BLUELOCK has to be the silliest and at the same time most hype anime I’ve watched for a while now. There is of course some little depth to it, as it addresses the psychology of strikers and egoism, which ties into the idea of the story to raise the best striker in the world by making him the “biggest egoist”. And I enjoyed that aspect of Blue Lock, as it’s usually not explored in sports anime, at least to my knowledge. Ego might be super snobby and rude, but pretty much everything he says has at least some partial truth to it, so it's nice to have a sports anime address these topics seriously.

But what ultimately sells BLUELOCK is its style, excessive edginess and the vigorous intensity that comes with it. Football here is not sports, it’s literal war. And BLUELOCK embraces it, with intense and over-expressive stills, an electrifying soundtrack, and dialogue which just wouldn’t work anywhere else but in BLUELOCK, as it already established the tone of the show to be just simply ridiculous. To be fair, outside of the matches the dialogue loses its edge and is mostly just serviceable, playing to the trope of each character (it gets even worse later when they play against international players and the Engrish comes) but that’s okay as most of the character-building happens in the matches themselves. So in the overall scheme of things you care only about how the matches play out, and this is where BLUELOCK shines and can deliver. And what I grew to quite like about its whole egoism theme is that in BLUELOCK the individual matters more. Other sports anime focus more on team building (which is also completely fine), but in BLUELOCK, one person alone can already change everything. While other sports anime keep tabs on these special people and make us aware of them, as they are only a few, in BLUELOCK you have the feeling that each character on the field can be that game-changer. And that happens quite often, as not only Isagi as the protagonist but every other side character keeps evolving and surpassing their limits. It’s the ultimate competition of who can stay on top of everyone else, and that felt pretty unique to BLUELOCK and was thrilling to watch. I can only imagine that it will get more intense and absurd in its second season, and after such an enjoyable first season I’m ready for more. Yes, BLUELOCK lives up to the hype.