Blue Lock

Picture this, you’re in extra time and it’s the final play of the game. Everyone’s sweaty and knackered, rightfully so, the scoreline is 6-6, or at least that’s what you think cause you never really keep track of the score during games. You’re in the penalty box and your best bud passes a beautiful through ball to you. You take a clean touch, fake a shot to the left, and whip the ball into the top right bin. The goalkeeper doesn’t see it coming at all. How could he? The crowd goes wild. A little quieter than normal you note–probably cause you’re at an away ... game. The ref blows his whistle, “fweeeeeeet”. The game’s done, you’ve won. You run to the sidelines and your mom hands you your favorite drink, a scrumptious blackcurrant Ribena that was in the cooler only seconds ago. You take a comforting sip and look around. You pinpoint exactly why the crowd was quieter than usual. It’s because your dad was dozing off in the middle of the game. Your mom sees where you’re looking at and gets mad. “JORDAN, how many times do I have to tell you, don’t sleep during your son’s game.” You’re not mad, you understand. He had to drive your ass for an hour and a half at 6am to watch a little league football game on a Saturday morning. You take a look at the other teams bleachers, trying to find the goalkeeper you just styled on. Strange, you can’t quite pinpoint him from the coagulate of jerseys until one of them walks up to you with his mom. His mom says: “hey, that was a great goal, my Kev could have never saved that.” You look at the child in tow, weird, you don’t remember a kid with glasses on the pitch. His mom notices and explains how she doesn’t let her son wear glasses on the pitch in case a ball hits his face. So that’s why he couldn’t save it, he couldn’t damn well see the ball could he? This, this pseudo-thrilling shithousery is Blue Lock to me.

The start of Blue Lock was actually bearable, dare I even say interesting. Seriously, it’s a good concept on paper. A bunch of ambitious teenagers vying for a chance to become Japan’s national team striker through a rigorous and ruthless training regime with one person remaining. Or that’s what it seemed at the start, until you realize that no characters introduced get eliminated. Or the absurdity of fielding a striker in goal could ever yield effective practice for anyone involved. But I understand there should be an expected level of plot armoring and suspension of disbelief afforded when it comes to these shows so I will give it some leeway. Instead, this review will focus more so on the myriad of reasons why this show doesn’t even work in an entertaining sense.

First and foremost, it’s the animation. For some surreal reason, some people actually think the animation in this show is good. The characters are drawn decently and the food looks realistic enough. But most importantly, the actual animation of the football? Really? For the people complaining about the work of the CG in another popular series that aired the same season that I just so happen to adore–You should be up in arms here with knives and pitchforks screaming “Sic ‘em!”; it’s hideous. But the biggest and most heinous animation problem are the still frames filled with exposition that completely ruin the flow of each play. Matches are shown in these constant close ups of the characters slowly gliding across your screen as you hear the play happening in their head. But the play itself is never actually explicitly shown. It's reminiscent of those imovie projects you had to do for middle school where you couldn’t quite figure out how to get the images to stop moving with the ken burns effect as you try your best to match your squeaky dialogue with the 4 second image overlay. It’s an embarrassing production. Football is dynamic and exciting at heart, especially in attacking play. But this static imagery completely ruins the momentum of each play and makes it really hard to sit through some of these moments that I would like to imagine were exciting on paper. If you don’t get the animation right for a sports anime, it’s really hard to build from there.

The ranking system is atrocious and representative of everything wrong with shonen anime. Why would the ranked 299 person realistically even have a shot at becoming one of the best players. It’s this unnecessary from the bottom to the top type writing that tries to maintain hype through introducing opponents of increasingly high rank. This might work for some, but to me, it’s tedious to sit through knowing that someone with more power but with even less personality will appear and none of this matters. Take Nagi for example. How on earth does he have the ego to say he’s the best player as he’s introduced when he’s ranked 250 something in this facility alone. It’s just meaningless fluff because it’s obvious they’re trying to drum up some kind of idiotic point where he realizes oh he’s not god’s gift and there are people that challenge him here. Then Rin comes along with a similar ego complex, but is just stronger and replaces what little Nagi’s purpose was. The part that really infuriates me is that after what seems like these development arcs for each of these characters. They’re reduced to these shells of their former selves and are added to Isagi’s collection of assets like they’re all tools in Mickey Mouse’s toolbox. “Oh toodles!!! Who will I pass to today?" As he bring up 4 options to the screen. I can just imagine the kids watching screaming at their screen: “Garou! Kunigami! Bachira! Chigiri!” or whoever else “fortunate” enough to be Isagi’s plaything at this current moment.

Strikers aren't the king of the castle but Blue Lock certainly thinks so. Football is a teamsport; it’s an 11-aside game played on a 105 by 68 meter rectangular field with the objective of putting the ball in your opponents net. The game most importantly is driven by cohesive teamplay. Unlike something like basketball where there is abundant teamplay, but there are also plays that can be started and finished by a single player because the pitch is relatively small. But it’s different in football. There is so much buildup required for each goal. Blue Lock doesn’t have nearly enough of this. I think it’s because of this ignorant “ego” thing they try to drive into each player. The mortifying “chemistry reaction” and “devouring” they keep bringing up as what they believe to be “football”. To anyone who has not seen football, please do not look at this affront and think this is what football’s about. It’s so cringey and it hurts every fiber of my being.

Similarly, players like Bachira and Chigiri are obviously more suited to be wingers. Yet they’re still pushed into this rigid idea that they’re number 9s. It does a huge disservice to your greats like Kagawa and that legendary Japanese midfielder that people get disappointed when they pack in Fifa. These midfield Maestros are some of your greats, why would you think to disrespect them by saying strikers are the most important position. Take some time to look back at the past few world cups, was Giroud the main reason France won the world cup in 2018? How about Spain’s 4-6-0 formation where they fielded 0 strikers and won the world cup in 2010? It’s just this cringey decadent idea that strikers are the most important part that I just know comes from a place to get impressionable children riled up for your show. Frankly, it’s dishonest and insulting.

Another crucial problem with only having strikers is, you only have a limited amount of qualities and unique skills to give around where players can excel at: Pace, finishing, hold-up play, off the ball movement, spatial awareness to name the key ones. And evidently, they’re exhausted pretty quickly. What you’re then left with are pure power upgrades that I really dislike. Where it’s this childish one-upping of “I read his play”, “I read his reading of my play”, “I can jump higher than you”, “I can run faster than you”. It’s just not fun to watch from a tactical and footballing standpoint. And deep down, Blue Lock knows this, so what do they do? They decide to introduce imaginary monsters. Yes you heard me right.

Just like Bachira and the monster inside of him, there are 2 wolves inside of me, one hates this show, the other also hates this show. The individual monsters of this show don’t work and don’t get expanded on. When you lean into that supernatural realm without actually doing anything meaningful with it–Or when they don’t iron out properties of these supernatural concepts like in the case of Blue Lock, it just becomes nonsensical mumbo jumbo. You have no limit defining, everything just ends up feeling so pulled out of the hat for convenience sake. It’s also those flaming eyes when the monsters come out or when they enter “serious mode” that are so badly animated for some of these scenes. They all start to look like Endeavor from MHA to me and it’s admittedly hysterical. But from a non-biased critiquing standpoint, it’s abhorrent.

