The truth is I fell in love with Blue Lock from the very first episode and the reason is simple - the concept. Blue Lock is really interesting because it's not about another sports club on the brink of disbanding that suddenly gets a new member and reaches the nationals all of a sudden. This formula works, and we've seen plenty of sports manga and anime apply it right, but just the fact that we get a sports anime, a sports shonen on top of that, that is not focused on a school club is a breath of fresh air. Blue Lock focuses on a group of 300 high school students that are invited to participate in a program where they will train in a facility aiming to become the best striker in Japan. All 300 of the players are forwards and this creates a very interesting dynamic you won't be expecting.
Probably my favourite part about Blue Lock is all the different types of football matches they employ in the anime. In the first episode you get a game of catch with a football. Then the 1st selection has traditional 11v11 matches but none of these players have been used to any position other than forwards, so seeing them fill the gaps and start rotating in the middle of the games is really interesting. Later in the show you see 2v2, 3v3, 4v4 and 5v5 matches, which is also a nice change of pace.
In a tactical aspect Blue Lock is also very interesting. Every character has a different "weapon". Be it jumping really high, running really fast, shooting from mid range and so on. Seeing these characters employ these weapons in the best possible scenarios, the so called "formulas", and evolving their weapons and becoming better players throughout the season is really nice.
Blue Lock has a lot of different characters. Some you'll come to like, others not so much, but the cast is really big and there are all sorts of different personalities. Many of these characters have their own backstory brought up and you start feeling for them. Some join the program because they want to have fame, others want to be the very best and some just want to have fun. That's why when some characters get eliminated from the program you're bound to feel for them. The character designs are also really unique and it's very easy to distinguis and remember all the characters.
If I had to point out the few problems I've had with Blue Lock it's pretty simple:
- the animation is quite lackluster. It's not bad by any means but it's pretty inconsistent and makes use of a lot of CGI;
- there are a lot of monologues throughout the matches, these are meant to explain all the tactics and strategies the players use. But sometimes there's a lot of down time during the matches with these monologues. They work better in manga format but in anime format it's not as good;
- finally there are the metaphors. This is something that started to bother me more so towards the second half of the show. It's not a deal breaker, but there are a lot of metaphors like the players having monsters inside of them, which I think is referring to their desire to become the best in football, or when Isagi deconstructs and then reconstructs himself with puzzle pieces, learning something new about himself or his opponents, or anytime they say "devour" in this anime that kind of pisses me off. Like I said, it's not a deal breaker at all, but sometimes it does bother me and I would just prefer that they would tone it down a little.
All in all I really like Blue Lock a lot, I would say it's one of my favourite sports anime (not that I've watched many). At one point this was a 10/10 for me but a few things here and there made me lower the score to a 9. I still think the anime is amazing and is imo a must watch for any sports anime fan.
