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May 13, 2022
Excellent art and storytelling. Commits 100% to its genre and knocks it out of the park.
The mangaka is crushing it with the wit, jokes, dialogue, characters, story progression, action, use of panels, visual perspective and most of all the art is crazy good. Not even the chapter title escapes his level of attention to detail, the masterful control of the reader’s attention and the way he builds up a story on top of the previous chapter is fantastic. There are no wasted panels, throw away pages or cheap regurgitated shots. The characters are alive and everything about them ties up so well with how
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the story is progressing so far. I don’t know where this thing is going but it’s one of the most exciting piece of work I’ve seen this year and I cannot wait to find out what its going to do next.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Aug 9, 2021
Sports manga's usually have those self-centered characters, who throughout the series attains self-awareness and discovers the value of his team mates and of team work. This manga is unique because it moves to the opposite spectrum, in that selfishness and egoism is the key to being the best striker in football. However, read fast and you might miss an important distinction.
Egoism used interchangeably with egotism originates from the same Latin word for "I" but have distinct uses in that 'egoism' is introspective and in acknowledging that it is natural to love oneself, develops a behavior based on its value system of self-interest whereas 'egotism'
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is a display of arrogance and conceit based on the illusion of completeness. Jinpachi Ego, the head coach and architect of Blue Lock is looking for a versatile striker who has the ability and confidence to pull off consistently outstanding plays in a team that exists to support him. Someone who won't be timid and can resist their tendency of confining themselves to a specific role to show deference to their members and their predetermined positions. Someone bold and unafraid of further developing their other potential and expanding their role for their team. Someone who won't let collectivism take precedence; a striker who can recalibrate their priorities, multiply the team's potential and focus on winning. The national team has repeatedly failed to win the world cup and it is clear that something is not working. The sole female manager Anri Teieri's biting forecast and introduction of Jinpachi Ego in a meeting with the association is an intervention to change the course of their prospect with a new strategy. It isn't about 1 person, at the extreme end of the spectrum in their selfishness and greed for being the best, playing against what is essentially 23 opponents. There's a reason candidates competing for 1 position is made to team up with each other and assigned different positions. Between collectivism and individualism is a space where the possible answer lies.
Ego uses an arbitrary set of standards to identify 300 under 18 high school football players, locks them in a dedicated sports training facillity and thrusts them in a culling game that will ultimately reveal the missing piece to complete Japan's transition into the strongest powerhouse in football. The mangaka brings up a fictional football player’s name with some real greats, Cantona's seagulls metaphor from a press conference for his two-week prison sentence due to assault and a shortened quote from Pele which revealed in its entirety echoes the author's basis for his premise.
Pele's full quote: “A lot of people, when a guy scores a lot of goals, think, 'He's a great player', because a goal is very important, but a great player is a player who can do everything on the field. He can do assists, encourage his colleagues, give them confidence to go forward. It is someone who, when a team does not do well, becomes one of the leaders.”
Pacing was fast and it doesn't take a lot of time for the characters to realize and address the situation they're in. Its still football so there are still aspects of it that exists here and can't be done without like team work. Self-motivation, self-improvement, quotas, incentives, betrayal, anxiety, stress and fear were played up. Its not perfect though, there's the usual characters and backstory, character development was weak, cliches abound, the dialogue occasionally lacks cohesion and tends to be exaggerated or corny, no exciting extended rallies so far, points easily rack up, there were 25 teams from B to Z but almost all the characters from the first 5 team seem overpowered from the get-go, its possibly why there's minimal coaching from Ego and Anri was needlessly objectified. Nonetheless, Yuusuke Nomura's art was consistently outstanding. Multiple points of view were used, every panel is interesting and occasionally baits fujoshis, characters were distinct and well-proportioned, their intensity jumps off the page, action packed scenes were clear, and matches intense and full of impact.
Its still a fun read but I gave it a 7/10 because there's just something about characters that start from level zero, who struggle possibly alone or with someone else, confronts their limitations and weaknesses, intimidated but faces daunting seemingly unbeatable opponents, stumbles and repeatedly gets back up or gets diverted from the path yet finds their way back perhaps after an opportune encounter. There's tension and uncertainty maybe even some frustration and sobering realizations. Its still early to say and I might be wrong but I thought I'd write a review since my initial impression was entirely different from this one and it took me 3 readings of the first chapter to get a grasp of what seemed to be a wacky premise.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Apr 1, 2021
The story begins with a panoramic view of the coastal town of Kurozu-cho and immediately, the art draws you in and sets a somber disturbing tone that effectively delivers the horrifying events that ensue through the eyes of Kirie Goshima. To Shuichi Saito, Kirie’s boyfriend who attends high school in a neighboring town, there is something unnatural about the place and that they should leave at once before they get caught up in it.