This menagerie known as the Blue Lock facility also feels so barren and boring. There needs to be an incentive to make this program feel rewarding where players should want to stay here because they’re becoming their best selves. Be it, superior practicing methods, state of the art training equipment, illustrious coaching instructors, you name it. But Blue Lock doesn't have any of this. It just feels like a death trap that unbeknownst to each of the players before they join, if they get knocked out they can never play for the Japanese national team. I feel like these sort of stipulations should have been included in the letter. If not, screw it, just go full squid game and say if you’re knocked out you’re executed. That would have spiced things up a little bit. I also think it’s laughably pathetic how this show is only situated in an air conditioned indoor football pitch as they prepare for a competitive outdoor sport. It’s almost as if these writers couldn’t have borne the thought of not being in an airconditioned room. The world cup and every club football competition is played outdoors. So why are we conditioning these kids to never see the light of day?

I don’t understand why Blue Lock had to introduce made up characters in the series. I understand this point is more a pet-peeve as not everyone that watches Blue Lock is familiar with football and that’s totally fine. But as for me, I’m just wondering why we had to make up characters mixed in with real footballing greats? Noa Noel? Seriously? Noa-ne cares. I had to sit here as they tried to explain white-washed Thierry Henry to me. You should either choose to reference only real life players or make up all the players for your world. Because from where I stand, it just sounds like you’re undermining the two goats of our football generation, Messi and Ronaldo.

The only thing that I can appreciate in this show are the subtle or not so subtle yaoi elements. It’s the only thing that’s keeping me engaged in this show and I’m not even lgbtq. The series really tries to reach a target demographic here and I for one am happy it succeeds on this front. When Bachira calls out to Isagi to free him from his captors. I shudder at the thought of these 2 loverboys not being together. My favorite line is when Nagi or as I know him as “NTR-gi” says: “Sorry Reo, now that I know how good this feels, I can’t go back to how I was before” (20:59, Ep 20). Gosh, That was a fun episode. They should just do this every episode, feign seriousness and drop these banging sus one liners in the middle of the game. Just start testing the homies, see if you can catch one of them lacking. Alas, these characters have to be serious, they’ve got indoor football matches to play!

Look, if you like Blue Lock, that’s your prerogative and I could never take that away from you. Nor would I want to, everyone’s allowed to enjoy what they want. As a football fan myself, I was massively disappointed that a show I was sold to be this “excellent intense battle-royale football show" fell so flat on its face. Why can all the other sports get shows like Kuroku No Basuke or Haikyuu!!, and we get this. I’ve seen clips of these other shows and they look phenomenal. It’s just not fair. If you were starved of football content as an anime fan, I’d recommend watching the 2022 World Cup instead of watching this 24 episode choppy passion-devoid mess. That was a real treasure to behold.

To be the best. You have to work the best, you have to train the best, eat, and sleep the best. Sometimes, it even takes going through extreme measures, in order to find that best out of someone. Even if what is presented, wouldn't be called Football to you. Football may just be a sport to some, but for a load of people it's very serious business. People eat, sleep, dream football. People travel endless miles, travel to different countries, no matter the cost, to watch their team perform. It may be a sport, but it's a lifestyle for so many, to even many nations, ... who want to grasp it by the horns, and be the best in the world.

This is Blue Lock.

But to be the best, you need to basically start from somewhere, You can't be the best with mediocare, or just good enough level of talent. You have to find the best. Or even make and train the best.

Story and characters: 8
While there are flaws within it's story context, as there is a dozen other positions on a football picture, and you cannot win alone as a striker by yourself. Football is a team effort, and here in Blue Lock, they show it in both forms. Points where they'll show how good it is working within the team, but all the while showing the greatest, can do it by themselves. The best get results, the best deliver, where it be on their own, or with a team. It's proven within the game itself. Taking quotes from real footballers, in order to further prove their points.

The characters within the show are quite bundle. The best players aren't just known for their skills alone, they have the personalities to boot. Sometimes you need the right kind of characters, in order to succeed. You cannot be weak, you cannot be a weak link, you cannot suffer under pressure. With so many conflicting and determined characters within this line up, and with the story it presents. It's going to be a good product.

Art and sound: 8
Blue Lock has an interesting kind of style that sets it apart from different animes. Just by looking through the characters eyes, is proof in the pudding. Hell, some even look a bit soulless. As if there is a massive focus, a massive serious attention from everyone who is in this process. Everyone has the determination to be the best, and if you don't, you're weak, you're out. Simple as that. I've described some shows as having an in your face style, but with Blue Lock, it's more described as a determined seriousness to it. While one may laugh at the idea of Japan ever wining the World Cup, but with how this show is presented. It's no laughing matter to them. The sound quality too, is top notch, and can't put a foot wrong.

Blue Lock is a different spin on a usual Football anime that has come over the last few years. But it's certainly left a very serious, and impressive impression. Give it a watch for sure.

Excuse me, wtf?

Do people who didn't like the anime REALLY understand how it works?
Do you really prefer that the "sport" genre is ALWAYS THE SAME THING THAT WE ARE TIRED OF SEEING? (And i say this as an absolute sports fan, including animes).
The next football anime, what will it have NEW if Ao Ashi already addresses everything?

That's why i like different proposals when well executed, and Blue Lock does it perfectly.

Story: 10/10
In short, Japanese football cannot progress, they do not have decisive strikers and this is their weakest point, so they need drastic measures to solve this problem, in this way, Blue Lock emerged, which ... aims to create the best striker in the world, the one who will carry the Japanese national team and make the country win the world cup.
ONLY HERE we can already see something to be considered, ALL other football animes always have the same idea of ​​"joining a team and going out trying to win all the championships ahead", Blue Lock innovates, it manages to stand out precisely because it is different from the others. You can look at it and think that the purpose is empty, but the amount of plots that are happening involving Blue Lock is ABSURD, they are things you would never expect and that's fantastic.

Animation: 8/10
It's not perfect like Bleach's animation this season, BUT, it's still extremely good, even more so for a football anime. It presents different angles of view, graphical representations, solid transitions, an art with highlighted lines, and even has the apex moments where the animation becomes surreal, the only questionable thing in my view is the sudden 3D models that may not be to taste from everyone and they can save the budget (but it's still good) like it did in Episode 8, but it's clear that the focus is on the action scenes and that really has to be the priority.

Soundtrack: 8/10
Both the opening and ending songs in addition to the Ost's are very good, they are not memorable as Haikyu songs, the ones you even want to listen to on Youtube, but they represent the atmosphere of all events well, especially the hype moments omfg.

Characters/Development: 10/10
Players practically have their main skills where they are better than others, but at the same time they evolve their other points to become complete strikers, which is precisely the methodology, a PERFECT striker. The main characters have backstories where things are shown such as why they play football and why they enter the Blue Lock, many of them establish relationships between them, both positive and negative, like conflicts, not everything is a rainbow. Characters have a variety of personalities and appearances, I like, not much to say here.

