't even a goalkeeper.
• Air Voyance:
  • Beautifully subverted as Endou shouts to the plane carrying Ichinose into the sunset. He replies immediately, having been right behind him.
  • Played straight near the end of the series, when Endou sees off the plane carrying his fellow FFI competitors.
• Aliens Speaking English
  • Subverted, as it seems that the aliens were actually kids given the power of the Aliea meteorite to be physically superior.
  • Later played straight in Galaxy with the actual aliens.
• All in a Row: Up to three party members can follow Endou (or in the plot developments in the third game: Kidou or Kazemaru) in this way, and sometimes an NPC also tags along at the back. The three can be swapped out with the other twelve field members at any time, unless the story requires certain members to accompany Endou.
• All Your Powers Combined: Starting with the second season of the original and ending with Galaxy, it becomes a running theme to have the winning goal scored by a hissatsu or keshin which combines the energy of all players. In order, they are:
  • The Earth in the Aliea Academy arc.
  • Jet Stream in the Football Frontier International arc.
  • No hissatsu uses this trope in the Holy Road arc of GO. However, the concept of Keshin Drawing is very much this; by taking energy from the entire team, a Keshin that was previously exhausted can be re-summoned.
  • Saikyou Eleven Hadou from the end of Chrono Stone. Also, the Grand Luster tactic, which involves passing the ball between all the team's players to gather energy and massively power up the next shot.
  • The Earth ∞ in the end of Galaxy.
• Ambiguously Brown:
  • Lots of characters are fairly dark-skinned. Tsunami makes sense since he's Okinawan, but Sakuma, Domon, Rika etc. remain a mystery.
  • Tetsukado from GO is an aversion, for being the son of a fisherman and spending a lot of time in the sun, but Amagi or Kurama are never disclosed.
• Ambition Is Evil:
  • Kageyama became obsessed with winning after his father's career had been destroyed due to losing a soccer match to Daisuke, after which he started to lose every match he played.
  • Fudou became power hungry after his father lost his job and his family became poor. His mother told him to become strong and not end up like his father, but he mistook what she had said and took it to the wrong extremes.
• Anachronism Stew: Chrono Stone. People play football in Sengoku Japan and Medieval France. Jeane d'Arc wears glasses. And so on.
• And Now You Must Marry Me: Lalaya Obies kidnaps Tsurigi. She doesn't outright on why she did so, saying just to serve her. After she shows her leadership skills as Queen, Tsurgi half-heartedly agrees to serve her which she states this trope.
• Animal Battle Aura:
  • Many Hissatsu shoots have animal-themed auras. Dragon Crash, Beast Fang, Tiger Drive etc.
  • Penguin hissatsu are especially common. At least one character a series, particularly associated with Teikoku or Genesis will have a hissatsu shot involving penguins empowering the ball at full force. Examples include: Koutei Penguin 1gou, 2gou, 3gou and X, Space Penguins, the multi-colored Koutei Penguin 7 in GO, Penguin the Hand in Chrono Stone (the first Penguin hissatsu that is not a kick, but a catch hissatsu) and Haizaki's Overhead Penguin and Perfect Penguin in Ares.
• Anime Accent Absence: Mostly during the FFI arc where the entire world seems to speak flawless Japanese (with the exception of Mark and Dylan who occasionally slip in Gratuitous English).
• Anime Hair: Many characters have this, to the point where it would be easier to tell the ones who don't.
  • Genda and Tsunami have some of the craziest hairstyles.
  • Tobitaka's bird-like hairstyle is very crazy, even for this show.
  • It starts getting really ridiculous in Chrono Stone when they introduce the Mixi-Max mechanic.
• Anime of the Game: The anime series is an adaptation of the video games, although some of the seasons aired before the respective games were completed.
• Animorphism: Galaxy introduces the power of Soul, which allows the user to transform into their spirit animal.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Being a soccer video game, only eleven members are allowed on the field with optionally five on the bench, but the whole team can have as much as 100 members.
• Arc Villain:
  • Inazuma Eleven / Football Frontier arc, Teikoku Academy and by extension Kageyama Reiji. Later Kageyama went off and formed Zeus, who becomes the actual Big Bad for this arc.
  • Inazuma Eleven 2: Threat of the Invaders / Aliea Academy arc, the eponymous Aliea Academy.
  • Inazuma Eleven 3: Challenge to the World / Football Frontier International arc, at first glance doesn't seem to have an antagonist. Halfway through the season, Kageyama returns as Mr. K, but it turns out he was The Man Behind the Man; and Garshield was the real antagonist of the arc. By the end, there were no antagonists, with everybody else only becoming Friendly Enemies.
• Artificial Limbs: Among the inhabitants of planet Gurdon, the pro-machine faction have traded their wings for mechanical arms. This allows them to create tools at the cost of their flying ability.
• Ascended Extra: Ichinose Kazuya, he joins as a secret character where there's no plot left for him to take. He doesn't even have any dialogue with his old friend Kino Aki. Then comes the second game, where he must be recruited to continue to story, the third game where his rivaly with Endou develops a whole arc of the game, and finally, the anime has him one of the key members of Raimon and has outright shown his relationship development with Aki. In Go it's hinted that he is Aki's boyfriend.
• Ascended Fanboy:
  • Tachimukai, being Endou Mamoru's fan and developing similar skills he has, becomes a part of the heroes who fight Aliea Academy and play for Japan's national team. In the second game, he also happens to have the Big Fan technique.
  • Winners of the official Inazuma Eleven 2 tournaments became secret characters in Inazuma Eleven 3. The bands who composed the intro and outro themes for both games and animes were also featured as secret players.
• As Long as It Sounds Foreign: None of the members of the national team of Saudi Arabia from Orion have actual Arabic names.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: The captains are usually the best players in their teams.
• Avenging the Villain: Five members of Protocol Omega in GO attempt to avenge their imprisoned leader Alpha.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: The initial pose of The Birth invokes this trope.
• Badass Adorable: Techniqually all the young characters, for being kids who can play soccer with fancy techniques and all of them get at least one badass moment that qualifies them. Toramaru, Fubuki, Tachimukai, Midorikawa, Kogure are all pretty adorable.
• Badass Cape: Kidou and his Evil Counterpart Demonio wear capes while playing soccer, most likely for Rule of Cool.
• Bag of Spilling: Stuff that carries over each game seems to be some of the characters' specials, nothing else.
• Bait-and-Switch Boss: Mt Olympus in the first GO game are billed as the Final Boss. The real Big Bad ends up subbing out the entire team at half time, and you face Dragon Link instead.
• Bait-and-Switch Credits:
  • Maji de Kansha! has this in spades. Gouenji appears several times in this opening, despite the fact he left Raimon after the second match against Gemini Storm. It also shows Gouenji and Fubuki making a combined shoot hissatsu, which isn't really true until the match against Genesis, and the overall tone of the opening is far from what you would expect from this arc.
  • Chrono Stone does this too with Jounetsu de Mune Atsu, but not in the way you would expect. It starts out with a poster of Raimon participating Football Frontier being burnt, and it follows similarly to Ohayou Shining Day; except Tenma is alone this time. Then after Nobunaga's arc, it goes through a Reverse Cerebus Syndrome.
• Barely-Changed Dub Name:
  • At least two characters named Jin in the Japanese version had their first name name changed to Jim in the dub.
  • Kanon (Endou/Mark's great-grandson from the future) is changed to Canon.
  • Played with for Sangoku/Samgok. The former is his Japanese surname and the latter is his dub forename.
• Battle in the Rain: The final match of the first GO game. Complete with the clouds parting revealing a rainbow once you win.
• Bears Are Bad News: In episode 31, the Inazuma Caravan is attacked by a bear during the team's trip to Hokkaido. Fortunately, Fubuki knocks out the bear.
• Becoming the Mask: Domon at first joined Raimon as a spy sent from Teikoku, but he ends up enjoying the team after seeing how hard the others were working.
• Big Bad:
  • Kageyama Reiji, although he turns out to be The Dragon to the real big bad Garshield Bayhan.
  • Ishido Shuuji/Gouenji Shuuya in GO though he is actually The Dragon to the Man Behind the Man Senguuji Daigo.
• Big Brother Instinct: Gouenji and Kidou are both protective of their younger sisters and have gone to great lenghts when their lives were threatened. For example, Gouenji was dropped of the team after the second match against Gemini Storm because he missed the goal on purpose in order to prevent some strange guys from hurting Yuuka and Kidou stopped contacting Haruna for six years and made a deal with his foster father to win three consecutive national tournaments in order to live together with her under the same roof.
• Big Eater:
  • Osaka's okonomiyaki shop's practice point turns anyone into this and in the anime, they fight over the food they prepared.
  • Kabeyama is almost always seen eating and enjoying it and can eat a lot at once, if being able to have ten plates of noodles is any indication. Justified, due to being a big guy with a big belly.
  • Endou eats more compared to the rest of his teammates, though still less than Kabeyama.
• Black Blood: When Sakanoue Noboru bled in episode 6 of Orion after Luci Fanos cut his leg with a knife hidden in his cleat, the color of his blood was black.
• Bloodier and Gorier: Unlike the anime adaptation, the characters bleed in the manga and their injuries are more detailed. The first character to ever bleed in the anime was Sakanoue in episode 6 of Orion after Luci Fanos cut his leg with a knife hidden in his cleat.
• Blow You Away: Kazemaru and Tenma from Go both have wind-related techniques which also incorporate their high speed. Wind is one of the four attributes in the games, though not every character or hissatsu listed with a wind-attribute has this as an element (e.g.Fubuki has ice-related hissatsus and Tsunami has water-related ones, but they're both treated as wind users in the games).
• Boss Remix: Any team that has a persistent Leitmotif, such as Teikoku and Zeus in the first game, and Genesis in the second, will have it remixed for their matches.
• Bowdlerize:
  • In the game, the Otaku Junior High arc dealt with Otaku hacking into the Football Frontier computers to make it look like Raimon lost as well as giving your team (sans Endou who refused to eat and Gouenji who refused to go in at all) food poisoning at a Maid Cafe. The anime changed their dastardly plan to pushing a goal out of the way of the ball.
  • In the second season, Kazemaru undergoes self-confidence issues and leaves the team. In-game? He is specifically targeted for being the only one who could keep up, and is hurt to a point of being seriously injured from the match with Genesis, and consequently gets Put On An Ambulance.
• Break the Cutie: Shirou, when he was having a Battle in the Center of the Mind with Atsuya. There's also Kazemaru in the second game, whose mounting self-confidence issues culminate in him actually succeeding in matching the superhuman Genesis in speed... only to be brutally put down. Even Endou got one in the anime after Kazemaru left the team.
• Break the Haughty: Downplayed with Fudou. He hates being a benchwarmer and much to his displeasure, he was benched during the Asian preliminaries until the match against Fire Dragon in the preliminary finals, but it could've been much worse.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: Someoka is the hot-headed, hard-hitter forward for Raimon, but he's a nice guy for the most part and eventually warms up to the other ace strikers like Gouenji and Fubuki.
• Butt-Monkey: Megane in a nutshell. Among other things, he's one of Kogure's favourite victims, who scribbles in his magazines, always puts chilli sauce in his food and even when Megane tries to switch his plate off, he still gets pranked because Kogure put chilli sauce in that plate, too. He often doesn't get respect from his teammates, especially when he tries to brag about things they know he isn't good at or don't find impressing and in the third season, he often gets his Mr. Exposition job stolen or somebody else names a hissatsu before him.
