Setting aside recency bias and the giant that is Haikyuu, I can’t remember the last time a sports Anime series has been this hyped or anticipated as much as ‘Blue Lock’ has since it was announced that the manga would make its Animated debut in October 2022.
But what exactly is ‘Blue Lock’ and why is there so much hype over yet another football/soccer anime? Well, let’s get into it!
‘Blue Lock’ is a Japanese manga series by Muneyuki Kaneshiro that has been serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump since August 2018. Eight Bit, known for animating The Time I got Reincarnated as a slime, are the animation studio behind the show, which is quite a surprising decision based on the shows they have worked on, but we can’t get Production IG on everything, and based on what we’ve seen from the trailers, Eight Bit has done a great job in bringing to life the beautiful illustrations of Yusuke Nomura.
The story of Blue lock is set right after the events of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, where the Japanese national team couldn’t make it past the round of 16, losing 3-2 to a strong Belgium team. As a result, the Japanese Football Association hires this mysterious mad-scientist type character, Ego Jinpachi, who devises a plan to lead Japan to World Cup glory. That Plan is Blue Lock, a training/prison-like facility designed to create the world’s greatest egotist striker, a striker that will elevate the Japanese national team to new heights. The protagonist of the story is Yoichi Isagi, who suffers from a severe lack of confidence and questions his ability as a football player especially after his team had just lost the final of the Saitama Prefectural finals due to a fatal error he made during the match. Isagi, alongside 300 of Japan’s best-talented strikers, is chosen to participate in the Blue Lock Programme. However Blue lock isn’t just any other training facility, not only are the participants pitted against each other and not allowed to contact their family and friends but eliminated players will be banned from representing Japan for the rest of their lives.
Ultimately this is what makes ‘Blue lock’ different from not only other football anime but sports anime in general. The fusion of battle Shonen manga, battle royale and sports creates a unique mix of genres. This isn’t another sports anime about a school’s sports team helping and encouraging each other to win their national tournaments like Haikyuu or the grounded reality of youth football of Ao Ashi, but the cold and brutal hunger games e
sque world of Blue Lock, where style, flair and a hyper-stylized version of football are at the forefront compared to the purity of the sport. If you are a lover of the beautiful game, you might find issues with how the story takes such a radical stance against ‘teamwork’ and the purer elements of what makes football such an incredible sport, because football at the end of the day is a team sport with not only strikers but midfielders, defenders and a goalkeeper. But in my opinion, there are enough shows that do a great job in conveying those types of stories in a better way than Blue Lock ever could.
Blue Lock Focuses on individuality and egoism, instead of teamwork and friendship, this concept is even more intriguing when viewed in the context of Japanese society where the collective is above the individual. What about in the context of football? Well, Brazilian football legend, World Cup winner, player of the year, and one of the most clinical strikers in the history of the sport, Romario, said “Strikers are egotists, selfish. We have to be”. Being a selfish athlete or player, especially in team sports is often a divisive topic and brings a ton of negative press around that player, but ultimately a striker is judged based on the number of goals he scores and not the number of assists he gets in a season. Fans and the media will often overlook ego for goals, whereas selfless strikers will always be criticized for their lack of goal-scoring output. But ego and selfishness aren’t the only themes in the story, the main character Isagi suffers from a lack of confidence which, without spoiling too much, is something that he hopes to overcome during his time in the blue lock facility. But this lack of self-confidence also speaks to a wider issue among up incoming football players and possibly even the wider Japanese population. The idea that you have a manga that encourages individualism, for the sake of growth and development but also the success of the team, is an extremely refreshing take on sports anime, one that as mentioned earlier hits even harder when viewed in the context of Japanese societal rules.
I am looking forward to seeing how much the first season of the show will cover from the manga, how characters like Isagi, Bachira, Kunigami, and others will come across in animated form, and In general whether the cast will resonate with audiences. I don’t think the story of Blue Lock is what will keep people watching the anime but more so the animation and thrilling and entertaining nature of this unique version of a sports anime.
Football/soccer is the most popular sport in the world, and being such has naturally birthed a wide range of manga revolving around the sport, which does a great job of showing why it has reached such popularity. Blue Lock isn’t that, instead, it delivers an intriguing mix of action and sports where every player’s career is at stake in this incredibly harsh “survival of the fittest “ environment, where every kick, pass and goal can make or break the future careers of these characters. In many ways, it’s a life-and-death situation for these young players who dream of becoming Japan’s number-one striker and leading their country to World Cup glory. This is 'Blue Lock'.
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