And some quick answers

- Blue Lock has nothing cringe, the dialogues and facial expressions are the essence of the show, it works AND MUST exist
- No, they don't play football alone, in Episode 3 you'll see why that's wrong, selfishness doesn't mean picking up the ball and playing alone, it's just a mix of "knowing you're capable of deciding the match in hours needed + player confidence + will to win at any cost" :)

So the top reviews from what I read don't understand the story enough to say anything and it shows. With someone even "reading" the manga but not understanding anything about it. The story's start point is to create the strongest striker in the world for Japan, that much is straight forward. It is literally the same as "finding the one piece" every pirate aside from a few in one piece are trying to be the pirate king. Does that make the story/plot bad? nope. (im not even a one piece fan)

Story: 9/10
Like I said everyone has the goal of becoming the best striker ... in the world. That doesn't stop people from playing other roles like the biggest reviews say. In the anime the first couple episodes has everyone wanting to play forward so they can score but unfortunately that can't work. They have a "striker" play goalie for them every single time, the goalie didn't change so the argument of people don't play different positions is already just wrong. The story also progresses to have every position played because the characters all find what they are good at and use it to their advantage. It doesn't stop them from wanting to be strikers but they still play their positions well. Which is like the biggest point of the entire story throughout all of the manga, is finding what people are good at and making them better. For 99% it doesn't stop them from wanting to be forward and scoring goals but they all understand they have their own strengths. People focus too much on "they are just trying to make hot characters who kick ball" instead of how the characters themselves develop and what's good about them. The story is constantly bringing in new characters to enjoy while making them all develop at the same time, doing a really good job of making everyone have their own likeability.

Should you watch/read. 100%
If you have the mental capacity to not whine because an anime or manga has characters that don't look like rats you will most likely like it. Majority of all characters you are introduced to are unique and have amazing development. I recommend reading the manga if you do read manga's. I have read a lot of manwha/manhua but never manga, outside of :black clover, jujutsu kaisen, kaiju#8, and blue lock:. Out of all the manga I listed blue lock is easily my favorite simply due to the character personalities. Everything else is really good in the story but the characters themselves make it something really great.

I decided to finally make a MAL account purely to write a review of this show, and in all honesty I'm not surprised by the amount of people that called this show "cringe" or "awkward." Reading these kinds of reviews make it very apparent that the people writing these reviews are talking from a perspective in which they don't come from a background of playing sports growing up, or specifically playing sports at the highest competitive level.

With that being said, Blue Lock is probably the most creative show in terms of showing what goes on inside of an elite athlete's mind, taking not only the ... physicality required to perform, but also shines light on deep sports psychology. People that call the idea of the "monster" inside the players cringe don't realize that during interviews with people like Kobe Bryant and Michael Phelps, they themselves talk about having a "darkness" inside them that they tend to tap into when getting into their individual flow states. An entire chapter in a book called Relentless, written by Tim Grover (who was Michael Jordan's performance coach), is dedicated to this darkness that exists only within athletes of the highest level. There are countless other examples of this show getting into different aspects of sports psychology, and at times it gives me chills because of how accurate it can be (which would fly over people's heads if they haven't played sports at a higher competitive level)

So, for people that would like to explore the truth of elite athleticism and be open to this perspective, Blue Lock is definitely for you. But for those that don't understand what it actually takes to reach the highest levels of sports, where players dedicate their entire being to becoming the best (either because they haven't lived that kind of life or just want to watch this anime comparing it to shows like Haikyuu and Kuroko), then this show really is not for you.

Calling this show unrealistic just teveals that you have not lived a life where you dedicate your ENTIRE being to a sport, which is totally okay, but when giving a review of this show (or starting/continuing it), please take this perspective into consideration.

Story: Literally non-existent. Each episode resolves of pseudo-developing football skills. The characters get a pass from another player and than stand face o face for 30 seconds and talk toxic redudant bullshit to each other to make sure the one speaking is more alpha than the other.

Characters: Nothing special here. Typical shounen character set, fancy hair styles. There is the already mentioned pseudo-developing of each character's individual skill set, which some people might find interesting. While this is a shounen anime i can understand this doesn't have to be near to realism, but it gets boring pretty soon. Its a typical schema: Isagi faces a ... better oponent which is depicted as super overpowerd, then he get's an epiphany on his oponents individual skill and tactic set and becomes better in ca. 45min. And this repeats on each story stage. Boring. Only Bachira's stoy background is kind of interesting and supports his development but thats all. The other 40 characters are not very individual to each other, they are all a bunch of toxic, narcistic losers who should better go to college.

Music: Typical shounen garbage.

Design: Some chars look cool, most of them have guffy hairstyles. Another boring part about the anime is the surroundings. These wannabes are caged inside a isolated cage. There is nothing, really nothing, that makes this anime in any way beautiful and a piece of art.

Animation: Literally non-existent. There is maybe 5min of total football animation in this anime, the rest are stand alone pictures. I didnt know time pauses when you play football.

Overall: Bad, redundaant, meaningless shounen anime, A score of 8.25 is blasphemy but shows, how bad anime fans can judge art lmao

Let’s jump straight into the point. Blue Lock is an anime which shows different ways of achieving our goals. Understanding Blue Lock, as simple as it is, is understanding the reasons of different characters to move forward. By no means do I think that the anime is complex or anything. So, what is going on?
Characters:
Every character is stereotypical. We got the “goofy” Bachira, main character Isagi, friendly straight-face Kunigami and some edgelords. We’ve all seen these characters before, but all of them have something to share in common. They show us their own way of getting better, moving forward, striving for success. Kuon, for example, ... will do whatever it takes to be the last man standing, whether it is morally good or not. Barou – a beast on the field, unstoppable rebellious force- also shares his way to victory. By realizing his mistakes, by finding someone better than him in the field where he should be the “king”, he shows us that, whatever stops him from going forward, he will devour. Haven’t we felt the same way? Whether it is at school or at work, we have always encountered someone better than us. And that really bothers the ego of most people. What do we do then? We get better, and better till we beat that specific person “Those who continue to fight in spite of their despair are bestowed with the power to achieve their dream”-Ego Jinpachi.
Although, we have seen a little from Kunigami, he also has something to say: “If our heads drop down now, we’re done for!”(my favorite quote). Failure is merely temporary and if you accept defeat then you stay knocked down instead of getting back up. Sometimes things don’t always go our way, so press on! Try again and again and learn from failure. Some characters can get you really hyped up, getting goose bumps from what they are saying, and that is the whole point. That is why I admire most of Blue Lock characters.
Here come the problems. As I said in the beginning most of them are stereotypical, so I can’t really find a favorite character from all of them. If it wasn’t for the plot twists, they would be really bland and would fall flat. On top of that, their dictionaries are pretty limited (mine too, but leave that for my profile’s comments), by repeating certain words and phrases over and over again every single episode. Annoying.
8.5/10

Plot:
Fairly simple, easy to follow, interesting plot twists and pretty enjoyable to watch. In the middle of the anime, some characters just disappeared, but I guess that we will find out what happened to them at some point. Other than that the plot is smoothly running and most episodes are fairly interesting.