• Bulungi: Little Gigant represent the tiny African republic of Cotarl.
• Call-Back: Joker Rains in the GO movie is a very obvious call back to Prime Legend, here's one simple hint if you don't see it, the users of both moves are the ace striker and the playmaker.
• Calling Your Attacks: Naturally, subtitles included.
• Captain Obvious: You can't love soccer with hate.◊ (Episode 38).
• Cast of Snowflakes: 1000+ characters in the first game, with another 1000+ added across the two sequels, every last one of them unique.
• Celebratory Body Tossing: In the anime, after Endou snaps the Dark Emperors out of corruption and their match with second Raimon ends in a tie, everybody tosses Endou in the air.
• Character Development: Aside from the whole "superpowered soccer" thing, this is a big part of what makes the series so enjoyable.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Though most of Aliea Academy's players gained their incredible strength from exposure to the Aliea Meteorite, the strongest team of all, The Genesis, actually don't use the meteorite's power — instead, they surpassed their natural limits by training tirelessly against their empowered colleagues.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Hikaru from Orion is introduced as seemingly nothing more than Iwato's panpel whom he had a crush on until he found out that he had been writing to a guy all along. He is later revealed to be Ichihoshi Mitsuru's younger brother, who suffers from a terminal ilness and is the reason why Mitsuru joined the Disciples of Orion. Ultimately, Hikaru is revealed to be the same Ichihoshi that plays in Inazuma Japan, with Mitsuru being the Split Personality of Hikaru's deceased brother.
• Chess Motifs:
  • GO's Final Boss Dragonlink has one. All of the members of the team have avatars that are based off of chess pieces, with their captain Senguji having The King. They also operate like a game of chess.
  • Some members of Dark Forest in GO's movie also have a chess motif with avatars that are dark themed chess pieces.
• Chick Magnet:
  • Fubuki often charms the girls and convinces them to give him information.
  • Endou himself, what with three of the four managers having feelings for him and Touko often claiming that her relationship with Endou is strictly platonic, but doesn't really come across as such.
• Cliffhanger: If an episode of the anime doesn't end with one of those then it's not Inazuma Eleven.
• Combat Commentator:
  • Necessary due to the subject matter of the show. Megane is the earliest example and there have been many more after him.
  • Kakuma Keita is the fandom favorite. He reprises this role in the Wii game, Inazuma Eleven Strikers.
• Combination Attack:
  • There are many, many hissatsu techniques that involve two or three players.
  • Shoot chains are combinations of multiple hissatsu shots by definition.
• Cool Old Guy: Double subverted with Raimon OB, the old guys who used to be the legendary Inazuma Eleven team. Endou and the other kids were excited to have a friendly match with them, only for them to have lousy skills, due to not having played soccer in a while. However, after Coach Hibiki gives them a pep talk about how the kids look up to them and want to be like them one day, Raimon OB show their real strength and teach the kids some new hissatsu techniques.
• Creepy Gym Coach: The coach of Shuuyou Meito makes all the female managers wear Meido outfits, which implies that he has perverted tendencies.
• Crippling Overspecialization:
  • Senbayama is a team known for not conceding a single goal during the Football Frotnier with their Hissatsu Technique Mugen no Kabe until Raimon managed to break it with Inzuma Break. However they still managed to make a single goal with Shine Drive per Rule of Drama.
  • The Empire is known for their incredible defense, but they are actually a subversion since they also have good offense, which was overshadowed due to their great defense is.
  • Minodouzan earned the monniker "The Impregnable Fortress" due to how great their defense is with their main strategy being tiring out the opposing team, who continue to attack them trying to break through it. Inakuni Raimon countered it by also playing defensively to maintain their stamina.
• Crossover: Inazuma Eleven GO vs LBX: Little Battlers eXperience W. Characters from Professor Layton, LBX and Yo-kai Watch also appear as secret characters in some games.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Quite a few matches are completely one-sided, with the main characters being overpowered by the enemies.
  • The first match between Raimon and Teikoku has the latter not only surpass the former with ten goals in the first half and other two in the second, it also has them physically injuring the completely defenceless inferior team. The only reason Raimon didn't lose is because Kidou forfeited the match after Gouenji scored their first and only goal, since he was the only reason why they had the match in the first place.
  • The first match against Gemini Storm ends with Raimon being beaten with a score of 20-0 for the former and the members with the most serious injuries being hospitalized.
  • The first match against The Genesis also ends with a score of 20-0 for the enemy. Fubuki gets injured during the match and Kazemaru leaves the team after seeing how badly they are outmatched.
  • In Inazuma Eleven the Movie, Ogre decimates Zeus with a score of 36-0.
  • In Inazuma Eleven Reloaded, Raimon loses the practice match against Barcelona Orb with a score of 0-13. This makes them realize Japan has no chance against the rest of the world and the team splits and everybody goes to different schools in Japan in order to strengthen its soccer.
• Custom Uniform: Gouenji and Tsurugi from GO raise the collars of their soccer jersey, Rika ties the edge of her t-shirts into a knot and lifts the shirt, Hijikata wears a sleeveless uniform, and Hamano rolls his sleeves up.
• Dance Battler: Michinari's technique, Flash Dance. He dances with a partner, whom he throws up in the air and the partner kicks the ball towards the goal. He was supposed to do it with Goujin, but Hiyori steals his place, much to Goujin's dismay.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Emperor Penguin No. 1 and Beast Fang are powerful techniques that put a severe strain on the user's body. A few uses is enough to send a player to the hospital and possibly injure them permanently.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • The second game/second season of the anime, where it somehow managed to become a Psychological Horror thriller. It went from a typical soccer anime in comparison to a world invaded by aliens who destroy schools whenever their soccer clubs refuse to fight them or lose the match, kidnap the prime minister and destroy a statue. Character arcs are also darker, with the main plot of the season (aside from Raimon's attempts to get stronger and defeat Aliea) being Fubuki dealing with his Split Personality disorder.
  • The start of Inazuma Eleven GO deals with the main protagonists entering Raimon while the youth soccer world is under a strict regime where matches are rigged, the players have no say in the matter, and any team that slightly shows reluctance to comply with the rules has their coach replaced, a SEED player to organize and corrupt the team, or in Raimon's case, attempt to break their legs. With Tsurugi's change of heart, it gets better.
  • Chrono Stone had this at first, and the first opening clearly tried to get that across. After the Mixi-Maxing with Oda Nobunaga, the series goes through a Reverse Cerebus Syndrome. It resurfaced by the Ragnarok Tournament against Feida.
  • A more literal example with Matatagi, where he unleashes his dark side after Sazanaara Eleven's plan backfired spectacularly. To add to that, his new form's Azul is so dark and wretched that the Sazanaarans were paralyzed at fear just by looking at it.
• Deal with the Devil: Okita Souji makes one with with Zanark to become strong enough to defeat Sakamoto Ryouma in Chrono Stone.
• Death by Origin Story: Pops up often. We have Gouenji's and Kageyama's mothers, Kidou's, Fubuki's and Fuyuka's families, coach Hitomiko's little brother Hiroto, Ichinose or so we're led to believe and Endou Daisuke, who also turns out to be alive.
• Defeating the Cheating Opponent: Otaku Junior High had the reputation of the weakest team in the Football Frontier until they actually won a few matches. However, during their match with Raimon, it comes to light that the've been cheating by moving the goalpost and obscuring its view. After Megane figures out their tactics, he makes them realize that what Otaku did was wrong, so they play the rest of the match against Raimon fair and square. Raimon wins.
• Demoted to Dragon: Kageyama is the Big Bad in the first game, but he's demoted to this when Garshield got introduced in the third game and is revealed to have worked for him all along.
• Determinator: Just about everyone in Raimon in both series. Special mentions go to:
  • Endou wouldn't give up ever.
    • Deconstructed after the match against The Genesis. Kazemaru crosses his Despair Event Horizon and left Raimon, which put Endou into his Despair Event Horizon and destroyed his hopes. Reconstructed after Endou was motivated by Tachimukai to keep on fighting.
  • Also Tenma, being Endou's expy.
• Department of Redundancy Department:
  • In the GO Galaxy game, a new evolutionary level is introduced. For the True (真)[[note]]Shin line, its new final level is called God (神)^note Kami. This for the most part is fine; unless the name of your hissatsu starts with God, such as God Hand, God Wind, or God Knows.
  • There is also the new Burst (爆)^note Baku level, which acts as a bridge between the True (真)^note Shin and the Ultra/Superior/Zenith (超/絶/極)^note Chou/Zetsu/Kyoku level. It's not nearly as bad as the previous example, but it might sound weird to say Baku Bakunetsu Screw (Burst Explosive Burst Screw).
• Defeat Means Friendship: Many teams that start of as rivals become friends with Raimon (or other main teams) after being defeated by them.
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: Rika is introduced by her humming along and walking to the beat of Maji de Kansha.
• Distracted by the Sexy: There are a pair of skills, "Cool Up" for males and "Charm Up" for females, that increase the user's success rate against characters of the opposite gender. A few particularly effeminate boys also get the latter, and vice-versa.
• Down to the Last Play
• The Dragon:
  • Kageyama Reiji to Garshield, who doubles as The Heavy.
  • Throughout the series, Kageyama created several teams whose captains play the underling role to him: Kidou in Teikoku, Aphrodi in Zeus, Fudou in Shin Teikoku and Demonio in Team K. Eventually, everyone made a Heel–Face Turn.
  • Together with Kageyama, Henktacker to Garshield.
  • Alpha to El Dorado. Replaced by Beta after he fails, who is then replaced by Gamma, who is then replaced by Zanark, and he gets replaced by Ray Rukh. El Dorado goes through a lot of these.
• Dub Induced Plothole: In episode 39, as Raimon were returning to Inazuma Town, they notice Sugimori and Shadow training, the latter wearing the Raimon uniform due to having transferred there in their absence after his school was destroyed. In the Japanese version, Shadow's original school is not mentioned, but in the English dub, Kidou describes both of them as the best players of Mikage Sennou and says they played against Raimon in the Football Frontier. However, his statement is unlikely and contradicts previous episodes. Not only did Shadow not play against Raimon, he wasn't part of Mikage Sennou's soccer team at all, so there's no way he can be the best member of the team. Also, if his school were destroyed, Sugimori's would be as well, but he didn't transfer.
• Dub Name Change:
  • In the European translation. See the character page for details.
  • Clean Dub Name: In the Latin American dub, Mamoru and Kageno were changed to Satoru and Sombra ^note Shadow in Spanish, It Makes Sense in Context respectively. The first one sounds similar to slang for oral sex and the second sounds along the lines of "shit, no"; thinking some people might get offended.
• Duels Decide Everything: Is there anything that isn't solved with soccer? Justified in GO, where soccer is an actual symbol of power as a consequence of the first series.
• Dying to Wake Up: Episode 22 of the anime adaptation of Inazuma Eleven begins with Endou having a nightmare about the match between Raimon and Zeus, with a score of 49-0 for the latter. After a Zeus member breaks not only Endou's God Hand but also Endou himself with a powerful shot, he wakes up.

E-H

• Elemental Powers: Every character, hissatsu, and Keshin is associated with an element in the FuRinKaZan (except for the select few powerful techniques in GO that possess the Void attribute). Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors is in full effect, and moves that are the same element as the user are significantly more powerful.
• Empty Piles of Clothing: All that appears to be left of Team Fire Dragon after losing to Inazuma Japan in GO Galaxy. Along with some green slime.
