I am not a soccer fan. I am not a sports fan. The only thing that’s even remotely like a sport that I follow is Battlebots, and even then, there aren’t a lot of opportunities to go and watch it here in the Midwest aside from the Discovery Channel.
But apparently everybody’s loving this new soccer manga called Blue Lock. And, since I found a copy of Volume One at my local library, I figured why not?
High school soccer forward Yoichi Isagi is second-guessing himself and lamenting the “loss of his dream” after a single action leads to his team’s loss in his final high school soccer game. But then a letter is sent out to not only him, but also 299 other high school forwards, all inviting them into a secret project.
Yep: In this world, apparently the game of soccer is treated with all the importance of global warfare.
Heading up this operation (at least on the day-to-day teaching side) is eccentric coach Junpei Ego. And, let me tell you: this guy is weird. His limbs and neck seem to be drawn much longer than those of the properly-proportioned other characters, and his eyes have deep circles underneath them. It all comes off as very creepy and alien, reminding me heavily of L from Death Note. When he opens his mouth, I think we can see individual teeth like in a Slasher Smile.
To say nothing of his personality.
In a harsh inversion of the stock sports story tropes about teamwork being the key to winning it all, Ego legitimately believes that there is a correlation between egotism and soccer skills. So his master plan is to weed out the 300 students until only one remains: the one with the sheer self-important egotism and drive to single-handedly be the best that will produce Japan’s ultimate striker.
You can tell that the author Mineyuki Kuneshiro has written for psychological horror strategy death game manga before, because that’s right where the story winds up going.
Which is cool and all, but there are a lot of reasons why I did not particularly enjoy Blue Lock.
As I said, I am not a soccer fan, so I got none of the references and have no idea what all the different soccer terms and positions mean. Even the few famous soccer players I recognize are from their having been mentioned in other media like The Simpsons. I have no idea what a striker or a forward is, or why they are so damn important that they apparently have their own national governing body.
But I can respect the author’s wishes in his desire to write about something he cares about. If I knew how to, I would be writing about nudism and card games and combat robotics by now.
The story is unbelievable (in that it is hard to believe it could happen and/or take seriously), the character names are weird, and the female characters are practically nonexistent. The only real major one is the national soccer chairwoman, and even she is not immune to some frankly offensive sexualization and micro-aggressions from her peers.
As you can probably guess by the fact that I have barely mentioned any of the characters here, there isn’t much to write home about there. Most of the characters are obviously focused on improving Japanese soccer to a maniacal degree, but the odd person here or there does have an interesting story.
Like the guy who wants to play soccer and excel so that he doesn’t have to take over his family’s shrine, and…that’s it.
So pick up Blue Lock today if you are a fan of soccer, or of death game manga, or you wouldn’t mind seeing them both squished together.
But, as for me, I’m afraid that I’m going to have to sit this one out on the sidelines.
(Does soccer have sidelines? Otherwise, that joke makes no sense.)
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