8/10

Sound:
From the opening theme, to the ending theme every little bit of sound effect is pleasant for the ears. The commercial break sounds, the heavily distorted sounds of shooting, the sound of electricity when characters are on a spree, Barou’s awakening guitar/drums. The sound effects of this anime are clearly made to hype you up, to go outside and kick a football as hard as you can, to beat the person better than you, to finally finish your assignment, to do some actual hard work, or to go back to play some competitive games and give all your best.
10/10

Art:
Here, is where the anime fails. Comparing the art style of the manga and the one of the anime is like comparing Berserk manga to the latest adaptations. Throughout this review I have praised the anime for hyping me up, but just by looking at the animation and art style the hype lasts a couple of seconds. The sparks and colorful mist around players is so poorly made. I understand the reason behind them, but just seeing the poor quality really ruins their whole existence. The 3D is just as horrible and noticeable as most of other 3D animations in anime. On top of that, the art is really just made to be commercially successful. 8bit really did not try to put the soul of the manga in the adaptation. After all we want hollow emotionless white eyes and impactful shots, which we do receive, but the budget version of it.

6/10

I have skipped some unnecessary parts, such as voice actors and illogical moments, the reason being that I find them not that impactful on the whole anime ( they don’t kill the vibe or make things better).

Overall: 8
Don’t get me wrong here. The overall score is just the overall enjoyment and fulfillment after finishing the anime. For me a good anime is an anime, which can make a person change or understand new things, such as worldviews and mindsets. Blue lock made me play football again ( not for long, I guess), made me continue with my work and not just slack off. This is a temporarily feeling, but I love that it exists.

The reviews for this series have been quite polarising, and essentially you can separate based on one factor:

- Whether the viewer has ever played a sport competitively or not.

The drive for self-improvement, the need to win - Blue Lock as a series provides a multifaceted view of this idea via its main cast. If you have played a sport competitively (at any level really), then you'll be able to understand and empathise better with many of the characters. Unless you've experienced a competitive setting yourself, it'll be hard to really enjoy what makes each character tick and just write it off as unpalateable.

It really doesn't ... matter whether sports anime would "conceptually" make sense in real life either (see Kuroko no Basket, Hajime no Ippo, Haikyuu!, etc) because having anime as a medium itself allows for more flexibility for the entertainment of the viewers. It doesn't make sense for someone to tune into a sports anime just to make sure that everything is accurate to real world rules to a tee.

Personally, I like Blue Lock because it brings me nostalgia to those days and it's an easy watch that you don't have to think too deeply about. It's exciting, it's enjoyable seeing every character develop on both a "football" level and a personal level, and you really do end up waiting week-to-week in anticipation on what will happen next. In my opinion that's all you need in a series really.

It's fine if you find this series cringe, but having an inability to empathise with any of the characters just tells me you've never worked hard to try to be the best at something (which is fine, your life and all).

Imagine yourself as one of the professional Japanese football players on the national team, and they just returned home after an exhausting World Cup game against Croatia, which ended in a 1-1 (3-1 on penalties) win for Croatia. They're frustrated that they couldn't make it any further and ended up being eliminated before the quarter's finals yet again. They turn on their TV, and the anime being exhibited is one about football; the very first line they hear is from a character named Jinpachi Ego; he's basically saying that Japanese football sucks because they lack a good striker, and that is due to the Japanese ... being too unenthusiastic, lacking ego, or greater desire to score goals, and this is what prevents Japan from progressing in football; he also trash-talks Japanese football and its players in general. It comes out that this anime/manga is extremely popular and well-received in Japan. After thinking about the amount of time spent on training and preparation just for that day and moment—an opportunity that comes only in a span of 4 years—how would you feel?

That's the problem with Blue Lock: aside from being a complete disaster at everything it does, all it does is shit on and disrespect Japanese players, football, and footballers in general, especially the ones that are not strikers. Blue Lock just doesn't respect the concept of sport or competition at all.

Things that make a good sports anime/manga is how inspiring it can be, how connected you feel to the characters, how genuine it feels, and being able to see different perspectives and takes on that sport. Take Haikyuu as an example, a really good manga that helped boost volleyball popularity in Japan, inspiring people all over the world and inspiring people who have now become professional main leads for the national sports team. Then on the other side, there is Blue Lock, doing everything it can to go against it, to be different, unique, fun, creative, and to reinvent the whole genre by deconstructing all the themes and narrative tropes of this genre. That is what Blue Lock imagines itself to be on paper, but reality is far worse than that.

On top of having a gay subtext, something anyone can notice in this show is how it tries to appeal to popular things to make it sell. Like the bishounen, femboy-ish, ultra edgy looking characters in order to appeal to teenagers and fujoshis, the Battle-Royale concept, why not? is popular, right? I mean, Fortnite and all that shit, and of course the World Cup, like come on, the manga started its release right after the 2018 World Cup ended and the anime aired alongside the 2022 World Cup, so it's clear that Blue Lock is just a commercial attempt at success without any care for substance, fun, passion, creativity, or any form of artistic value, and on that they succeeded, so congrats, after all, this is what Blue Lock IS about.

A facility that allows three hundred strikers to compete against each other to "create football from zero", whatever the fuck that means, and create the best striker in the world in order to win the World Cup. The concept that Blue Lock has of a great striker is that of a spoiled child who doesn't want to pass the ball and only wants himself to score the goals. By defining narcissistic and egocentric behavior as a good thing in a sport, all it does is a detriment to the sport itself, but that is the philosophy of Blue Lock. Going through a basic level progression while the matches are played to decide who is going to be eliminated as you just pray for this torment to end.

The characters are constantly overreacting, delivering lines that don't match the tone of the situation or that are just blatantly stupid. The interactions are also lazy and poorly conceptualized; they constantly trash talk and give each other silly nicknames to show competitiveness. As the matches go on, the show develops their relationship, but that is also done in a very inorganic way. They all have some unique trait or ability that makes them useful in matches, and that is explored in the most superficial way possible. The show always feels the necessity to explain some plays through exposition; right after the play is made, a character will have a monologue where he explains exactly what you just saw, and the anime also makes use of visual explanation for that, so in case there is a toddler watching, they can also understand what just happened, thanks Blue Lock.

There is no referee, no penalty, no offsides, and no throw-in. There are around 3 fouls, free kicks, and corner kicks in total. A really flabbergasting and exceptional use of the football rules. The author also shows us his incredible knowledge of football by using the most basic football junior tactics and hammering the same three names everytime he wants to use a real player as an exemple—it's always Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Neymar, with Pelé being mentioned only once—names that only the real football fans will get to recognise.

The show presents us with terrible characters in order to have a pseudo-development later on; you can see that on a lot of MC, like Eren Yeager for example, it gives you a false impression of progress; a character who once was an absolute piece of shit and now it's tolerable feels like a good development, and that's the case with our great protagonist, Isagi Yoichi. The other characters are just as you would expect: caricatures and archetypes that you've seen a thousand times in other shows, just tools to help Isagi in his "journey" to become the best striker that plays alongside other strikers in a game with no rules inside a prison facility. The long, red-haired delicated character that relies on speed; the emotionless white-haired prodigy that learns to like the sport; a traitor who wants to win by exploitation of the rules because he sucks and he knows it but also regrets it and is forgiven later; a temperamental, loud blonde guy that is very egocentric but agrees on what others tell him to do; a femboy cringe lord that acts very silly and so on. No one really cares about who gets eliminated because none of the characters are interesting enough for anyone to give a fuck about them. The only one that has a little bit more emphasis than Isagi is Bachira, with his insanely cringe monster allegory.