• Enemy Mine: In Chrono Stone, El Dorado's representative teams in the Ragnarok Tournament are a mix of Raimon and Protocol Omega members.
• Engrish: Mostly averted, but a couple spelling errors have slipped through the cracks:
  • One example of "Itarian": one scene in the anime has a giant sign reading "ITARIA" instead of "ITALIA".
  • Episode 85's Liocott International Airport sign is spelled as "Raiocotto". This one was corrected in time for the third game's release a couple weeks after this episode aired.
  • Then again the games aren't completely safe either. There is a "Rocker Room" in Liocott's main stadium...
• Eternal English: In Chrono Stone, all characters Raimon meet when they travel to various tine periods speak modern Japanese.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Tsurugi from GO is perfectly willing to hurt players to teach them a lesson but he crosses the line at sending them to the hospital. Considering that's where his brother is, it makes sense he would be above such methods. That's the root of his Heel–Face Turn.
• Evil Duo:
  • Genda and Sakuma in Shin Teikoku.
  • Burn and Gazelle in Chaos.
  • Hakuryuu and Shuu in GO.
• Evil Old Folks: The council of El Dorado is made up of old men.
• Evil Plan: Kageyama makes one or two: destroy Raimon.
• Evolving Credits:
  • The first anime opening goes through some changes starting with episode 19, mostly to ilustrate Kidou's transition from a member of Teikoku and Kageyama's underling (being replaced by Zeus' captain Aphrodi in this scene) to a member of Raimon. Domon and Ichinose are also added in the opening for the first time, although the former joined Raimon as early as episode 5.
  • Orion no Kokuin has a habit of changing its opening and ending themes every time a new member joins Inazuma Japan.
  • In light of The Reveal that Ichihoshi is actually Hikaru, the little brother, not Mitsuru, the credits in Orion change the casting credits to properly reflect this.
• Evolutionary Levels: The Second Stage Children are the next step in humans evolution. Though El Dorado made a cure to it that made the SSC be Brought Down to Normal.
• Expy:
  • Tenma is a kind-hearted, determined, motivating, cares about others more than himself and a soccer-loving freak, which makes him extremely similar to Endou. This is also lampshaded by some characters in the series.
  • Tsurugi has a cool, calm and quiet personality, and he is hostile towards soccer at first because his older brother is involved in an accident just like Gouenji, who also has the same personality and being hostile towards soccer at first because his little sister is involved in an accident, and he also raises up his collar just like Gouenji (justified in that he's a Gouenji fanboy). Taken even further in the game, where even their stats are similar.
  • Shindou is from a rich family and thinks that Tenma suits better to be the captain than him, same like Kidou who also from a rich family even though he's adopted and he thinks that Endou suits better to be the captain than him. Also, Shindou's commanding skills is similar to Kidou's.
  • And Aoi is like Aki.
  • Hell just about half of Raimon's team, if not all GO characters are pretty much this when you think about it.
• Eyepatch of Power: Sakuma wears one over his right eye and it seems to hide a red eye with black sclerae, although he was under the control of The Aliea Meteorite when his eyepatch had a hole in it and it might just be a side effect.
• Face Fault: The first season has several scenes where one or more characters instantly collapse when they hear something they consider absurd. Though unusually for an anime, they usually fall backwards (the flip-take) rather than on their face (the anime fall).
  • In episode 2, most of the guys who were already in the soccer club aren't too enthusiastic when Megane decides to join the club, and when Endou accepts him in the team and answers that he's being serious, Kurimatsu, Shishido, Shourin and Handa flip-take.
  • In episode 5, everybody in the room except Gouenji and Kazemaru has this reaction after Endou reads his grandfather's explanation of the Inazuma Drop, which is total non-sence.
• Face–Heel Turn: Kazemaru, Someoka and multiple other Raimon Eleven players became the Dark Emperors, the True Final Boss of the second game after Kenzaki gave them the remaining fragments of The Aliea Meteorite. It doesn't last very long.
• Failure Is the Only Option: The main team usually manages to score enough goals that assure their victory at the last minute, even though the opposing team leads in the begining. But during the match against The Empire, even if Inazuma Japan scores the last goal, they lose because they failed to score enough on time.
• Fake Crossover:
  • With Despicable Me, at least in this Eye Catch set seen here and a trailer for the JP release of the movie seen here.
  • Also with Happy Feet Two in GO also as a promotion for the Japanese version of the movie.
• Faking the Dead:
  • Ichinose suffered a bad accident when he jumped on the road in front of a car to save a puppy, leading Aki and Domon to believe that he had died. But he gets better with medical treatment and visits his friends in Japan to show them that he's alive and tells them the reason why he faked the death.
  • Daisuke, Endou's long-thought dead grandfather, turns out to be alive in the third arc.
  • Asuto's mother told him that his father moved overseas for a job and died in an accident, but he actually left the country to chase his soccer dreams and she couldn't go with him overseas, so she kept the truth about his father a secret. In episode 11, Asuto receives a letter from his mother where he finds out the truth and becomes more determined to continue to win the Football Frontier.
• Fantastic Racism: In GO Chrono Stone normal humans fearing and rejecting Second Stage Children lead them to try to Take Over the World in retaliation and start being racist to normal humans back. El Dorado's solution is basically to erase them from history because of their fear of Second Stage Children.
• Fantasy-Forbidding Father: There are two characters whose parents disagree with them playing soccer at first, but later come to accept it.
  • Endou has a fantasy-forbidding mother. She doesn't want him to play soccer because she fears he would suffer the same fate as her father, who ultimately faked his death.
  • Gouenji's father wants him to go to Germany to become a doctor instead of playing soccer because it can't save people's lives.
• Fighting Spirit:
  • Keshins/Fighting Spirits in Inazuma Eleven GO, they appear from the spiritual energy of their user once it is mastered, it also severely drains the stamina of their user after usage. While it is rare for normal players to have one, it is the opposite for SEEDs. Keshins/Fighting Spirits can be fused, such as Shuu/Tezcat and Hakuryuu/Bailong creating Sei Kishi Arthur/Holy Sword Paladin Arthur
  • Later in Chrono Stone, Keshins/Fighting Spirits are capable of becoming one with the users. This technique is called Keshin Armed/Armourified Fighting Spirit, where the Keshin/Fighting Spirit is worn like an armor. In the games, this allows the player to reduce their TP consumption.
• Fighting Your Friend: The true final enemy of the second game/season, the Dark Emperors, consists of the members of Raimon that were forced off the team throughout the story, hopped up on the power of the Aliea Meteorite.
• Final Boss Preview: The very first match of the first game is against Teikoku, with Raimon getting absolutely dominated, losing 20-0 at halftime. Downplayed in that they turn out to be the Disc-One Final Boss when Zeus show up.
• Finishing Move: All the flashier shoots can fall under this, but the one that really takes the cake is The Earth in season 2.
• First-Name Basis:
  • Most of the male characters are referred to by Last-Name Basis except, Toramaru, Hiroto and Arata in the original, Shinsuke, Tenma, Taiyou and Fei in Go and Asuto and Tatsuya^note Hiroto's name in these series in Ares.
  • Aside from the aforementioned exceptions, the only boys who are called by their first names are the family members of the main characters, especially if said character is called by his last name. This includes Endou Daisuke and Kanon, Fubuki Atsuya, Tsurugi Yuuichi and Kira Hiroto.
  • Also all of the girls, albeit inconsistently. Most of them are called exclusively by their first names (especially if their last names are associated with their dads, as is the case for Natsumi and Fuyuka), but Aki and Haruna are sometimes called by their last names. The soccerplayer ones are on a First-Name Basis among their teammates, but the commentators address them by their last names (as is the case with all of the boys, including the ones mentioned above).
  • Also, in the dub, most of the characters are called by their first names.
• For Great Justice: The plot of the first season of GO! with Raimon fighting so that people can freely compete in football.
• Fusion Dance:
  • In GO's movie Hakuryuu and Shuu combine to their Avatars to make Holy Knight Arthur while Tenma, Tsurugi, and Shindou combine their own to make Demon Emperor Gryphon.
  • Mixi Max causes a type of fusion that gives the target to gain certain physical traits of the person they are Power Copying from. One example is Ranmaru turning blonde and gaining glasses when Mixi Maxing with Jeanne d'Arc.
• Gag Dub:
  • The English dub occasionally adds silly lines that aren't present in the Japanese version. Among other things, Kirigakure calls Kazemaru "Mr Speedy Green Hair" (as opposed to Fujimaru, which is just another spelling of his name), Aphrodi is called girly more than once and Kakuma Oushou calls the Mukata triplets "brutal agressors with terrible haircuts".
  • At one point, they even change the person who talks. During the match against Mikage Sennou, Endou leaves the goal unprotected and tries to score a goal himself. In the original version, it's Someoka who tells him to come back. In the dub version, it's Domon, who adds that he's scared.
• Gainax Ending: Galaxy ends with Kuroiwa Ryuusei teleporting to an unknown spaceship. The scene is never explained.
• Gang of Hats:
  • Most of the rival teams, especially in season 1 revolve around one gimmick. Let's see, we have the occult team Occult, the animal team Nose, the sci-fi team Mikage Senou, the Otaku team Shuuyou Meitou, the ninja team Sengoku Igajima and the god team Zeus.
  • In Go, we have the (academic) nerd team, another sci-fi team, another occult team, the famous universities team, the pirate team... and that's just the regionals.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Gouenji loves doing this with flaming soccer balls whenever someone is struggling.
• A God Am I: All of the Zeus players, as their team's name suggests, use a performance-enhancing serum named Aqua of the Gods which gives them superhuman powers and makes them believe they're gods. Fittingly enough, their names are inspired by the Greek Mythology. Most prominently Aphrodi, who announces himself as a god a lot. He gets better after being defeated by Raimon and sets aside the Aqua of the Gods.
• Goggles Do Nothing: Subverted with Kidou and Demonio. It is later revealed about the reason Kidou using goggles which is because it makes him being able to concentrate just on the vital parts on the field, as stated by Kageyama. The other reason is because it's been his trademark. Played straight with Dylan, though. Same with Amagi, who wears his goggles on his chin and just looks ridiculous.
• Gollum Made Me Do It: Fubuki's teammates realize he becomes a different, more agressive player when his position changes from defender to forward, but at first they don't know he's under the control of his brother's split personality when that happens.
• Graduate from the Story: Most of the characters graduate at the end of the first series, which takes part one year after Inazuma Japan's final match.
• Gratuitous English:
  • Mark and Dylan sometimes slip into this Justified, for being American.
  • Endou likes to say "Don't mind, don't mind!", "Thank you!" and "sakka".
  • "Pinch" and some English football terms like "playmaking" or "dribbling" are often used as well.
  • Chrono Stone's Alpha's "Yes"/"No" is quickly becoming memetic.
  • Most hissatsu techniques have at least partially-English names. Most sound pretty cool even to an English speaker's ear, but not all of them.
• Gratuitous Spanish: The second opening of the GO anime has the phrase "Que sera, sera", translating to "Whatever will be, will be".
• Hand Blast:
  • The Ganymede Proton Hissatsu technique uses a Hand Blast for soccer of all things; the user stands behind the ball, facing the opposing team's goal, and directs the beam at the ball to send it flying at the goal. Apparently it's technically not a handball if you don't directly touch the ball with either hand, or maybe Rule of Cool just takes precedence over the other rules.
  • Tsurugi's Death Sword in GO. At least there's some kicking involved...
