Blue Lock is a sports series where some of your normal sports anime tropes aren’t present, especially the “power of friendship”, which is good in a way, yet it made it so edgy to the point where sometimes, it’s quite laughable. If you’re someone who likes sports anime for its realism, you won’t get that here at all. It’s definitely quite epic at times, and there are a couple unpredictable moments mixed in there, but I feel like the appeal of sports anime in general is to have a good mix of humour and drama, while being very character driven and relatable to the viewer at times. With how gimmicky the characters tend to be, it was hard to resonate with any of them, or the plot in general. For me, it was mostly just a popcorn shounen show, that didn’t leave me with much to take away other than some hype moments.

The premise is quite interesting, as the Japan Football Union created this project called Blue Lock, who would select three hundred U-18 strikers into their program, and pit them against each other to rise to the top. In a sense, I thought it’d be like a death game anime, where if you fail, you would die, and this show sort of has that identity of being that way, as expulsion from Blue Lock is virtually the end of one’s pro soccer aspirations.

While soccer is generally considered a team sport, Blue Lock separates itself from other sports anime, as it focuses on selfishness and ego, rather than trying to build teamwork and good relations with teammates. While that seems like a novel concept, to me, it has a major drawback. Since character development is one of the most important things in sports shows in my opinion, the lack of team building and cohesion makes it so the characters aren’t that memorable, and they’re more gimmicky than anything, with each character having their unique part of the game that they’re good at, whether it’s vision of the field, speed, shooting, or handling the ball well. The character interactions for the most part, don’t tell us much about each character besides their surface personality. In fact, most of the characters don’t even develop properly, and have zero backstory to them. Without meaningful character interactions, it was difficult for me to really empathize with any of the characters. Their aspirations beyond being the “best striker” is all they want to do, so most of them have nothing that separates them from others aside from their gimmick.

The animation and art in Blue Lock is not all that great in my opinion. Some of the movement during the games was very stiff, especially during the second cour of the show, where I think the studio just rushed through production. The CGI was quite ugly at times when it was shown as well. As for the character designs, they scream like edgy teens. The eyes were extremely cringy to me especially, but I suppose the edginess is what makes this show special to people.

The music was middling as well, as the soundtrack wasn’t all that standout. The first ED and second OP were good, but the OP and ED by Unison Square Garden just wasn’t all that impressive.

As for my enjoyment throughout the show, I thought it had quite an unimpressive first half, and then the story improved towards the end of the series. It’s unfortunate that the animation degraded as the second half went along, or else I would have had a more favourable impression of this show overall.

Overall, Blue Lock is a fine show, despite all my criticisms. It can be quite exhilarating to watch sometimes, in the big moments, but the edgy dialogue and humour wasn’t all that great. The characters are quite weak overall, while the story was up and down. One thing I found funny was that the 2022 World Cup happened during the airing of this anime, because I felt it unintentionally promoted this show a bit more.

The main message here is just don’t expect a realistic portrayal of sports, you won’t get it in this anime. Otherwise, maybe try it out, but I can’t promise great things from this show.