The production on this anime is trash; after around episode 5, things just went downhill. Lapses of decent animation, super exaggerated moves that don't convey the technique of the supposed move correctly, poor use of CGI—they even use CGI on still frames that lasted more than 5 seconds on the screen—how lazy is that? Sure, the character designs are detailed, but that is an exigence coming from a manga that has supposedly detailed art and character design, and that, on top of the lack of great animators on the staff, doesn't help the animation fluidity at all. It's super repetitive; everything plays out the same, and they don't even try to do something differently. The direction is super uncreative; you don't get anything unique or interesting; it's always the same perspectives and the same angles of the characters in CGI chasing after the ball and stand still animation. The OST is very forgettable. Also, what the fuck is that additional time garbage that shit is not funny it's just painful to watch.

One may try to argue that Blue Lock is mindless fun and that it's not taking itself seriously, but that is not true given how edgy and over the top Blue Lock is. It's not a satire of sports manga, nor is it presented in an unpretentious way; it's the complete opposite. The only reason that Blue Lock may feel like that sometimes is because it is so unbelievably bad that you can't accept it for what it is without making up a reason for it.

If you really want a football anime, the only one I can recommend to you is Ao Ashi. It's not exceptional, but it's WAY better than this shit

Winter 2023 is by no means a great season for anime, but from the very beginning I had my eyes dead-set on reviewing two anime. They were Oniichan wa Oshimai and Mahou Kakumei. But something called Real Life™ got in my way, and instead of writing shit, I spent my free time lying in bed, catching up on desperately-needed sleep time, half-awake and half-dreaming about some giant-ass pumpkin patch. It was pumpkins as far as the eye can see, with the hills and the valleys and the far-off mountains all textured with delicate orange stripes. Well, fuck pumpkins, fuck sleep, and fuck real life. Who ... cares about anything else when you can watch Blue Lock? It’s objectively the best football anime of Fall 2022 and Winter 2023 and it’s pointless to even consider a 2nd place. So now to answer the all-important question for the readers of this review: What is this anime about?

Blue Lock starts when our power-of-teamwork guy Isagi passes the ball to his teammate instead of shooting for himself and his teammate misses. Isagi then starts pondering if teamwork is hella overrated, and before you know it he is whisked away to the wonderful world of Blue Lock, where the goal is not to work as a team, but by becoming the single best striker in the world. And how is our now-not-so-power-of-teamwork guy Isagi gonna do this? Well, first he has to win matches in teams of 11… and then win more matches in teams of 2-5, and if he succeeds he gets to play in a better team of 11… wait… something doesn’t seem quite right, let’s try something else.

Blue Lock starts when our not-actually-power-of-teamwork guy Isagi passes the ball to his teammate instead of shooting for himself and his teammate misses. Isagi then starts pondering if teamwork is hella overrated, and before you know it he is whisked away to the wonderful world of Blue Lock, where Isagi’s current understanding of “teamwork” is immediately thrown in the trash. Our reformed-power-of-teamwork Isagi, throughout the trials and hardships of Blue Lock, comes to realize that teamwork is not about passing the ball to his teammate in any situation, but instead knowing the strengths and weaknesses of each player and working with that, to generate “chemical reactions” that play to the strengths of each player… wait, timeout, hold on a second.

Isn’t this “chemical reaction” thing just the plain run-of-the-mill definition of teamwork?

When you look at Blue Lock more closely, it turns out not to be the “revolutionary approach” to football that it boasts itself as. Instead, Blue Lock’s goal is to explain very basic concepts of football in the most overcomplicated way possible to make it sound like something really cool. Like, what is “smelling a goal”? It sounds really cool, but when we translate it from Isagian to English it turns out to just be “coming up with a winning strategy”. What about “turning zero into one”? It’s just learning how to play in a team instead of individually. And what does “awakening” mean? Easy; it means “shounen shenanigans”. Concepts such as consistency and luck are overexplained in the most overexplanatory way possible that when you realize this, this show starts to be painful to watch. The “character development” is nothing but a contrived sense of progression that is randomly bullshitted by the author with the idea that “if you throw enough bullshit, some of them might not be seen as bullshit”. There’s simply nothing to be found.

Well, if the character development is nonexistent, then at least we can settle for just the characters themselves, right? Well, no, not really. Isagi is basically a reprinted shounen character who says things like “I have to get better” so often that he skips sleep to say it more. Bachira’s characterization is that he can dribble, he is cute, and he can be shipped with Isagi. Ego is a character who spouts off some random shit and also eats random shit. Chigiri has long legs and long hair. Raichi has spiky teeth and spiky hair. Nagi’s characterization is that he can do weird kicks, he is cute, and he can be shipped with Reo. They are pretty much just shounen characters, each with strange “superpowers” that no ordinary high-schooler could possibly have, constantly talking about winning and shit.

So what’s the point of Blue Lock? It fails at plot, fails at characters, fails at OST (it’s generic as shit). But there’s one thing it doesn’t fail at, and that is making cute, shippable characters. Take Bachira. His VA is talented and adds a considerable amount of nuance to Bachira’s dialogue. But what is this nuance used for? Better character exposition? Reflecting Bachira’s emotional state in a non-obvious way? These are forlorn hopes. The nuance’s sole intention is to make Bachira cuter and more shippable. Nagi’s backstory makes no sense: he only practiced for 6 months and is already a living god at technique. But the story’s intention is not realism; Nagi hence seems more mysterious, so he can be contrasted with Reo better, so they can be shipped together better. The whole purpose of Blue Lock is to ship cute boys together. At the time of writing (just after last episode) there are 3067 Blue Lock fanfictions on AO3. 2643 of them are categorized as M/M fics, of which 473 just so happen to be rated explicit. There are 778 Reo/Nagi fics, 382 Bachira/Isagi fics, 375 Isagi/Rin fics, and many more consisting of all sorts (and forms) of ships. Comparatively, Okabe/Kurisu from the fan-favorite Steins;Gate has only 178 fics to its name; that is less than the 225 Putin/Medvedev fics that exist somewhere on this site. So we can say, with certainty, that Blue Lock was invented to ship cute boys together. Maybe we can go further: Men’s sports manga was invented to ship cute boys together. Fuck it, let’s go even further. Men’s sports was invented to ship cute boys together. Men were invented to ship cute boys together? At this point I don’t know anymore. Perhaps I’ve been ridden to insanity over writing this review, juggling real life, and watching this show. Who knows.

So with all that said and done, let’s try this one last time.

Blue Lock starts when our cute shounen boy Isagi passes the ball to an irrelevant character and loses the game. The plot don’t matter, the details doesn’t matter, but Isagi becomes tired of his surroundings, and before you know it he is whisked away to the wonderful world of Blue Lock where he can meet other cute shounen boys for the audience to ship and scream random shounen stuff about self-improvement and winning that sounds really, really cool. As Isagi powerlevels, he can meet more cute boys and scream about more bullshit stuff, and the cycle continues until Isagi has all the qualities essential of the world’s #1 striker: know every cute boy on the planet, and be able to scream out the most overcomplicated form of every concept that ever exists. And if a story like that isn’t worth watching, I don’t know what is.

The beginning was very promising. The whole idea behind Project Blue Lock seemed interesting, though from a realistic point of view quite foolish and childish.