• Heel–Face Turn: Many characters that start off as bad guys have a change of heart later. A list of characters who remain evil until the end would be much shorter, but here we go.
  • After Kidou finds out that Kageyama tries to destroy Raimon just so the team he coaches would get an instant win, Teikoku realize what a horrible person he is and stop following his orders. Kidou later joins Raimon after his teammates are badly injured by Zeus in order to defeat the team which curb-stomped the rest of Teikoku and stays there for the rest of the series.
  • After Raimon defeat Zeus, Aphrodi sets aside the Aqua of the Gods and starts playing his own soccer. He later offers to join Raimon during the match against Aliea's Diamond Dust, but leaves it after being injured when he tries to break through Chaos' defense. In season three he's an opponent again, but is more of a Friendly Enemy than a bad guy.
  • The entire Aliea Academy (except Epsilon, who befriended Raimon earlier in the season) at the end of season 2 after Kira Seijirou realizes that using the Aliea Meteorite on the children from his orphanage to create the strongest teams in Japan was a mistake. Hiroto and Midorikawa join Inazuma Japan in season 3.
  • So does Fudou, although it takes a longer time for him to be trusted due to his past with Kageyama and his arrogant personality.
  • Even Kageyama has a change of heart after Fideo reminds him of how he loved watching his father play soccer before his career was destroyed and that he actually still loves it, despite claiming to hate it. However, this leads to another trope.
  • In GO, Tsurugi starts of as Raimon's Token Evil Teammate, but he fully drops off Fifth Sector before the match against Teikoku after his brother finds out that he's involved with them in order to help him walk again and he wants Raimon to lose so he can receive the money for Yuuichi's surgery, but his brother convinces not to worry about him and help his teammates win.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: After Kageyama turns good, he's killed when he's run over by a car set by Garshield, who makes his death seem like an accident. However, he's brought back to life.
• Heroic BSoD: Endou, of all people, at least twice. First is when he loses to Kidokawa's Traingle Z technique,and other is when Kazemaru ditches the team during the second season of the anime.
• Heroic RRoD:
  • Koutei Penguin 1gou and Beast Fang are Dangerous Forbidden Techniques that put a severe strain on the user's body after using them because their power is too much for the user to handle. Sakuma and Genda use these techniques respectively after they join Shin Teikoku and get in the danger of being unable to move after the match ends, especially the former, who uses his technique three times and collapses to the ground at the end. They appear again in episode 56 and appear to have mostly healed, although Sakuma's leg is still a bit injured.
  • The Avatars in GO can cause this to their users as Tenma realized a bit too late in the Holy Road Final.
• Heroic Spirit: Mainly Endou, but the whole of Raimon Eleven could apply.
• Historical Gender Flip: Zhuge Liang from Chrono Stone is portrayed as a girl instead of a boy like the real historical figure.
• Homage:
  • Freddy McQueen, goalkeeper for England representative Knights of Queen. Don't tell me it isn't obvious.
  • Michael Jacks on the American team.
  • "Diego Oro" ^note Diego Armando Maradona in the Argentinean team.
  • Pretty much the entirety of Orpheus (Italy's team) references past and present Italian soccer players, with the exception of Hidetoshi Nakata being based on the homonymous Japanese player who techniqually, also played for Italy' team sometimes.
• Hollywood Healing: Zig-zagged. Characters sometimes get injured during the games, usually in their legs, but depending on the situation, they will sometimes only be put on the bench and recover soon after the match ends. Other times, their injuries take more time to recover and have to be taken off the team for a while as a result.
• Hopeless Bossfight: Every single game in the series has at least one match where you're completely unable to win. Typically, it's because the enemy team has overall much higher stats than what you can have at that point and will almost always dribble past you, steal your ball, score a goal or block your shot whenever any of these interactions occur, regardless of if you use an hissatsu and they don't. Only exception is with scripted events that give you a bit of hope before taking it away.
• Hot-Blooded: Endou surely gives his all when it comes to his favorite game and is often described by others as the biggest soccer freak because of his passion for it.
• Human Sacrifice: Well, not to the point that they'll actually die (this is a kids show), but Sacrifice plays it straight.

I-L

• I Can Still Fight!: Most of the time, the main characters, with their determination and Heroic Spirit, will try and be able to continue to play, even after taking heavy blows from the opponents.
• An Ice Person: The second game/season introduces two ice-themed teams: Fubuki's Hakuren and Gazelle's Diamond Dust.
• Idiot Hero: Endou can be really thick sometimes. His successor, Tenma, isn't much better.
• Improvised Training:
  • Being a goalkeeper Endou usually practices by punching a tire tied to a tree which he tries to stop with his hand in order to exercize his catching.
  • The whole point of Special Practice system; pushing a noodle cart, making snowmen, kicking trees, etc.
• In-Series Nickname:
  • Matsuno "Max" Kuusuke, Shourinji "Shourin" Ayumu, Yamino "Shadow" Kageto.
  • Naturally for a sports genre, notably skillful characters get titles. Ichinose "The Magician Of The Field", Fubuki the "Bear Killer", Gouenji the "Flame Striker", Mac Roniejo "King of Fantasista" of Brazil, and Fidio "The White Meteor" of Italy.
• Inconsistent Dub: There are several instances in the English Dub of the anime, particularly in Season 3, where the wrong names will be used for characters and moves, usually accidentally calling them by either their original Japanese names or dub names that belong other characters/moves, it's especially noticeable with the special moves as the on-screen text almost always displays the correct name. The most noticeable instance of this is in second half of episode 73, where everyone suddenly switches from calling Toramaru by his actual dub name, Austin, to calling him by Tobitaka's dub name, Archer, for the remainder of the episode.
• Informed Attractiveness: Played straight, then subverted. In the first game, a lot of boys are seen fawning over Haruna for her "beautiful smile". However, her in-game sprite only shows her in a neutral expression, until the second game comes along, and her smile actually is pretty adorable.
• Invocation: Hissatsu names are yelled before being performed.
• The Irredeemable Exception: While the majority of the antagonists, from rival teams to the Arc Villains themselves get redeemed or at least grow to appreciate the fun of soccer more and show more respect to the main heroes, a couple of them like Garshield Bayhan, Kenzaki Ryuuichi and all the members of Makai Gundan Z (led by Desuta) remain evil until the end.
• Ironic Echo: "Earth has a saying that goes like this.[insert proverb]": First said by Reize after Gemini Storm defeated Raimon for the first time and was about to destroy their school and later said by Natsumi after Raimon finally defeated Gemini Storm.
• It Only Works Once: Hissatsu Tactics used by the protagonist team are usually only used in one match with a few exceptions. This is justified since those tactics were explicidly created to counter the opposing team.
• Japanese Delinquents: Tobitaka is the former leader of a gang of delinquents who used to be known as "Tobi The Kicker" due to his excessive use of kicks in his fights. He kinda gets better as the series progresses. Tsurugi is implied to be one, too, what with him never wearing the school uniform and being found alone in an arcade in the Chrono Stone alternate continuity.
• Jerkass: So far Shindou as of galaxy towards the new 8 characters. even though they gradually get better, he's especially hostile towards the new goalkeeper, Determinator Ibuki Munemusa, even when he busts out a new hissatsu technique on the spot and stops Big Waves Megadolon technique he says something along the lines of "that's what goalkeepers supposed to do"
  • He mellows out pretty quickly. The only one he seemed to resent is the new Goalie and the reason why Shindou doesn't respect Ibuki, is because Ibuki believes himself to be enough. After Ibuki learns his lesson, Shindou opens up more to him.
• Joke Character: Plenty, but Megane is probably the only one you actually get for the story mode.
  • Lethal Joke Character: In GO, Megane's Luck is above-average, but it's still useless since his overall stats is pathetic. With the Mixi-Max mechanic in Chrono Stone, you can give a portion (which is still a lot compared to the average Luck most players can get) of Megane's Luck to somebody with a better kick stat. As an added bonus, you can give him skills such as Jinx!^note Reduces chances of critical hits, but makes them stronger when you do get them, Critical!^note Increases your chance of getting a critical hit, or Lucky Plus for added effects. If even that doesn't satisfy you, the Keshin he comes with when you recruit him gives everyone 30 Luck.
  • Ever since Inazuma Eleven 2, Megane learns some of the strongest moves in the game by the time he gets to level 99.
    • In Inazuma Eleven 2, he learns God Break.
    • In Inazuma Eleven 3, he learns Chaos Break.
    • In Inazuma Eleven GO, he learns Fuurinkazan Destroyer.
    • In Inazuma Eleven GO 2: Chrono Stone, he learns Saikyou Eleven Hadou.
    • Lastly, in Inazuma Eleven GO: Galaxy, young Megane learns Saikyou Eleven Hadou, and adult Megane learns The Earth ∞. Consider this as well when you're planning to do the Mixi-Max mentioned before.
  • Wonderbot in Galaxy is also this. Despite how pathetic his stats look (even Megane had a stat above 150), his real perk comes from the fact that he gets 400 points to use for training. With this, Wonderbot can be good in any position; at the cost of sucking at everything else. In fact, that isn't even that big of a flaw; as you can just rely on everyone else to cover for his flaws.
• Kamaitachi: The Chrono Stone game introduces the Avatar Youki Kamaitachi/Thin Air Slasher Sickle Weasel. As its dub name implies, it manifests into a weasel with giant claws. When used together with the technique Whirlwind Blade, the Avatar turns into a really fast wind energy that allows the user to dribble past the opponent.
• Kappa: Kamezaki Kappa and his brother are a pair of humanoid Kappas. Nobody believes kappas exist for real until they see them.
• Keet: Endou and his successor Tenma are very cheerful boys.
• Kids Are Cruel: The Teikoku kids like to aim at goalies instead of the goal. They get better.
• Killed Off for Real: Though most of the deaths in the series were fake, Kageyama's seems to have been the real deal.
  • Back again as Kuroiwa Ryuusei in Galaxy, most people won't be surprised if he's immortal at this point.
• Large Ham: Ryou Sakaguchi, the actor who played Endou in the live-action stage show.
• Last-Name Basis:
  • Most of the Japanese male characters. However, there are exceptions.
  • Most of the FFI characters are referred to exclusively by their first names. However there are exceptions with Roniejo, Blasi, and Henktacker. The first two aren't even on a first name basis with their own teammates.
• Legendary in the Sequel: Raimon as well as the members of Inazuma Japan in GO.
• Lethal Chef:
  • Natsumi. Justified at first, because due to being an Ojou, she had other people to cook for her and didn't have any culinary skills as a result. When she tried to make onigiri for the first time, it had a weird form and it was too salty. Ten years later in GO, she learnt to cook food that looks good, but still tastes bad.
  • Tachimukai has a tendency to make food so spicy he's the only one able to eat it.
• Light Is Not Good:
  • Aphrodi. At first, anyway. He does help Raimon out in a couple of episodes, but is generally portrayed as something of a Friendly Enemy. That being said, he's utterly fabulous.
  • The bad guys in GO, Fifth Sector, consider themselves a holy order.
  • One of the teams showcased in the movie is called Unlimited Shining, led by Hakuryuu.
• Lighter and Softer:
  • The beginning of season 3 is much lighter than the Raimon vs Aliea Academy conflict of season 2 with drama more associated between the Inazuma Japan members, training for the international tournament as opposed to stopping super soldiers for war, and overall facing a lighter tone with the core ideals of having fun and getting better. After the beginning of Inazuma Eleven Go, the series has progressed after all of Raimon fully agrees to fight for the rebellion while retaining their love for soccer.
