Reviews

Mar 26, 2023
Well-writtenWell-written
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
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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