However my main gripe with this show was the pacing. During every match and without failure, every move and thought process is over-explained and over-analysed until all the momentum of the previous action gets lost. It's all build-up without peak, which in turn just leaves you frustrated and unfulfilled.

To make things worse, they just just had to add melodrama on top of it all. Why are these teenagers dramatically breaking up with each other, or in some cases with ... the monster inside of them? Why are they all having an existential crisis in the middle of the match? Even our main guy Isagi, cosigned with the one and only Ego as an Average Joe, dismantles and rebuilds himself every episode or so. This guy just took learn and adapt to a whole new level.

Also the damn vocabulary used in this anime makes me want to bite my fingers off from the second hand embarrassment. How can these guys talk about being a hero or a king, about creating "chemical reactions" together, about "devouring" each other and not just die from cringe?? Well I guess they're teenagers after all and well that's as good of an excuse as any for such behaviour.

Now, the animation was all over the place. Awkward still frames and rigid CGI on some parts, but fluid 2D and stunning visuals on others. The art definitely played a huge role in saving the day as it's quiet phenomenal. Character design is absolutely stunning and leaves nothing to complain about.

Lastly, Ego. This guy single-handedly carrying the title of the biggest bitch on this show. Every time he opens his damn mouth, I wonder how come he made it alive so far when he's just begging for a beating.

For a football anime, Blue Lock was more talking than ball kicking but well it had its fun moments which saved it from being an utter bore to watch.

This is my first time writing a review lol, so bear with me + this is all MY OPINION :)

To be honest, these other reviews calling blue lock trash are quite confusing and a bit tasteless. I mean compared to other sports anime, Blue lock takes a different approach and brings something new to the Table, like and anime that is based only on strikers is quite cool. Yeah some people may say oh why is it only focused on that, without watching the rest, but along the story we do see the importance of other positions on the team, so that is a ... new approach.

For something to be interesting it doesn't always have to be complex, sometimes simple and straightforward storylines like the one Blue lock has is all we need.


Regardless of its flaws or what people say, I am very much enjoying this, and this is coming from someone who plays sports (soccer included).

In conclusion Blue Lock is cool, so give it a try lol.

I saw 1 reviewer criticized negative reviews of this film because those people having 0 experience in "playing a sport at the highest level"? HAHAHAHA, I am a retired semi-pro E-sport player back in 2012-2016, and my role was something similar to a striker in Football.

And I can tell you that this anime is absolute dogshit for promoting selfish behavior in a sport, as I had a similar attitude of how to become the best in my game is being selfish but it's all wrong the more I play the game. I used to be somewhat of a genius in my game with ... 0 experience of playing the previous sequel of my game, but within 2 years I reached the top rank and had my name on the leaderboard of North America and South East Asia servers, which is super rare, as most pros took at least 5 years to get where they are.

The idea of having 1 star player to carry the whole team is simply trash and unrealistic to the point of annoying, as being a superstar means that you need to be able to shine alone but at the same time be able to push and help your teammates improve their games.

Back in my day, I also think that in order to climb up the leaderboard and make the name for myself, you should only focus on myself by improving my fundamental skills, and yes it is somewhat true but it only works when you are playing at a lower level. Once you reach a certain level, the skill gap between players is extremely tight, so you need each position to be always at their top form. The idea of putting a sole striker to dribble past 10 players and score goals is honestly an insult to any sports fans and to people who have experience in playing any team-based sports or esports.

Blue Lock has the corniest and cringiest dialogues I have ever seen in any Anime series, those lines simply have no meaning and too cliche. I get the idea of making all the characters look cold and cool, but it didn't work out the way it should.

TBH, don't waste your time watching this anime... The worst one I have ever watched.

It's not the best, it can't even be compared to the manga in many cases, but what this anime of kids kicking balls with abruptly high egos has achieved doesn't make any sense, the Blue Lock project is real.

To begin with, the soccer that is narrated here can be taken in many ways; impress you, disgust you or love it, but one thing here is true, this is fiction. All of this coupled with a dark aura (technically edgy. and it's awesome) makes the anime something unique, making a sport seen as "simple" (without analyzing it too much, since all sports have a lot of ... content) into something absurd. , but entertaining and fun. As the characters threaten each other with death for the simple fact of having lost the ball or because they are simply jerks, but each one is unique, thus having their own weapon, differentiating them from the rest (along with part of their attitude, aura and representative color and further).

Now I would like to talk more in depth about the series, setting aside the context and the amazing (and edgy) characters.

-FIRST, the animation... this causes a lot of commotion, it is true that it is not up to what it should have had, but some scenes are visually incredible, and the drawing almost never disappoints, to improve would be the use of cgi (for background characters or far shots) and still images with the ball moving or with sound effects or something that makes it appear that the image is moving.
-The first and second arc, the first and second selection... are quite good. The material is entertaining (the second half seemed like a video game to me, and I love it) and it makes new characters or characters that hadn't been seen before shine and become very fond of them, each one having their moment of prominence. Although they are little compared to what will come in future seasons (hehehe).
-And lastly... the amazing and mostly overlooked (by vast majority though it may not seem like it) amazing music and OST's. BLLK's OST's are incredible, they give a lot of emotion to the scenes and make you feel motivated, or scared, like many of Rin's OST's, causing a feeling of danger to the viewer. And then, that it is not important in the reviews, the Openings and Endings. To start with, the 2 Op and Ed have great animation and amazing music, even though the first Op is controversial because it doesn't reflect much of BLLK (the lyrics do it perfectly, but we're not Japanese and we understand almost nothing or nothing), and then there is the madness of the second Op, Judgment, with a quite innovative and new artistic section, as well as a very good song by the group ASH DA HERO.

Beyond this there is not much more to say about Blue Lock, the truly good is yet to come and we are not prepared for it, luckily everything manages to live up to it.
If you have come this far, I thank you and I hope you support my review, I wish you a great day.
(I don't speak English very well, so much of this review has been done with a translator, I hope I didn't mess it up and that your eyes didn't hurt from reading some mistake, once again I say goodbye, thanks for reading).

The amount of haters I see is actually crazy, as somoene who read and is caught up with the manga I can confidently say that blue lock is going to be one of the most enterntaining shit ever. Now, I myself is not a football fan which is probably a good thing when it comes to blue lock. as we all know blue lock is an unrealistic potrayal of football and to be honest I'm quite happy that it is because im not just about to watch an anime for it to just show people kicking balls, thatd just be so boring. As a ... football ANIME, it very much delivers because again its an anime. anime isn't medium known for its realism but theres certainly realisitc anime out where however, expecting a battle shounen anime to have realism in terms of football is just plain stupid. A lot of people say the dialogue is cringe because it doesnt fit in the genre of football, but like I said it isn't really real life football its anime football. So if you're somoene who likes battle shounen, or just sports ANIME then you should definitely give blue lock a try it wont disapoint. if you have more spare time try reading the manga since its a lot more consistent, and every chapter of it is enterntaining and wont bore you.

Blue Lock is not a sports anime. Blue Lock is a sports-flavored action show that uses its “sport” to peddle absolutely backwards ideas that make no sense. I am convinced that the author of Blue Lock is an alien who came to Earth and only learned about both soccer and human society by watching Japan's losing games.