  • The Galaxy series is also lighter (despite Matatagi's dark side) than the drama-heavy, soccer warfare, time-traveling, and Social Darwinist plot in Chrono Stone.
• Limited Wardrobe: Mostly a straight example, with most characters rarely wearing anything else other than their soccer jerseys and/or tracksuits and their school uniforms. However, it's sometimes combined with Unlimited Wardrobe. Casual outfits appear from time to time and in the later series they start appearing more, but there's still usually only one casual outfit per character. Chrono Stone in particular zig-zags between these tropes, with everybody having a different casual outfit, depending on the era.
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: All the boys with long shiny hair, visible eyelashes and mostly androgynous features, such as Kazemaru, Aphrodi, Sakuma, Kirino etc. qualify for this.
• Long Song, Short Scene: The map theme in GO. It's got an epic guitar riff you'll probably never hear because you're unlikely to spend more than a few seconds there.
• Love Triangle:
  • One involving Endou, Aki and Natsumi. Later when Natsumi is Put on a Bus, Fuyuka takes her place. Natsumi comes back later and the ship tease between her and Endou is amped up to eleven.
  • Quite confusing in GO: Strikers' bonus page (showing GO artwork, no less), the anime and Inazuma Eleven Go - Shine show Endou married with Natsumi, wherease Go - Dark has Fuyuka instead.
  • This was because Natsumi was the only love interest Endou would marry as planned by Hino but negative reaction from Aki supporters (of all things) persuaded him to release a second game where Endou married Fuyuka instead. They believed that the Endou/Fuyuka dynamic would be similar to a potential Endou/Aki one. Fuyuka being a last minute throw-in becomes glaringly obvious when you realise the GO anime aired before the games were released to see how people would react to the romantic choices. Fuyuka had an important role to play in the storyline as a nurse while Natsumi was only one of the several members in the Resistance. Her major role would have been as Endou's wife. So if this were something like a dating sim, Natsumi would be considered the "true end" or "main heroine". In the Chrono Stone game, Endou is married to all three in different timelines in order to please the shippers.
    • Although, this event in Chrono Stone isn't considered canon even in terms of the Inazuma Eleven multi-timeline by most people due to the fact that the other "alternative dimension events" involve such insane things as playing super-dimensional soccer with a soccer-skilled-Layton and Sangoku getting a keshin of the wrong playing position (something which is impossible to happen). More likely then not they're just events put in for laughs, rather then to be taken seriously.

M-R

• Made of Iron:
  • The goal nets. They were first broken by Reize in the second season, then Fubuki's Eternal Blizzard sliced through them, and then Edgar from England got to them. Three moves in over a hundred episodes.
    • As of nearing the end of Chrono Stone, it's still three moves in now over two hundred episodes.
  • The balls. They rarely break even they take direct impact from special moves.
    • Kusaka breaks the record in Episode 3 of Galaxy.
    • If we're counting out of match incidents, it's actually broken much much earlier when Gouenji is dueling Kidou after Teikoku's initial loss to Zeus High, while Gouenji tries to convince Kidou to join up with Raimon. Why a Fire Tornado, one of the earliest (albeit beloved) shots in the anime manages to break a ball when so much other shit does not is probably due to Rule of Cool.
  • Several of the players could probably count for this as well.
• Magic Meteor: The Aliea Meteorite, a glowing hunk of space crystal that gives those exposed to it superhuman physical abilities.
• Magikarp Power: In the games, almost everyone starts out at level 5 with no or default techniques included. Training their levels up will have them access powerful moves, such as Handa getting Odin Sword at level 66
• Man Behind the Man: After Kageyama, the Big Bad of season one and most of season three, gets Killed Off for Real, Garshield is introduced as the man who he was working for and who was supporting his plans all this time.
• Manly Tears: Kazemaru after being released from the effects of the Aliea Meteorite.
• Mascot's Name Goes Unchanged:
  • Inverted in the Latin American Spanish dub. Most of the names are left untranslated from the Japanese version. However, the protagonist's first name is changed from Mamoru to Satoru because his Japanese name sounds like an inappropriate word in Spanish.
  • The European dubs (including the English one) play a variation of this trope with the soccer teams/schools. The main team Raimon keeps its original name, while most, if not all, opposing teams that don't have already an English name have their names translated.
• Meaningful Name: Most, if not all, characters. Nearly every single name in the English translation also doubles as a Punny Name. Shawn Frost and Axel Blaze anyone? A brief rundown of the most notable examples:
  • Fubuki Shirou: Fubuki literally means "blizzard", and Shirou is a pun on "shiro", meaning "white".
  • Touko: The "tou" means "tower", after her signature move The Tower. ("Ko" just means "child", a common suffix for girls' names.)
  • Tsunami is a pun on the eponymous natural disaster
  • Tenma means "Pegasus"
  • Taiyou means "Sun"
  • Tsurugi means "Sword"
  • Kazemaru means "wind circle"
  • Endou Mamoru is a pun on "endo o mamoru", means "to protect/defend the end" ("end" in the soccer jargon sense).
  • The dub gives us a minor NPC named Tsun Derrey.
• Megaton Punch: Well, it's called megaton ''head'', but Endou creates a giant fist above his head. And if you haven't seen it before, you should watch it, because it is awesome.
• Mood Whiplash: All of the trailers for the GO video games.
• Moving the Goalposts: So Aidoru/Sam Idol's Goal Slide technique consists in pushing a specifically made papier-maché goal out of the ball's trajectory, therefore literally moving the goalposts.
• Morality Pet:
  • Rushe can be seen as one for Kageyama. Back when he was still a villain and shortly before he becomes a good guy, she's the only character he ever does a genuine act of kindness to by paying for her hospitalization bills to restore her eyesight. And before Garshield kills him, a move which he anticipated, he gives her a music box as a gift.
  • In the beggining, Tsurugi Kyosuke in GO is hostile towards the others from Raimon and only plays soccer in order to win money for his older brother Yuuichi's operation. His concern about his brother and the fact that he can only win the money if he makes Raimon lose causes him to intentionally score in his own team's goal, but after Yuuichi convinces him that he doesn't need to do that, he has a full change of heart.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Inazuma Eleven beats pretty much every other sports anime/game that uses the trope. Yes, even Tezuka and his dinosaurs.
• My Future Self and Me: You can recruit Kogure in both his GO/Ten years later form and his original form in GO, thus causing this.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Tenma says this word by word (without the my god part) when his plan against Dragonlink backfired horribly and caused all of his teammates to fall to the ground because of their injuries.
• National Stereotypes: The Football Frontier International arc is dripping with these. For example, America's team's goalkeeper is a cowboy, several Americans (including Mark and Dylan) are blond and blue-eyed, Teres from Argentina's team is dark-skinned, and Brazil's team is entirely made of people saved from poverty.
• Nerf:
  • When the second game was localized, the move Southern Cross had its cost increased from 20 TP to 50. Originally it was an Aliea Academy move, so it cost less than half as much as it should have for its power level. Since that was balanced out by having Aliea Academy players have half as much TP, this nerf caused players who used the move to burn through most of their TP with just one use.
  • Galaxy nerfed a large number of moves from Chrono Stone as well as the Keshin Armed mechanic, which now only reduces TP costs instead of nullifying them completely.
• Never Bareheaded: Several characers such as Max, Touko (excluding her adult self), and Hiyori from Ares wear a hat all the time, including when playing football or going to school. Nobody bats an eye. Max also has a special hat for sleeptime.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: Certain characters gain new hissatsu techniques or improved soccer prowess. Some comes from off screen training and potential, some are foreshadowed, and others just come out of the blue.
• New Transfer Student:
  • Gouenji is introduced as one in the first episode, transferring from Kidokawa to Raimon because of his sister's accident.
  • Domon transfers from Teikoku and joins Raimon's soccer club at first as a spy, but ends up enjoying his new team and later joins it for real. However, him and Ichinose go back to their school in America in the third arc and graduate there.
  • Kidou transfers to Raimon after his team Teikoku is defeated by Zeus in order to defeat the latter team and avenge the former.
• The Nicknamer: Haizaki calls almost all his teammates (except Kidou and Mizukamiya) by a nickname based on their defining appearance characteristic. All the nicknames are revealed in a special chapter in the "Heir of Penguins" manga: Amano is Shaggy, Kotono is Rando, Shiratori is Forehead, Yagihara is Eight, Tetsuya is Scurry, Uoshima is Goliath, Saotome is Split Ends, Sasotsuka is Spiky, and Orio is Fox. Ironically, Mizukamiya is the only one who wants to have a nickname from him.
• No Communities Were Harmed: Inazuma Town bears a striking resemblance to the Tokyo metropolitan area. The area around Raimon and the riverbank plaza is reminiscent of Asakusa and its surrounding area, and the place where Endou does his tire training seems be based on Shiba Park.
• Numerological Motif: In GO, most of Dragonlink's players have go, meaning "five", somewhere in their names. Their dub names likewise include various languages' words for the number five. In either case, this refers to their status as Fifth Sector's ultimate team.
• Official Couple: Inazuma Eleven GO (Shine), anime, manga and supplementary material have Endou and Natsumi married.
  • While not considered the official couple, it is possible in the Inazuma Eleven Go (Dark) alternate continuity for Endou to marry Fuyuka.
  • Again not considered the offical couple, and not even considered canon to the Inazuma Eleven multi-timeline/universe, but Chrono Stone has an alternative dimension event where Endou gets brainwashed and let's the player choose his wife: Natsumi, Aki or Fuyuka. Considering the nature of some of the other alternative dimension events, this is probably just a scenario put in for laughs/the sake of the shipping fans.
  • From Chrono Stone we have Gillis and Meia of the team Giru. While not as major as the former example, it's still the only other official couple on the show so far.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome:
  • At the end of Chrono Stone, The Stinger shows GO-era Raimon using the TM Caravan to travel back in time to meet FF-era Raimon and challenge them to a friendly match. But we never get to see the actual match.
  • A similar thing happens at the end of Orion, where we see the reunited original Raimon team ready to have a match with Inakuni, who went back to their school on the island. Once again, we never get to see the actual match.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: The anime version of Shinjinrui The Genesis. The "wordless aaahh-ing" variation also shows up in Zeus's theme.
• The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: El Dorado in Chrono Stone, who order Protocol Omega to erase soccer from existence.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: One year before the start of the series, before the match between Kidokawa Seishuu and Teikoku Academy in the Football Frontier finals, Gouenji ran away from the match because his sister suffered a bad accident, leading to his team being disqualified. After changing school and getting back into soccer one year later, Gouenji had to face off Kidokawa in the semi-finals. His former teammates, particularly the Mukata triplets, still hated him and continued to mock him for running away, at least until they learn the truth about his sister, after which they stop taunting him.
• One Game for the Price of Two: Since the second game (Fire/Blizzard). The third has Spark and Bomber, plus an Updated Re-release named The Ogre, and Go has Shine and Dark, both with many changes between each other.
• One-Letter Name: Mr. K, who is later revealed to be Kageyama.
• One-Steve Limit:
  • Subverted in regards to scout characters. There are some repeated names: those with the same given name, some having one name as their given name and another having it as a family name, etc.
  • For plot significant characters, there's Mark Kruger, the captain of the American team Unicorn. Whose name... never got changed in the dub. Then he meets Mark Evans. Manga Moe, one of the characters from season 1, is also named Mark in the dub, but this is less of a problem because he's mostly called by his nickname.