This manga isn’t about opening doors that grate ominously or abandoned buildings with a sinister past. There are no chairs that move by itself, no sighting of ghouls nor of
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dolls inhabited by evil spirits. It’s the inconsequential town itself and its inhabitants drawn to actually appear their age, who inexplicably become obsessed and consumed with the spiral. Its disconcerting, the way the townsfolk adjusts with ease to the hair raising events, how they arrogantly justify their actions and how Shuichi is the only one who reacts appropriately aside from the victims prior to their demise even though Kirie experiences it herself. Unfortunately, none of the characters have any technology or gift in dealing with the supernatural for a satisfying resolution and so like them, we get to thoroughly experience and be seized by the disturbing imagination drawn with painstaking detail and expression of one Junji Ito.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Nov 8, 2020
This was such an emotionally draining piece of work without respite for the reader or its characters. It is overly dramatic and unable to stop itself from dangling doubt in whether the protagonists are blood related while the female lead deals with her trauma and her high school classmates who are out for blood. It was notable that Masamune, a convenient character that handles all the leg work, head scratching, eye-straining, financially depleting and strenuous legal affairs that happens in the background, was used to steer clear of the logic that could've added something..anything to this series. Still, all of the characters feel like one
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dimensional half-baked pawns in a nauseating mediocre shoujo manga.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Apr 3, 2020
Preliminary review after drop on ep 10/26:
The dialogue and story were the weakest part followed by the music. Pacing and humor was odd, transitions were jarring, flashbacks were mishandled and it doesn't know how to handle multiple characters during a fight scene. World building was weak, there wasn't any explanation made for the skills and reasoning for why things happen as they do. It sometimes rushes to catch up explaining why some things occur and feels poorly conceptualized. The demons in the story could've been effectively menacing if only they used more mystery and gore. I couldn't empathize or care for the characters enough to
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be affected by each and everyone of them even with the back stories portrayed.
On the other hand, animation was really good especially in shots where a character was moving smoothly down a mountain path, depiction of flame under a pot, rapidly slicing through multiple objects, water flowing from the blade or when the screen quickly moves through alleyways and in the small elements here and there but sometimes it feels overused. There are old anime out there with not enough of a budget in animation as this but is able to deliver a dose so potent it manages to be mind-blowingly good.
This anime missed its mark and manages to be bland amidst the good animation.
Final review after continuing and reaching ep 26/26:
I admit I was swayed by some of the reviews but because the animation was quite good I just had to go back and see for myself.
The animation gets even better: the scene where a kagura dance is performed, a tree falling on the river followed by water getting displaced, looking at leaves on the trees from the forest floor in the evening, transitions in a world of relativity, fight scenes, and a moving train were particularly outstanding.
The music, transitions and flashbacks have improved too especially when they reach Mount Natagumo at episode 15. Humor is still odd but thankfully tolerable at times. The pacing has gotten decent although scenes in the final episodes have been extended. The dialogue has improved slightly but I find myself fast forwarding as some scenes were bland or repetitive. World building and story telling had so many missed opportunities in turning Kimetsu no Yaiba one of the best anime's this year.
I still couldn't care enough for the characters; the only part where this anime almost had depth was when Tanjiro would empathize with the demons he's slayed or fought. This story had so much potential and was almost lukewarm and forgettable until the splendid animation by ufotable dragged it by its neck towards being watchable.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jan 31, 2019
This manga revolves around a male protagonist who is indecisive, self-defeating, with a hero syndrome, prone to daydreaming and boundless prattle, with shallow romantic sentiment driven by lust and a female protagonist who plays dumb and has little self-awareness in 2/3’s of the manga.
Art was consistently good, details and background drawn well although some female characters shared the same face. Chapters continued off from a different viewpoint and didn’t feel too redundant. Dialogue, majority of the plot and pacing of the story were forced, overdramatic, not believable, and just kept dragging endlessly in circles and nowhere in particular. There’s a lot of fan service
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and ecchi scenes that eventually fails to be entertaining. Thinking or even believing that this manga is filled with romance is a misconception. Comedy was nowhere to be found, I haven’t laughed once.
Side characters were treated with indifference and degrades its subject. The way some of the female characters were portrayed in this manga was crude and creepy. Such as a 16 year old who was made to pose seductively in a magazine to promote a school drama club that was barely shown in the entirety of the manga and art was used twice as an excuse for nudity of 16 year olds. On the other hand, some of the male students in the beginning were portrayed as predatory made evident by them creating a fake pageant to record female students changing infront of a hidden camera then later on a fake photoshoot to target the school’s idol. New characters were introduced here and there for no apparent reason and just as quickly retired from the story. The beginnings of the male portagonist’s definite character development only showed up at chapter 77 then proceeded undetected.
I’s is an exercise in telling a shallow story in a complicated way. The author seems unwilling to tell a story in a straightforward manner and drowns the relationship in a series of uninspired disturbances dragging the story like a dead body. It was overall an unrewarding read.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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