The premise of Blue Lock is that a national soccer training program is instated in which a bunch of the nation's best young male soccer players are trapped inside a facility that treats them like prisoners, withholding basic rights and amenities unless they prove that they’re better than everyone ... else at soccer by trusting no one and prioritizing themselves rather than working as a team. Players slowly get eliminated until only the best remains, and if you get eliminated, you are banned from soccer forever and your career is over.

That is batshit insane. It sounds like an absolute nightmare of a setting that can only be used to tell a horror story satirizing certain philosophical and political ideologies. But somehow, it's not; it's presented as The Way To Win Soccer. But let's put a pin in that. First, let's look at this absolute inane setting for a sports anime and ask the obvious question: why?

Well you see, it's because Big Soccer is convinced that the reason Japan hasn't won the world cup is because everyone is too focused on teamwork when what they really need is the best striker ever who only cares about his own glory and winning, because the striker is the most important role and the team exists to back him. The purpose of this program is to simultaneously train Japan's best striker and weed out all of the other people who are not Japan's best striker and as such are effectively worthless.

This is accomplished by having all of the characters act as strikers and run an internal competition of who can score the most goals individually, because the real winners aren’t those on the winning team, but those who scored the most goals out of their team, regardless of if your team won or not. They’re motivated to work against their teammates to score more individual goals by rewarding those goals with privileges such as nutritious food, a bed to sleep on, and contact with your family. The goal isn't really to get better at playing soccer (because in order to do that you need to see your teammates as equals), but rather to get better at being the best striker alone by yourself, because then the rest of the team will just have to follow your lead. Teamwork makes the dream work but only when the team are not equals and act under the guidance of the singular best guy. Yes, this plan is how you win soccer and it’s going to train the single guy who will single handedly win the world cup for Japan.

Now, I may have spent my high school years in the school's auditorium rather than on the field, but even I know that not only is that not how soccer works, but the game would fall apart if people tried to play it that way. The author really said "you know that team sport where the entire point is working as a team and that's always how it has been and there are eleven players who all have different jobs to do for a reason? Actually it's a load of bullshit and the striker is the only important role and it always has been, so he should do whatever he wants forever and all of the other roles are for losers" This makes no sense if you think about it for more than three seconds. The goal of soccer in Blue Lock is not to win soccer—not really. It’s to be better than other people. And that is an insane goal to have in your show about a team sport.

Now it's time to take that pin out. While the man in charge of this program is presented in a creepy manner, he is also presented as being right. The show has such a grim, mean, violent tone, but rather than playing it for horror and using it to satirize the ideas it presents (such as our society placing one's worth only on their ability to achieve, how the people in power got there by throwing other people under the bus, and how it claims the only reason you have failed is because you didn’t work hard enough), it presents this excessively heavy tone of pain and suffering as beneficial and character-building.

You were put in an unfair situation that it would have been near-impossible to escape from because you were given an incredibly short amount of time? Well that’s your fault! Here are all of the ways you could have escaped from it but didn't—broken down in detail to show that I am right—and the reason you failed is because you didn't work hard enough, so your entire career is over. You are also the one character who was criticizing my ideas because you, as a sane normal soccer player, value teamwork. I am the one who knows how to actually win soccer, and the next 23 episodes are all going to be people getting better at soccer using my backwards, anti-teamwork, hard-work-fallacy endorsing ideas.

I think my least favorite example of this deeply flawed and illogical ideology is the fact that, as it is presented, the stronger players are given better living conditions, training facilities, and food, and the weaker players are told that if they want to live in those same comfortable conditions, they have to work hard to achieve them. This is bullshit, because in reality, giving the strong players better conditions just makes them stronger, and giving the weaker players worse conditions just makes them worse. It’s actually more complicated than that but I don’t want to mark this review as a spoiler. All that matters is that Blue Lock endorses this idea. The weak players are told they just have to work hard to advance upward so they can live in good conditions, as if the truth of that situation wouldn’t lead to the lack of those good conditions making it impossible to advance. Hmmm…I wonder what this reminds you of?

Just keep pulling on those cleat laces, I guess—just like one of the best strikers in the world who rose out of poverty just by working really hard at soccer!

I don’t even buy the yaoibait team camaraderie it’s trying push so it can masquerade as a sports anime; the blue lock program discourages teamwork by rewarding the players who score the most goals with access to basic rights, and it is making them all work toward the goal of being the singular person to graduate the program with their career still intact because they were better than every other player including all of their previous teammates. I do not buy a friendship formed by encouraging a fellow player to overcome his career ending injury when his motivation for overcoming it is “so I can be better than everyone else.”

I can’t believe in any of these friendships, the inspiring kind where they encourage each other not to give up and celebrate as a team when they win, when this show also includes members of the team double-crossing each other for their own individual goals—which the program encourages because they think soccer is best won when led by a striker who prioritizes his glory over all else. The lunatic running this program explicitly says that one’s individual goals are all that matters, and he as such rewards the teammate that betrayed them. The characters overcome this struggle not by protesting the unfair system, but just by working harder. Then the episode ends with them talking about how awesome it is to live in fear because it makes them stronger.

The blue lock institute aims to breed fear in the hearts of its players—fear of having their lives ruined because they failed at their career—with the man in charge very explicitly saying that their players are failing because they were never taught to associate success with survival, so blue lock is here to reeducate them. And the players proudly say that they are glad they operate under fear because it leads them to success. According to Blue Lock, it is a good thing to live in fear of your own survival because it is the only true motivator to succeed, and that’s terrifying.

Early on in the show, the question is asked: “is it worth it to ruin the lives of 299 athletes just for the sake of one?”

The response?:

“Ruin their lives? Why shouldn’t we? It’s what we need to move forward!”

And that, I think, sums up the inherent flaw that is Blue Lock’s design.

Blue Lock is a highly inaccurate and laughable portrayal of soccer used to push the idea that in this messed up world, one should only think about themself and never care for others, because that's the only way to accomplish your goals, and if you cannot do it then the only explanation is that you did not work hard enough. And living like this is good, because it makes you stronger. The sheer horror of the blue lock program would be perfect for criticizing the individualist mindset, but rather it drives it home as true.

But the reality is that it isn’t true in the slightest. Historically, every time society has operated under this logic, it has failed. The earliest sign of civilization is a healed femur.

The author of Blue Lock not only doesn't know how soccer works, but he doesn't know how the world works either.

The plot is dumb, the characters and dialogue are over the top and awkward, and the football isn't actually football.

Basically, this show is mad cringe, and that's what makes it so great.

If you came in here looking for thought provoking narratives, or interesting and dynamic character arcs, or even just actual Football then it fails in all aspects.

However, if you're an avid enjoyer of fun like I am then this show is a very good time.
The energy this show gives off is just great, from the overdramatic character monologues to the unapologetically cringe dialogue, it fits the setting and plot to a T.
(Side note: If ... your main issue is that the plot is cringe and stupid, the premise is literally Football Squid Game.)

The animation, top notch. (The CG is not that bad, I've seen worse)
The OST, very OK, I think it's fine.
Characters? Hit and miss, while pretty one note and tropey, they are still a fun cast to watch.
The voice acting? Pretty good, I especially love Hiroshi Kamiya's portrayal of Ego. He's great.
Is it hype? Absolutely. When the ball goes in the net, my dopamine goes crazy.