  • Akane is both the name of one of the managers from GO and Haizaki's childhood friend from Ares.
• Opposing Sports Team: As a soccer anime, Raimon faces many opposing teams and rivals, prominently Teikoku Gakuen (Royal Academy) and Zeus, while the threat of Aliea Academy and the International tournament adding more sports teams ready to defeat Raimon and Inazuma Japan.
• Optional Party Member: Listing them all would probably take half a lifetime.
• Order vs. Chaos: In GO the main conflict is between Fifth Sector's managed soccer and Raimon's free soccer.
• Otaku: Megane. At one point they fight a team of Otaku, and in the anime proves he is More Otaku Than Them.
• Our Dragons Are Different: The Master Dragon in King Arthur's time is based on an eastern dragon.
• Outside-Context Problem: Even for a series where soccer is Serious Business.
  • The Aliea Academy arc was built on this idea alone, as one wouldn't expect aliens using soccer as a method to Take Over the World.
  • Raimon later becomes this to Aliea Academy, while at first were merely minor distractions, are later able to hold up against the Aliea Academy's stronger teams. Subverted, as Raimon opposing Aliea Academy was a part of Seijirou's plan.
  • Kenzaki giving the injured Raimon players, Nishigaki, Shadow, and Sugimori the Aliea crystal to create Dark Emperors.
  • In Chrono Stone, Protocol Omega and El Dorado is this. Soccer mysteriously faded from mystery after Holy Road, because El Dorado has ordered Protocol Omega to remove soccer from this world.
  • Fei is this to El Dorado, as this time traveler saved Tenma, and not even El Dorado knew who he is.
• Overly Long Gag: In episode 101, it takes almost a minute for Inazuma Japan to read Saginuma's overly long letter, even with Endou's sped up voice.
• Parental Abandonment: Quite a few characters have either one or both parents missing.
  • Between the main characters, Endou is the only one with both parents alive. Gouenji's mother is dead, Kidou's biological parents died in a plane crash and was adopted by an apparently single father and Fubuki lost both of them, along with his brother, in an avalanche accident.
  • The girls don't have it much better. Natsumi and Touko don't seem to have mothers, while Rika doesn't seem to have a father. Fuyuka's biological parents died in a car accident and was adopted by Coach Kudou. Still, she doesn't appear to have a mother. Haruna is a subversion, because even though she lost her biological parents in the same plane crash as Kidou, she's happy with her current family, which consists of both parents.
  • Kogure's mother abandoned him at a train station when he was young, which is what caused him to become a Jerkass who doesn't trust other people. Kariya from GO has a similar backstory and Freudian Excuse, because he was abandoned at the Sun Garden orphanage at 11 years old and didn't trust anyone there.
  • Kageyama's father abandoned his family after losing to Endou Daisuke and his career was destroyed and his ill mother died shortly after that. This is the main reason why he wants to destroy soccer.
• Party in My Pocket: Three members show up on the map to follow the leader, but the other twelve are still available to swap in.
• Patchwork Map: The Russian Roulette stadiums in GO are found in a desert area, an icy tundra area and a beach/water area, areas which are in close proximity to each other. Consideing they're artificial and separated by walls, this is not really unusual.
• Perpetual Frowner: Sugimori and Mikage Senou in general show little to no positive emotion. He gets over it after learning soccer can be fun, and in Season 2 is seen practicing with another frowner, Yamino Kageto, who is nicknamed Shadow.
• Player-Exclusive Mechanic: In Galaxy, players can evolve moves using the Ultimate Evolution Manual, reaching a level that greatly surpasses their previous level^note As an example, Wonder Trap ∞ (which was the weakest wind block in the game) will be stronger than Stealth Walk GX (which is the strongest wind block in the game). Of course, the computer finds ways to get through this.
• Playing with Fire: Mainly Gouenji, though other characters have fire-related techniques as well, such as Burn.
• Pointless Bandaid: Kurimatsu and Kuramada in GO both wear bandaids on their nose.
• Power Copying:
  • Tachimukai easily learnt Endou's God Hand and Majin The Hand hissatsus, the former which he mastered just after watching him do it on television.
  • Neo Japan, a team consisting mostly of random members from season 1's teams and a few from season 2. It's members were able to learn from each other their special techniques, like Saginuma learning God Knows from two Zeus players.
  • The function of the Mixi Max gun in Chrono Stone also one user to gain the powers of another person or player such as Nobunga's intellect & power for Shindou or strength and speed of a T-Rex for Fei.
• Power Makes Your Hair Grow:
  • Genda, Sakuma, and most of the Dark Emperors get longer hair when under the influence of the Aliea Meteorite.
  • Most of the Mixi-Max's shown in the show also fall under this.
• The Power of Friendship: An important theme in the show.
• Power Gives You Wings: Certain hissatsu techniques tend to give the protagonists wings. These include:
  • Aphrodi's shoot-type hissatsu techniques (God Knows, God Break) involve him growing wings and flying up into the sky before kicking the ball with his light energy. Another one, Chaos Break, is a combination hissatsu which gives him wings and combines his light with Burn' s fire and Gazelle's ice.
  • Saginuma learns Aphrodi's God Knows hissatsu from two Zeus members during Neo Japan's match versus Inazuma Japan. This is just one of the many techniques Neo Japan's members teach each other.
  • Mark Kruger also has The Icarus, flying high in the air with its wings to blind the opponent with the light from the sun increasing the frequency from its wings.
• Power Trio: Inazuma Eleven tends to mix it up per season. Though only The Smart Guy usually gets replaced per season.
  • Endou, Gouenji, and Kidou in the original series. They're also known as the Break Trio because they are the main users of Inazuma Break.
  • Endou, Gouenji, and Fubuki in the Aliea Academy arc. They're also (very rarely) called the Earth Trio since they are the main users of The Earth, which also doubles as a pun on the arc's main villains being aliens.
  • Endou, Gouenji, and Toramaru in the Football Frontier International arc.
  • Tenma, Shindou, and Tsurugi in GO. They even have consecutive uniform numbers to boot (8, 9, and 10 respectively). They are sometimes known as the Gryphon Trio as they combine their Keshins to create Matei Gryphon.
  • Tenma, Tsurugi, and Fei in Chrono Stone. A downplayed example, as they are far less obvious compared to previous trios.
  • Galaxy returns to the Gryphon Trio as they are the only members from Raimon's soccer club to play for Earth Eleven.
• Put on a Bus: Aside from Endou, Kabeyama and Megane, all the boys from the original team are put on a bus in season 2 and get replaced by new characters, only for them to come back at the end of the season.
  • Quite a few characters get injured after Gemini Storm curb-stomp the team, badly enough to stay in the hospital for a long time. The same characters are put on a bus again at the start of season 3, because none of them except Max are selected to join Inazuma Japan and not even him gets accepted.
  • Gouenji is dropped of the team by Hitomiko after the second match against Gemini Storm due to getting distracted and missing all goals. Unlike the others, however, he comes back halfway through the season after training in Okinawa and reveals that he intentionally missed those goals because of some strangers who threatened him to harm his sister.
  • Someoka tries to perfect the new hissatsu he created with Fubuki inspite of his leg injury, but this makes his injury worse and is dropped off by Hitomiko as a result.
  • Kazemaru leaves the team after the much stronger Genesis curb-stomp Raimon and make him cross the Despair Event Horizon, followed soon by Kurimatsu, who becomes very sad due to Kazemaru's departure. In the game, both of them get injured, instead. They return and join Inazuma Japan in season 3, bur Kurimatsu leaves after his injury in the match with the Empire.
• Psychological Thriller: Some of the character arcs can fall under this, to name a few example.
  • Fubuki Shirou in the Aliea Academy arc and his unstable multiple personality disorder.
  • Fei Rune in Chrono Stone, who by the last moments of Chrono Stone; showed just how serious his parental issues is.
  • Matatagi Hayato in Galaxy is unexpectedly cynical about people because of how materialistic the people around him were when his family is struggling to live, and his mother hospitalized.
• Raptor Attack: Chrono Stone features scaly and oversized Troodon who seem to have an enlarged toe rather than an enlarged sickle-claw.
• Real-Time with Pause: Some events, such as the opportunity to steal the ball, will trigger an automatic pause if they recquire the player to choose one of several actions, in this case he can choose between a regular tackle and a sliding tackle.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Several antagonists such as Kidou and Aphrodi have red eyes (the latter is a straighter example, though, since the former almost always wears eye-obscuring goggles). There's also Epsilon Remastered, whose members get completely red glowing eyes when they return to face off Raimon again after their last match ended in a tie.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni:
  • Fire elemental Burn is red and ice elemental Gazel is blue. They even have color-coded hairstyles, though Gazelle's hair is more of a light grey rather than blue.
  • Kidou is the calm and calculated blue compared to Jerk with a Heart of Gold Fudou and his Evil Counterpart Demonio Strada, but becomes the red when compared to the more idealistic Fideo.
  • Fubuki Shirou is the gentle and calm blue oni in contrast to his much more agressive and Hot-Blooded brother Atsuya, who is the red. He's also the blue to Someoka's red, who's equally hot-headed as (though much nicer than) Atsuya. Doubles as Color-Coded for Your Convenience, as Shirou has light bluish-grey hair, while Someoka and Atsuya have pink hair.
  • Gouenji (blue) and Endou (red), Kurimatsu (red) and Kabeyama (blue)... let's just say there seems to be a lot of these.
• Remake: Inuzuma Eleven Reloaded, which aired before Ares started, was a remake of Episode 27 of the original anime. The start follows the start of the episode, till something that should have happened, The Aliens invading, doesn't happen, and then Gouenji and Kidou suggest trying to take on the World with an exibition match with Barcelona Orb and it goes downhill from there.
• Replacement Goldfish: Hiroto is a replacement for the dead son of Kira Seijirou, the leader of Aliea Academy. A minor example are the various antagonist teams that Kageyama creates over the seasons to fight Raimon. However he plays it straight with the introduction of Demonio, a Kidou Expy, in season 3.
• La Résistance: Hibiki leads one against The Holy Emperor and Fifth Sector, to get back true soccer in GO.
• Running Gag:
  • Kogure putting chili sauce in people's food.
  • Kageno appearing out of nowhere and scaring other people.
  • Endou getting distracted while training with a tire tied to a tree and consequentially getting hit by it.
  • Kabeyama always has to go to the bathroom when nervous.
  • In the second season, Touko often comes across as a love interest to Endou for Aki and Natsumi, only for her to claim that their relationship is just platonic. Sometimes, she intentionally acts like his love interest to annoy them.
  • In the third season, Rika trying to lie about things which are obviously not true and the other girls naturally don't get fooled.
  • Megane often has his job done by someone else in the show's third season.
  • Natsumi being a terrible cook counts if you consider the franchise as a while. This is referenced once or twice in the first series and it carries on in GO when she regularly cooks for Endou as his wife.
  • In GO, Kariya's bad naming of hissatsu techniques, and Tsurugi's dodging Tenma's (sometimes with Shinsuke) attempts to glomp him.
  • In Chrono Stone, the same poor guy kidnapped to be commentator in the matches.
  • Also in Chrono Stone, Wonderba always getting his coach position stolen by someone else (human or not, mind you).

S-Y

• Sailor Fuku: Averted with the girls' uniforms, although the boys still wear a traditional gakuran. Later played straight in Ares with Aki, whose Tonegawa Tousen uniform is a white and green seifuku.
