Review for "Blue Lock" - S1E2 - "Monster"

Hey fellow Hivers! Just finished another episode of Blue Lock and this most recent installment, "Monster," starts with the number-one ranked player in the group -- Kira -- getting kicked out, or "locked off," from the Blue Lock program. I think that might be a running gag on the show where when a player gets knocked out of the program they tell them lock off which sounds a lot like "f**k off," which I found funny.

Here's Kira's face after Isagi apologizes for disqualifying him in the Blue Lock program's first exercise. The dude does not look too happy since he went from number-one to zero super fast.

Understandably Kira who was ranked number-one in Japanese high school soccer is upset that his future's been decided by what appears to be an arbitrary exercise but Blue Lock's creator reveals the reasoning behind the exercise ...

... Apparently in soccer there's a region around each side's goal where the highest amount of scoring and turnovers occurs on average -- the penalty area (if anyone knows more about soccer please correct me -- I know basically nothing) -- so Ego devised the two minute tag exercise to determine how Group Z's player would react high pressure in a small arena.

Ego further goes on to explain that despite Isagi being a low-ranked player he decided against targeting a player below him and instead went after Bachira who higher than him. Seeing the tense environment of the exercise, Bachira decided to steal the ball and use the situation to confuse the top-ranked player Kira and prepare a knockout kick for Isagi who accepted the offer instantaneously and tagged Kira.

Ego telling Kira that he's been disqualified or to basically leave and f*** off.

After Kira leaves, we get some more information about the foundation of the Blue Lock program. One of the high-ranking officials of Japanese Soccer has chosen an experimental madman to create a program to find a player capable of taking Japan's national soccer team not just to the World Cup but to its first victory as well.

We also get to see that there's people in the administration who don't care about Japanese soccer as a feat of athletic sportsmanship but simply as a business. This pits new member of the Japanese
Soccer Union, Anri, against longtime member and Special Advisor Hirotoshi against each other. This sets up a conflict between making a winning team and a team that makes money.

The animation on Blue Lock is pretty decent, even above that during some action scenes. Plus I love the sinister and outlandish atmosphere they've given to a show that's basically about soccer -- but perhaps I'm only seeing it that way because I've never played the sport or know much about it.

Plus I like the way that Blue Lock's leader Ego is portrayed as a type of mad scientist who is crafting all these different exercises not just to get rid of losers but break down and rebuild one of the contestants into a top-notch athlete.

I also can't get over the drama of how characters/players like Isagi and Kira have such kind and friendly exteriors but deep down in tense situations we get to see their true natures -- vicious monsters obsessed over one goal. It's not necessarily a bad thing but it shows that people carry themselves through the world with multiple personas and that sometimes what we've been taught doesn't always align with who people really are deep down.

Kira went from kind to pretty goddamn rude after learning he'd lost, showing that he was a sore loser and not at all the kind gentle soul he tried to make himself appear to be to high school newspapers.

Now I'm not a big fan of CGI in anime but sometimes it can maybe be done well -- like on Jujutsu Kaisen, Attack On Titan, and Chainsaw Man. One of the interesting things that Blue lock has done so far is illustrate the athlete's competitive spirits as potentially or psychologically actual spirits inside them -- maybe even other personalities that emerge in highly charged environments like competitive soccer.

The competitive "monster" pictured above belongs to a character named Bachira who says that they do their best to listen to their inner "monster" when it comes to soccer because this entity just seems to know what to do best in haywire moments.

On the show, when the main character Isagi becomes ultra competitive we see an embellishment which is his eyes start to burn with a blue fire -- signaling his competitive spirit. But in episode two, Bachira actually says that he passed the ball to Isagi during the first exercise because he sensed a fellow competitive "monster" within Isagi as well.

Also, on episode two -- we learn from Blue Lock leader Ego that Isagi's actually in the lowest ranked group in the Blue Lock program and that all the different groups will be competing internally and externally for that number one spot.

Another interesting aspect of the show is the cultural friction between people who want Japanese soccer to be a purely collectivist team-experience -- that also makes money -- and the few who want to bring their country world-wide fame by crafting players that will earn them trophies and victories. It's a very individualism vs collectivism type of party that makes for a nice clash between selfish and self-sacrificing individuals.

The guy pictured above it Itoshi -- he's some world renown Japanese soccer player whose been playing abroad because he thinks his country lacks "competitive spirit" but when he learns about the Blue Lock program he seems very intrigued. Not sure how he's going to play in the story since he wasn't initially chosen for Blue Lock.

I'm wondering what Anri's arc will look like -- perhaps she'll have difficulty controlling Ego the mad man she's hired to find Japan's next number one soccer striker. There's the obvious elements of her being a young businesswoman in an environment that's mostly old men so perhaps we'll get to conflicts about that and other related aspects of her life.

At the end of the episode we get a sneak peek at Group X, who Isagi's Group Z will be competing with soon. There's a few interesting people in the crowd and if the show continues to be visually, musically, and dramatically appealing I'm definitely going to keep watching.