Bottom line, this show doesn't try to be believable, or fit in with the standards that you might generally find with most sports shows. It doesn't care how cringe or awkward it comes off as. It's just a fun, fresh take on an otherwise stale genre.

Look, I keep hearing about how Blue Lock isn't supposed to be inspirational, realistic, or like football at all.

Fine. But what is it supposed to be? If you want to drop the tried-and-true formula of friendship, teamwork and positivity for something new, I'm all for it. But what IS that something new? Teenagers being jerks to each other and staking their careers on a maniacal guy's training program? Point is: I'm not really sure how this thing's supposed to bring me enjoyment.

Let's get into some specifics: The characters. Despite how the show seem to pride itself on subverting sport anime tropes, its protagonist is ... your typical loud, brash idiot who starts off with very mediocre physique and technique but a very useful ability. In this case, it's his ability to visualise the field and foresee moves. This is all fine and all, but because the setting of the story has all but destroyed football as a concept for 'subversion', the protagonists can't use actual theory and gameplan to overcome opponents the way people in Ao Ashi, or Haikyuu, or Ace of Diamond does it. Instead, Isagi simply 'smells' out goals, while his talented friend Bachira listens to 'the monster in his head'. Fantastic.

The execution of the story also got on my nerves. This is a very subjective thing so I'll just list out my issues here: Overuse of metaphors. These guys cannot stop talking about weapons and formulas and chemical reactions and it's starting to annoy me, especially with the lack of concrete details. I'm not looking at sports anime to because a master strategist at football, but if they're going to ramble, I'd appreciate it if they make it actually informative instead of useless vague monologues. This hyperfixation on 'my weapon' is annoying as hell, because it leads to some truly dumb moments such as how Isagi, despite apparently being able to learn the footwork to get behind an opponent in seconds, didn't bother to try learning it because he was so fixated on doing stuff to 'his weapon'.

Speaking of metaphors, I'm not a fan of how the things in their mind are literally drawn out: I don't need to see literal chains to understand Chigiri's struggle, nor do I need to see a broken and battered court reminiscent of a battlefield just because some character treats this like combat.

Some of the characters are truly insufferable. Isagi perpetually sounds like he's on the verge of crying when he's trying hard. Most of the most talented guys are needlessly rude and intent on shoving the MC's uselessness in his face. And people like Kuon act like realising 'being selfish is the key to survive in blue lock' means they've discovered the secrets to the universe. Then there's the two Wanimas...I mean, these annoyances (Isagi excluded) are few and far between, but when they do show up, they make sure they take up a large portion of the screentime. Not a single event can happen in-game without the Wanimas cackling in the most obnoxious way possible.

Good things: some of the characters are pretty fun. The animation is solid, especially when it showcases some of the more talented player's technique. I love the animation of Bachira's footwork and Nagi's control.

every episode: puzzle pieces as symbolism fly off the head of characters 10 times an episode and it must be shown for our audiences to understand that the characters are 'putting the pieces together'

every episode: each 'soccer game' needs to take up 5+ episodes because within 30 minutes the time stops and internal monologue must occur 50 times in one episode

every episode: the characters evolve like pokemon and shock everyone else like shonen characters developing new abilities that make them stronger

every episode: the boys must say they are 'eating each other' out in a normal way because that means plot is developing

“What is the missing piece to complete this puzzle ?” -Isagi Yoichi
The fookin animation and budget for any scenes that do-not-lead-to-a-goal you dumb c***
I think the easiest way I can define the problem and make a TLDR is with this,
it feels like that blue lock is more of a SCORE them GOALS anime than a Football anime.

Make no mistake, Blue lock is truly the only anime that comes even close to the legendary status of Haikyuu season 3 but the real frustration and gripe that I have with this show are that it falls just short because of how many corners are cut from ... the animation on off the ball moments and any other moments unrelated to scoring, Can one forgive this bad animation as long as they have Good music, Well-drawn art, Amazing VA, Good plot, and real hype with good animation on high stakes moments?

I know the answer for many is a resounding yes, but seriously the amount of time the hype was under shadowed by janky movements, speed lines-based animation, and just a little bit of VFX where the real sakuga must have gone will leave you cuckolded.

Now I know that animating a football show is hard, and there are some great scenes in the blue lock but most of the animation and art hits only when someone is about to score a goal, ao ashi which was another football anime, we see the game for as it is, players, moving in the frame as a response to the ball, great passes, and pre positionings, actual bird's eye view at certain points. and the thing is, the animation overall was better in Blue lock than in Ao ashi, but,

The distribution of the animation budget is completely fucked.

The person who is about to score IS THE ONLY FOCUS almost 90% of the time, there are very few frames in the blue lock game that have more than 3 characters in them, so we only see a portion of the pie all the time. Every sprint, pass, or defense maneuver is animated with either terrible CGI or just uses still frames or default running animation for it.

Cmon guys, the football I love is not just about scoring, It is the most important factor yes, but not the most important variable.

Plot 9/10
As I said Blue lock from the get-go, had immense potential, but only as a sports-based anime. It Is NOT a real football anime. Though I will admit they took out (very arguably but sadly true) the best aspect of football which is the striker, dramatized it, by making the main character be actually good at his game but just lacking the final piece in most games. added real stakes to it by having a battle royale kind of formula where each loss has real and sometimes permanent consequences, and still manage to have many colorful side characters who arent just plot devices but real threats and competitors to our main Protag who nearly always steal the cake from him. Some of my most memorable moments and high-octane goosebumps have been thanks to blue lock and the final few episodes with isagi vs top 3 were probably the only time a sports anime made me actively grin from ear to ear. It is a flawless combination of tales of passion, talent, hard work, and the concept of winning and losing.

Characters 9/10
Many memorable and passionate young players each have a talent in them that differentiate them from dreamers and makes them achievers who are ready to put their trust, experience and even friendship on the line to achieve what they want, each character is quirky in their own way and one would easily love their interaction during blue lock additional time. Some of the characters are quite animyfied and do break the realm of realism at times (the brothers in one match). It is nice to see the friendship blossom even in the midst of cutthroat competition and rivalry and I love most off-match moments as well which have additional character depth moments. The matches themselves are still able to add meaning to quirks rather than have them become irrelevant.

Sound and VA 10/10
Amazing sound and OST some of which went instantly to my playlists, so many of the scenes are transformed so well due to the absolute banger of goosebumps and hype-inducing soundtrack accompanied by great voice acting, you would feel like rewatching just those scenes over and over, just like that potato chip scene from death note. Most monologues which are frankly for Animation budget saving are delivered so well that you can be forgiven to take those scenes as great ones even though not much might actually be going on in the screen, THe VA and sound team definitely deserve some awards for this, THe OP and ED are all bangers as well.

Art and Animation 6/10
The art of Blue lock is great and unique and some scenes which depict the aura of the players are well drawn, the animation however the Achilles heel of this anime and I have already mentioned a lot about it above so lets just leave it at that.

This is an absolute must-watch for everyone, Though it would be preferable that you treat it as a regular sport-inspired show rather than a football anime, that would let you enjoy it very thoroughly.