First Season

Lore & Background

The Deimon Devil Bats enter their first season as a joke in the local league—a handful of players, no real practice facility, and a captain whose reputation for playing like a demon has earned him more enemies than fans. Kuroki's philosophy is brutally simple: he doesn't care about popularity or tradition, only about winning, and he will draft, push, and reshape anyone willing to run through a wall for him. The roster at the start is so thin that positions go unfilled for weeks, and the team's first practices are less organized drills and more Kuroki screaming plays at kids who still can't catch a spiral.

Sena's arrival is the season's quiet earthquake. Small, quiet, perpetually being shoved into lockers by older students, he has one gift that no one in the program has ever seen: raw, terrifying top speed. Kuroki spots it the way a predator spots a heartbeat, and from that moment Sena's role is singular and absolute—he runs, and he runs faster than anyone can tackle him. The rest of the team orbits that fact, learning to build routes, blocks, and timing around a single, lightning-fast variable.

What makes the First Season feel so grounded, even amid the larger-than-life plays, is the team's sheer smallness. There is no bench depth, no backup quarterback, no experienced linebacker. Every position is a first-timer learning the sport in real time while the season clock ticks. The rivalries that form here are personal and immediate—opponents who mock the Devil Bats' name, teammates who doubt Kuroki's eccentric schemes, and a league that simply does not put Deimon on its schedule because it doesn't think they exist. By the season's close, the team has proven it exists, and the league has to start taking it seriously.

In Their Own Story

The practice field at Deimon smells like wet clay and sweat. It's late afternoon, the kind of grey Tokyo sky that makes the stadium lights look like they're burning through fog. Sena is doing his fourth set of sprints, and his lungs are on fire, and the other kids are already sitting on the sideline drinking from crumpled bottles. He doesn't slow down. He never slows down. That's the thing about him that Kuroki keeps saying in that low, amused voice—'You don't stop. You just don't stop.' And it's true. His legs don't know how to stop. They only know the next yard, and the next, and the next.

Kuroki is watching from the sideline, arms crossed, that half-smile that means he's either about to praise you or throw a helmet at your head. He calls out a play. Sena doesn't understand the play. He never fully understands the play. But he understands the direction, and the gap, and the moment the line shifts, and his body is already moving before his brain catches up. The ball is in his hands. The field is open. And for three, four, five seconds, the world is just grass and wind and the sound of his own breathing, and nobody—nobody—can catch him.

He crosses the line. The sideline goes quiet. Kuroki uncrosses his arms. And for the first time, the small kid who used to run from people is running toward them, and it looks like exactly the same thing.

Reader's Guide

Okay so picture this: you've got this tiny, scrawny kid who gets bullied daily, and a creepy, intense captain who basically says 'run for me and I won't let them touch you.' That's the whole engine of the First Season, and it's *magnificent.*

The setup is pure underdog: the Devil Bats are a skeleton crew, maybe a dozen players, no real depth, and the league basically pities them. Kuroki is assembling a team in real time, and a lot of the early episodes are just… kids learning what a blocking formation is. It's funny, it's awkward, and it's so relatable.

OH NO moment: the first real game. The team is outmatched, the opponents are bigger and faster, and Sena is in the lineup for the first time. You're holding your breath. He gets hit. He gets up. He runs. And the play that follows is the single most 'wait, WHAT' moment of the season—Sena does something so absurdly fast that the opposing team just… stops. The whole stadium goes silent. You feel it in your chest.

OH YES moment: by the end of the season, the team that was a joke is a team. The positions are filled, the chemistry is there, Kuroki's schemes are clicking, and the Devil Bats have beaten someone who actually counted them. The league has to start putting them on the schedule. That shift—from invisible to dangerous—is the whole emotional arc, and it earns every single yard.

The rivalries that form here are the seeds for everything after. The opponents who mocked them? They're coming back next season. And the Devil Bats are no longer the same eleven kids who couldn't catch a pass in October.

Did You Know?

• Sena Kobayakawa's defining trait—his almost superhuman top speed—is introduced in the very first chapters, but he is initially a victim of bullying who runs *away* from people; Kuroki's recruitment flips that instinct fr
• The Deimon Devil Bats start the season with a roster so thin that multiple positions go unfilled for an extended period, making early games a matter of raw effort over strategy.
• Ryuma Kuroki's 'Devil' persona is as much a psychological tool as a playing style—he uses intimidation and unpredictable play-calling to rattle opponents who are physically superior to his team.
• The manga's art, by Yusuke Murata, is known for its dynamic, almost cinematic panel compositions during plays, which later made the transition to the anime's action sequences especially striking.