TV Review for "Blue Lock" - S1E1 - "Dream"
Isagi's inner competitive spirit above.
Hey guys, let me just start off by saying that I have no knowledge whatsoever on the sport of soccer, or football as it's called outside the US. Also, I've never watched a sports anime before. I know there's a super popular basketball one (or volleyball? I know it's one with a large ball and a net) but mostly I've stuck to sci-fi, fantasy, more supernatural stuff.
Anyway, with that out of the way -- Blue Lock is brought to audience by Eight Bit studio that has apparently done quite a bunch of pretty recent stuff. All of which I've never heard of, which probably makes me some kind of anime noob. As a kid I watched a lot of anime with my cousins in the Philippines or on either Cartoon Network's Toonami, Adultswim, or Kid's WB, stuff like:
Pokemon
Dragonball
Dragonball Z
Dragonball GT
Yu Yu Hakusho
Rurouni Kenshin
Outlaw Star
Cowboy Bebop
Samurai Champloo
Psycho Pass
Ghost in the Shell
Shaman King
Yu-Gi-Oh!
Metabots
Death Note
Code Geass
Baccano!
Full Metal Alchemist Original & Brotherhood
.hack//Sign
Sword Art Online
Mobile Fighter G Gundam
This is a rather small list of series but hopefully that illustrates the sheer scope of how massive the anime world is, I didn't even list movies up there.
So -- again, anyway, Blue Lock is about Japanese high-school soccer player Isagi and his admittance into the "Blue Lock" program that pits him against Japan's best soccer players for a chance to be striker for the national team and hopefully earn Japan its first World Cup.
Why did I check out the first episode? I heard it was a Machiavellian story about a Japanese high-school soccer player who considers embracing his competitive spirit/"inner darkness" to achieve his dream of being the number-one striker for Japan's national soccer team. The message I saw literally read something along the lines of -- "what if that evil/fake nice-guy main character from Death Note, Kira, wanted to be a soccer champion?"
But as a reminder, Blue Lock is far from the supernatural murder drama of Death Note. There's no demonic death gods or book that kills people by writing their names it -- this is just crazy ambitious high-school athletes competing for a chance to jump into the pros straight from high school through an experimental program.
I like how the show's pilot shows the conflict between juxtaposing Japan's more collectivist culture against the history of individualist-mindset necessary to excel in sports. Isagi's a great representation of that because on the outside he's a very polite shy guy but deep down there's an obsessive competitive spirit that wants to not just win but dominate at the sport that he loves.
SPOILERS -- > In the screenshot above, it is due to him rejecting his competitive spirit and succumbing to the shyer aspects of his personality that makes him pass the ball at a critical moment during a high school game instead of taking the shot. Due to this moment of conflicted generosity, his teammate happily accepts the ball but fails to score resulting in them being disqualified from the finals that year. This decision to be a team player haunts him because deep down he doesn't want to be part of a great team but to be a number-one player who can decide whether or not a team is great.
Animation-wise, it really reminds me of Attack On Titan back when it was done by Wit studio, due to the sequences of highly-detailed action, overall-average quality for distant shots, and then slideshows or action reels of incredible quality.
There's this funny thing my family noticed where they say people cover their mouths or turn their backs a lot in anime, and they wondered if that made animating dialogue easier. I'm not sure if that's the case, but I have seen that from time to time.
At first I wasn't sure if Isagi was a character I could follow throughout an entire show but thankfully as I proceeded more through the episode, he showed a lot more emotional range. In the screenshot above he's crying in front of elementary kids near a canal because of all the regret he feels for not taking the shot. But it's not the extreme sadness this main character feels ...
... It's also the rage he displays, sometimes animalistic, other times almost cold calculating savagery like a heartless machine. Isagi might have what it takes to win and even be the best but it's going to require him sacrificing parts of himself that he may have been raised to cherish, or taught to cherish by society.
But Isagi's not alone in his pursuit of greatness, the BLUE LOCK program has assembled Japan's best high school boy soccer players ...
... So there will be hopefully a wide range of characters for Isagi to confront, befriend, defeat, or even get betrayed by.
So far, some of the other character designs look cool or just plain outlandishly weird. Check out those twin psychos above -- not even sure how to describe those eyes. Also, one has almost no eyebrows while the other has curly ones. How the hell does that work?
I've gone over the emotional drama of the show but there's quite a lot of decent action as well. Never been a soccer fan in the past but watching this might peak my interest just a little bit -- due to how information kind of sneaks its way into your brain through the entertainment you repeatedly expose yourself to.
Also they really go all out to show just how much it hurts to get hit with a soccer ball, just face-crushing instances of people getting smashed by that zebra sphere of pain.
Also, here's a list of screenshots from the outro which wasn't half bad. I'm guessing these are the other important main and supporting characters and hopefully the series does a good job developing them all.
If you have the time, look up Blue Lock and see if it strikes your interest!
Here's some trailers of the show below!
Official Trailer from Crunchyroll below
Season 1 Anime Opening Below
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