• Say My Name:
  • The first season finale has everybody shouting Endou's name after he gets knocked down, which helps him stand up and complete Majin the Hand.
    "ENDOU! ENDOU! ENDOU! CAPTAIN! ENDOU!! MAMORU!!
  • Something similar happens in the second season finale, where Aki starts shouting Raimon's name and soon everybody who's not on the field, including people who watch the match on TV, follow her. Once again, this helps Endou and the others stand up and Endou uses his God Hand one last time to free the Dark Emperors from the meteorite's influence.
• Scarf of Asskicking: Fubuki has one. It originally belonged to his brother and he loses it after he gets over his problems. In Ares, the scarf belongs only to his brother.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: Most of the glasses-wearing Big Bads get them, with the most prominent example being Kageyama. Megane has this also, but it's subverted, being used for comic relief and hamming it up.
• Scenery Porn: Like everything else Level-5 does, backgrounds are intricately detailed and quite colorful. The Galaxy's planets have even more lively backgrounds than most of the previous series'.
• Science Is Useless: Most of them anyway.
  • Averted in Galaxy: the Black Room ends up being the key to train the borderline terrible Inazuma Japan.
• Secret A.I. Moves: Neo Raimon, Red Team, and White Team in Inazuma Eleven 3: The Ogre
• Serial Escalation:
  • Soccer teams that seems to have spent their whole lives in a jungle, players that summon penguins, hands and gods out of nowhere, abilities to get away from intently injury other players without triggering a foul or a red card, aliens using soccer to take over the world, etc...
  • The plot of the GO follow a similar premise to the original trilogy, but to an even greater extreme:
    • In the first game Raimon has to defeat Zeus a team Kageyama Reiji has enhanced with the "Aqua of Gods" to win the Football Froentier, in GO Raimon has to rebel to take back soccer and preventing it from becoming uniformed and controlled by Fifth Sector who have specialized players in the form of SEEDs in every team.
    • In the second game Raimon travels through Japan to create the strongest eleven to defeat Aliea Gakuen, in Chrono Stone Raimon travels through time and space to create the strongest eleven to defeat invaders from the future.
    • In the third game Inazuma Japan participates in a tournament to decide the best youth soccer team of the world, in Galaxy Inazuma Japan participates in a galaxy wide soccer tournament to save their planet if not the whole galaxy.
• Serious Business:
  • Plotting the murder of the opposing team just to get an easy win. A bit much don't you think, Kageyama?
  • How ten years later as a result of the first series, soccer became the determinate factor of a school's worth; resulting in Fifth Sector's controlled soccer.
  • In the first movie and Chrono Stone, what is essentially time police is ordered to erase the existence of football from the universe or at least undermine its importance, and the heroes have to protect it.
  • In Chrono Stone, after an international incident involving football, the game is banned in Japan. What takes the Serious Business to new levels is that the authority isn't content with just the ban. They order that all balls, uniforms and football equipments in general have to be burned.
  • That's not even getting into the soccer itself. When the pre-teen to young teen soccer players are fully willing to fly into space to kick the soccer ball with the force of a literal supernova or drop the entire sky on the target just to score a goal or summon literal gods to stop these cataclysmic attacks, things have definitely gotten a little bit over the top.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: A substantial part of Chrono Stone. The protagonists have to restore the "true" timeline from all the tamperings of Protocol Omega.
• Shapes of Disappearance:
  • In episode 27, after Raimon wins the Football Frontier, Endou gives Shishido permission to hold the trophy as some other members are staring at it. When the trophy is snatched by Kageno without them noticing, its outline appears on Shishido's hands.
  • Doctor Arno Crossword from Chrono Stone has the habit of disappearing suddenly when the kids want explanations from him, leaving behind an afterimage or his outline.
• She-Fu: The CCC Osaka Girls. The third game has Touko and Rika lead what is essentially an all-female version of Inazuma Japan during a practice round. And Strikers has even the managers become playable.
• She's a Man in Japan: The dub of the anime (but not the games) turns Miyasaka and Gazelle into girls. It's especially odd since they still use the names from the games, so their names are Miles and Bryce.
• Ship Tease:
  • Aki and Endou get a lot of ship tease.
  • The ship tease between Natsumi and Endou builds up throughout the series and it becomes apparent near the end that they are the Official Couple.
  • Season 3 gives us Endou and Fuyuka., as the game version has ship tease for Natsumi and Rococo.
  • A little bit with Tsunami and Touko, but it doesn't get anywhere. Quite a bit with Ichinose and Aki in Season 3 as well. Inazuma Eleven Go hints at Aki and Ichinose dating.
  • Depending on whether one follows the games or the anime, Haruna get a lot of ship teasing with Kogure (video games) and Tachimukai (anime). ^note In fact, the anime seems to insert scenes that diverge from the video games just to do this.
• Shirtless Scene: There are a few scenes where most of the boys from the main team are shirtless and change their clothes (e.g.before the match against Zeus), but the only character who appears frequently shirtless is Surfer Dude Tsunami.
• Short Teens, Tall Adults: Most of the players are middle-school teenagers, but with very few exceptions, even the taller players are still at least half a head shorter than any adult.
• Shout-Out: The dubbers went hog wild with pop culture references in minor characters' names:
  • Toramaru ("tora" meaning "tiger", a reference to his Animal Battle Aura) got the dub surname Hobbes.
  • One minor team got sci-fi themed names with Harkness Torchwood, Cyber Dalekman, Zaphod Riker, Jimmy Kyrk, Jean-Luc Janeway, Scotty O'Brien, Wesley Sheridan, Worff Chewback, Lucas Skywalk, Sithri Peon, Carl Rissian, Robert Affett, Dart H. Cylon, and Starbuck Rogers.
  • Genei Academy, the illusion-themed team, got a bunch of magician-themed dub names like Harrold Houdini, Pen Teller, Jaymes Randie, Sigfryd Roi, and Dave Coppfielder.
• Shown Their Work:
  • The Mezozoic Era visited in Chrono Stone mostly avoids Anachronism Stew and Misplaced Wildlife by showing only Late Cretaceous creatures from the Hell Creek Formation. Besides famous dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops, the only Sauropod shown is Alamosaurus instead of a more famous Jurassic Sauropod like Apatosaurus.
  • For a fictional pterosaur, Tochan is a very accurate Quetzalcoatlus, having the right size and proportions, a long wing finger, a pteroid bone, plantigrade feet, a head crest, and being mostly quadrupedal on the ground (although he is also able to stand on two legs).
• Significant Anagram: The dub of GO has the leader of Fifth Sector: Alex Zabel -> Axel Blaze.
• Significant Name Shift:
  • Tenma is one of the few characters largely addressed by his given name, but only his closest peers and the managers call him like that at first. As his Character Development changes him from a Naïve Newcomer to a key part in the team, all his teammates begin to call him by his given name.
  • Tenma and Tsurugi in particular don't start the series on the best terms since Tsurugi is a SEED from Fifth Sector who is supposed to tear the team apart. After his motives are clear and he stops serving Fifth Sector for his brother's sake, their relationship improves significantly. By the time of the Holy Road finals, they are close enough that Tsurugi starts addressing Tenma by his given name.
• Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer:
  • Rika doesn't show in the second anime opening, for whatever reason.
  • Minamisawa of GO took the fandom by surprise because he wasn't in any of the promotional work or even the website.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Snowland Stadium in GO.
• Smug Snake: Senguuji's son Yamato is arrogant and overconfident about being part of Dragonlink, the strongest team of Fifth Sector, but his teammates rely too much on on their Avatars, without which they're nothing, and their overconfidence in them leads to their downfall.
• So Bad, It's Good: In-universe in GO, this is what most of the other characters seem to think of Kariya's suggestions for hissatsu names.
• So Last Season: Unstoppable ultimate techniques tend to become much less so as the series goes on.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Deconstructed, while this trope did cause Raimon to significantly improve in the Aliea Academy arc, it also broke many of Raimon's players. This trope is a big reason why Kazemaru was Slowly Slipping Into Evil and became a part of the Dark Emperors.
• Spin Attack: A lot of hissatsu wazas involve some kind of spinning: Death Zone, Spinning Shot, Fire Tornado, Flame Dance, etc.
• Speed, Smarts and Strength: The main Power Trio in GO, consisting of: Tenma, whose speed is incorporated in most of his special techniques, Tsurugi, the hard-hitting Ace Striker, and Shindou, the strategic game maker.
• Split Personality:
  • After an avalanche killed Fubuki Shirou's family, the soul of his brother Atsuya formed inside his mind in order to teach him a lesson about working with the whole team and changes to him whenever his position changes from defender to forward. After Shirou learns this lesson, the two souls are able to merge.
  • Satan Gaul from Orion appears to have this as well, being able to change in no less than three personas with different hair colours and levels of craziness when he shakes his head. His calmest personality has light orange hair, which is relatively straight, while his most agressive one has very spiky dark red hair. His default personality is somewhere in between and has orange-red hair.
  • Also, from Orion, Ichihoshi turns out to have DID in episode 13, with Hikaru being his real personality and Mitsuru being the split personality of his deceased brother, who formed inside his mind due to being in denial about his brother's death.
• Split-Screen Reaction: Raimon's protagonist tends to show their reactions a lot in unison to major event on screen together, with even all 11 members and the supporting characters reactions at the same time.
• Spoiler Opening:
  • Maji de Kansha! showing silhouettes of Desarm and Gran, showing that there's more to Aliea Academy than just Gemini Storm.
  • A minor example would be "Katte Nakou Ze!!". It shows pretty clearly which characters are part of Inazuma Japan, making the plot of episode 69 predictable since the opening already shows the 16 players chosen from the 22 candidats to represent the team.
• Spoiler Title:
  • The episode where Inazuma Japan loses the match against The Empire is called "Absolute Despair! Inazuma Japan loses?!". Considering it's the only episode where they lose a match in a tournament, the ending would have been more shocking without the title giving it away.
  • The fact that the last GO trilogy is called Inazuma Eleven GO: Galaxy should've clued you that aliens are involved.
• Sprite/Polygon Mix: The first three games have both 2D sprites and mugshots and 3D models of the characters. The 2D models are used for distant camera angles and the 3D models are used for closer ups.
• Stepford Smiler: Accidentally invoked by Endou's mum in the games. Her sprite, which shows her widely smiling, never changes, including when she's scolding Endou, or talking about touchy subjects such as Endou's grandfather. Needless to say, this can unintentionally be very creepy at times.
• Stalker Shot: Played for laughs in episode 41 when Endou is talking to Aki outside after they both get up early and the camera reveals that Natsumi is eavesdropping on their conversation, with the implication that she's expecting a love confession to happen.
• Stock Footage:
  • Of any hissatsu that has its own background. They don't even try to hide it. Justified in that the techniques look like they have to be pulled off in a certain way to work.
    • This ends in some subtle errors sometimes. For example, When Gouenji, Hiroto, and Toramaru first do the Grand Fire Hissatsu, Hiroto is wearing the captain band because Endou is away. When Grand Fire is used again in the match against America, Hiroto is still wearing the captain band during the technique, even though Endou is on the field.◊
  • Played with by hissatsu which don't have their own background. The foreground is reused each time, but the background is reanimated. God Hand in particular has the camera swivel around the user, which tends to really show off the Scenery Porn.
• Stuffed into a Locker: Subverted, Kabeyama tries to hide in a locker and gets himself stuck.
• Super Ringer:
  • Gouenji is added to the team mid-match multiple times in the series.
