Think of your favorite sports anime. Whatever it may be: Haikyuu, hajime no ippo, kuroko
no basket, hajime no ippo, ping pong the animation, anything except for keijo, hajime no ippo-
There’s a lot of prerequisites for sports anime, but the two things they almost always
do (to a fault even) is a tournament arc... and friendship. It’s almost cheesy, the
way that a lot of sports anime format the idea of friendship being the key aspect tying
a team together. Hell, kuroko no basket’s final power-up lets you enter the shadow realm
after achieving absolute trust in your teammates. Even in hajime no ippo, a anime about boxing,
a fundamentally solo sport, the bond between Ippo and his coach and training gym mates
is key to the show’s charm. But imagine if a sports manga did none of that. What if
there was a sports manga that threw friendship out the window and followed only the most
egotistical, pride-driven, and independently headstrong players as they compete with eachother
to get to the top of the sports world? Well guess what? That is exactly what Blue Lock
is all about.
Sports anime and manga always like to show off the different positions on sports teams.
Nishinoya made a position with no spiking, no attacking, literally just defense and receiving
into one of the coolest parts of haikyuu. Shooting guards, point guards, i only know
the positions on a basketball team because i watched kuroko no basket. If you can’t
tell, my knowledge of sports is limited to basically only what i’ve learned from anime.
But once again, check this out. A sports anime where the characters all have the same position.
Blue lock follows 300 of japan’s strongest strikers, which if you’re not sporty unlike
myself, the sports connoisseur, is basically the guy in soccer who scores the goals. The
main weapon and offensive attacker. They’ve all been sent to this really intense, probably
very illegal training facility to train Japan’s first world renowned striker, because -to
sum it up- Japan basically builds teams full of softies. It’s kind of like a criticism
of the friendship theme I was talking about earlier, this manga takes that idea of friendship
and kindness and then just tosses it into the toilet. Blue Lock only trains the hardest,
most lethal killers on the soccer field and among those 300 recruited, only 1 wins. And
what happens if you lose, you might ask? Can you just try again? No. if you lose in blue
lock and get kicked out, you’re blacklisted from any professional team and your future
in soccer goes right down the toilet with friendship. Blue lock is all about training
the biggest egoist. A striker so incredibly confident in their abilities that they don’t
need that foolish idea of friendship. And what’s more exciting than our most primal
instinct to survive and wear the crown on top of a mound of corpses, but in the form
of soccer?
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back to blue lock.
So even though everyone plays in the same position in blue lock, the manga still creates
distinct differences between each player’s individual styles, almost to the point where
it doesn’t even feel like they’re all strikers. Some are really good at dribbling,
or shooting from long distances, which keeps it fresh and prevents it from feeling like
a huge sausage fest of dudes trying to score better goals than eachother. Although, that’s
pretty fun to read too. And the manga knows that. The characters all have this really
sick aura to them in the art style whenever they’re about to do something crazy, and
Blue Lock really capitalizes on these crazy moments and makes them epic. After all, it
doesn’t have anything extra like friendship or a lot of team bonding. I mean there’s
a little bit of team bonding but, then they realize they’re all out to beat eachother
into the dirt and they realize, oh wait. But because it doesnt have all these extra parts
that normal sports anime or manga have, blue lock really compensates with its hype moments
and hardcore characters. Like Nagi, who just started playing soccer 6 months ago but is
somehow a god among men already and can stop a full blown pass in a second with a little
toe touch and do whirlwind rock lee kicks in the air to score. And our main character,
Isagi, is almost hardcore… i’d say.
See the thing is, manga have to develop their protagonist in some way. Because character
development is really important to a good story. In all the best sports anime and manga,
the main character starts with a lot of potential, but its unrefined. They enter the sports world
and realize how outclassed they are until they train their skills, and of course like
any good sports manga, blue lock has this as well. Isagi starts off the story by losing
in the road to high school nationals because at the very end, right in front of the goal
that could’ve tied the game, he chose to pass the ball instead of just taking the shot.
Totally uncharacteristic for a striker… plus his teammate whiffed. Like ur trash kid.
And so he’s really down in the dumps afterwards, feeling guilty and debating whether he should’ve
passed or not when he gets invited to blue lock. And so this manga follows isagi learn
to abandon the idea of relying on his teammates. Drill into his head to never again pass in
that kind of situation and be so goddamn cocky and egotistical that he will always take the
shot because he is 100% confident that he will hit it. Once Isagi first gets his taste
of victory, you start seeing the demon inside of him come out and its pretty exciting.
I mean blue lock is just about the same as every other sports manga or anime you’ve
seen, except all of the characters have insane drive to win and its more competitive. This
leads to more intense 1v1s, and the stakes are higher than ever. Instead of just losing
a tournament, you lose a future in the sport. This is the story of japan’s 300 best strikers
being forced into an all-or-nothing competition to become the world’s best and its awesome.
Check it out.
As always...