  • Subverted with Nishiki in GO. During the Hakuren match he's set up to be the key forward that'll complete Double Wing, only to reveal that his skills are a bit rusty due to playing in a completely different position overseas.
• Super Serum: The Aqua of the Gods/Ambrosia used by Zeus gives its players superhuman abilities. The Aliea Meteorite does the same to an even greater degree.
• Super-Soldier:
  • Aliea Academy's players were trained with their abilities and soccer potential enhanced from the Aliea meteorite in order to train Genesis, Kira's true desire for super soldiers: Genesis. They trained to beat the other members of the Aliea meteorite and got stronger without being possessed at the cost of needing limiters
  • In the movie, Ogre was surgically designed to become time soldiers to destroy the fun of people who enjoy soccer.
• Talking Is a Free Action: Megane lampshades this trope after being subverted during the match versus Shuuyou Meito. While he is scolding them for cheating during the match using dirty tricks inspired from animes, one of them steals his ball and scolds him for interrupting him during his lecture.
• Talking to Themself: The Fubuki brothers talk to each other in Shirou's mind, usually with help from a mirror.
• Team Spirit: Whether its Endou, Tenma, or Asuto, when one member of the team convinces the other team they can win when they work together and try, this often results in Determinator levels reaching very high, new hissatsu techniques, or even the antagonistic teams performing better.
• Teen Genius: A lot of the middle schoolers are proficient intellectually, athletically, in some case: both, or has a skill that can benefit their team in a soccer match.
  • Kidou (academics/sports), Ichinose (sports), and Otomura (music). Interestingly enough, they all play as midfielders.
  • GO! has Shindou (music, like Otomura). He also plays as a midfielder.
  • Galaxy has two of them: Manabe is very proficient at mathematical problem solving and calculations, while Minaho is a prodigy detective (ingame he even solves Kuroiwa's secret identity without being caught).
• Temporal Paradox: The reason why El Dorado doesn't have Protocol Omega 2.0 just use brute force to destroy Raimon in the past. Instead they attempt to manipulate or influence things without altering history to crush Raimon.
• Theme Naming:
  • Nose's players are named or nicknamed after animals, which usually match their designs and behaviours. Niwatori's nickname means "chicken".
  • Zeus' players, named after gods and goddesses. Their captain Aphrodi is named after the goddess of beauty.
  • The managers are named after the Japanese seasons: Aki means autumn, Haru(na) means spring, Natsu(mi) means summer and "Fuyu"ka means winter.
  • The managers in GO are named after colors: Ao(i) means blue, Aka (ne) means red and Midori means green.
  • Protocol Omega's members (except for Beta and Gamma) take their dubbed names from the letters of the NATO Military Alphabet.
• There Are No Therapists: Many of the characters go through traumatic events, and while some characters have been diagnosed for the physical problems such as Yuuichi and Taiyou in Go, others such as Fubuki were forced to overcome their tragdies in mentally painful fashion. Thankfully, many of them are able to recover for the better.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich: In Episode 78 (Fuyuka's Ultimate Secret Technique Plan!!) One of Fuyuka's attempts to help Endou come up with a new powerful football move is to share a ice cream sundae together. Endou gets baffled by what Fuyuka is trying to do until he figures out she wanted to help with his training. After that Endou decides to show Fuyuka the tire by the tower that he trains with. When they leave the ice cream parlour they discard the sundae that they didn't eat at all.
• This Is a Drill: Desarm's Drill Smasher. Baddap's Death Spear also looks and sounds like one.
• Time Police: Protocol Omega of Chrono Stone essentially are route agents authorized to intervene with time.
• Time Travel: The first movie and GO's second season involve this.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Touko and Rika respectively. While they're both Genki Passionate Sports Girls, Touko is the more straight-forward one and not really interested in feminine stuff, while Rika is more interested in romantic stuff and other cute things.
• Too Unhappy to Be Hungry: In episode 46, Endou became depressed due to blaming himself for Fubuki's injury and Kazemaru leaving the team. When when Aki tries to give him a plate of rice balls, he refuses to eat.
• Tournament Arc: Makes up most of season 1, all of season three, and first season of GO.
• Training from Hell:
  • Endou practices by punching a tire tied to a tree. Really. Also, in the game it is implied that he performs 100 push ups every day to keep his God Hand strong enough.
  • The Final Boss Opposing Sports Team was trained by Endou Daisuke himself—since they were children.
  • Kidou as coach in GO, to the point that three (... or two with one dragged along) rebelled and didn't come to practice the next day. Turns out Kidou did it so he could run diagnostics on their limitations, then adjusted their individual training menus to their maximum capabilities.
  • Also in GO, Fifth Sector's training menu in God's Eden. In Chrono Stone, the Avatar users of Raimon, who are unaffected by the brainwashing, go there to learn how to activate the Armed mode.
  • Coach Hitomiko's training of Neo Japan also counts as she puts them through intense training: tanking multiple hissatsu shots for basic defense, practicing shoots that nearly broke Desarm's former self and lead him to focus only on victory, and shook them to their core that they become completely different people once they challenge Inazuma Japan.
• True Companions: Of course. The former name for this trope: nakama, pops up in just about every other Inazuma Eleven theme song.
• Uncool Undies: Before going to training camp in episode 24, Endou's mom gave him a pair of underwear that she wrote his name on (so Endou wouldn't mix it up with someone else's, including Kabeyama) which he finds embarrassing.
• Underdogs Never Lose:
  • Played straight with the main team, who always find a way to win in the end, no matter how stronger the opponents are, but completely subverted with Tachimukai's team.
  • Subverted when Inazuma Japan loses the match against The Empire. But it plays a role in their development, so it all works out in the end.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: The national round of Holy Road features unconventional stadiums. Naturally, Raimon are never informed about where they will play next.
• Unnamed Parent: Played straight with Gouenji, Kageyama, Kogure, Rika, Fuyuka, Sangoku and Norika's mothers, Kidou, Asuto, Haizaki and Ichihoshi's fathers and Fubuki, Fudou, Tenma, Tsurugi, Matatagi, Michinari and Nosaka's parents. Their names aren't mentioned either in the story or in other official sources. However, many other parents of the main characters do have a known given name. It usually depends on how relevant their parents are to the story.
• Unrealistic Black Hole: Desarm's and Zel's Worm Hole. The user creates a web-like wormhole with his hands which sucks the ball inside, then the wormhole appears above the user's head and the ball falls on the ground.
• Unsettling Gender-Reveal: In episode 8 of Orion, Hikaru, Iwato's panpel whom he had a crush on, turns out to be a guy, which shocks him enough to keep him awake all night. For the rest of the story, see Chekhov's Gunman above.
• V-Formation Team Shot: At the end of the Katte Nakou Ze! opening video.
• Villain Team-Up: In the second season, after they're both defeated, Prominence and Diamond Dust merge to form Team Chaos.
• Welcome to Corneria: Present in the first game, Non Player Characters keep the dialogs of the last chapter after you beat Zeus. It gets better in later games.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Endou was reasonably displeased to discover Gouenji's involvement with Fifth Sector.
• Wham Episode: In the first GO game:
  • Chapter 10: Tenma finds out that the one who saved his life when he was younger was the current Holy Emperor of Fifth Sector... but he also may be more sympathetic than he seems.
  • Chapter 11, oh boy... Tenma finding out the friend he made in hospital is his next opponent is just the start. Tenma gets an evolved Avatar, and he, Shindou and Tsurugi fuse their Avatars together into one super-Avatar, and Shindou gets heavily injured to the point that Tenma has to replace him as captain.
  • Chapter 1 of the Chrono Stone game was already a Wham Episode in itself, somehow it seems that soccer is wiped clean from the face of the earth; Tenma himself being the only one who actually remembers soccer. Then Alpha shows himself to Tenma and reveals that he has travelled through time and erased soccer, he later deflected the soccer ball that Gouenji used to save Tenma; which injured him and removed his passion for soccer. Since it doesn't work, Alpha and Protocol Omega beats up Tenma until Fei showed up and saved him.
  • Chapter 2 of the Chrono Stone game had this one instance where you see Yuuichi is standing up, and he's joining Tenmas to play with Endou before the Raimon soccer club was ever made against Protocol Omega, later it was revealed that Yuuichi came from a different timeline where he never broke his legs, went to become a famous soccer player, and thus hunted by Protocol Omega only saved by Helper X who gave him his Time Bracelet.
  • Lastly in the final chapter of the Chrono Stone game where it is revealed that El Dorado was not in fact the villain, and that shifting the antagonist role to Feida, the Second Stage Children terrorist group. It goes even further when the Ragnarok Tournament begins, Fei was a mind-wiped Second Stage Children agent sent by SARU to prevent El Dorado from eliminating soccer, Helper X is revealed to be Fei's father and Kinako is his mother.
• Whateversaurus: Big and his mother Rockstar are an unidentified species of giant Theropod dinosaurs.
• Whole Episode Flashback: Episode 15 of Orion focuses mostly on Li Hao's backstory and how he went from a street rat to Zhao Jinyun's pupil to a competent soccer player, among other things.
• A Wild Rapper Appears!: Many of the anime openings feature this.
• The Worf Effect:
  • Mainly The Wall and The Tower, which rarely work in the anime, despite being incredibly useful in the games. Also, if the bad guys of the week get serious, don't expect any waza to stop them until Endou gives another speech of soccer and friendship.
  • Ijigen the Hand. Quite ironic, it deflects many shots in the game until you get God Catch.
  • In GO Sidewinder^note which is a very good shoot in the video games and just about all of Sangoku's goalie techniques get this.
• World of Ham: During the matches, even characters who aren't normally hammy can get pretty loud and fired up when calling their hissatsu wazas, plus there are always Large Ham Announcers who commentate the matches.
• World of Technicolor Hair: Many characters have unnusual hair colours without comment, including:
  • Kazemaru, Haruna, Kogure, Rika, Domon, Tsurugi, Aoi, Kariya, Hiura have blue/teal/cyan hair.
  • Someoka, Touko, Tsunami, Kirino, Midori, Sakura, Nosaka have pink hair.
  • Kabeyama, Aki, Midorikawa, Morimura, Norika have green hair.
  • Kageno, Fuyuka, Tobitaka, Amagi, Manabe, Goujin have purple hair.
• Yellow Earth, Green Earth: A few goalkeeper techniques, such as God Hand and Majin the Hand, have a different-coloured aura depending on the player's element: golden-yellow for earth in contrast to blue for wood and red for the fire variations. Aside from that, earth is mostly associated with orange in the games, such as the colour of the icon seen in the Earth-type characters' info.
• Yin-Yang Bomb: Several hissatsu techniques are made by users with opposite powers, usually light combined with darkness. This includes:
  • Shadow Ray, as expected of a move from the angel and the devil.
  • Zero Magnum, going with GO's theme of black and white.
  • Sei Kishi Arthur, which is a keshin created by fusing Seijuu Shining Dragon and Ankoku Shin Dark Exodus.
  • Joker Rains, which is more downplayed compared to the other examples here.
  • Great Blaster, another Yin-Yang Bomb move with Hakuryuu.
• You Have Failed Me: In Chrono Stone, any member of Protocol Omega that fails to meet El Dorado's expectations are sent to Infinity Prison.
• Younger Than They Look:
  • A lot of characters, such as Someoka and Hijikata. This would be the case of Artistic Age.
  • Despite being the physically largest member of Raimon and even having facial hair, Kabeyama is actually one of the youngest members.

---