On November 16th, 2018 the now popular football sports animanga, written by Muneyuki Kaneshiro “Blue Lock” was officially released for people to read. Blue Lock is about a teenage boy named Isagi Yoichi, on his way to becoming the world’s greatest striker. He gets scouted by a man named Ego Jinpachi, who sends him an invitation to the Blue Locks facility to battle against 299 others to see who’ll come out on top.
Its first impression on many readers was shock and confusion about what this manga was really about. Blue Lock is surrounded by multiple encounters of egoism and selfishness, constantly fighting for the spotlight. This is a very unique concept for a sports manga because unlike most sports mangas revolving around teamwork and cooperation, for example, the popular volleyball sports animanga “Haikyuu” and popular basketball animanga “Kuroko’s Basketball”, it defies the art of teamwork.
Later, on October 9th, 2022 the Blue Lock manga got an anime adaptation. This is where Blue Lock’s popularity skyrocketed, gaining the title of the best-selling manga of 2023 with over 10 Million copies being sold.
Blue Lock has reached great heights and did what no other sports animanga could do within just a year of the anime being released. I feel the anime had a huge impact on the popularity of Blue Lock, the reason being that the very first episode gave watchers a taste of pure egoism and bone-chilling moments. Compared to other sports animanga, Blue Locks protagonists, antagonists, and even deuteragonists are better than any other having many different personalities, egos, and very unique character designs that surpass any other characters I’ve seen in other sports animanga.
Blue Lock’s games/matches are filled with tons of exhilaration, action, and insane, almost impossible plays that humans could never achieve. Having so many unique goals and celebrations that’ll have readers or watchers sitting on the edge of their seats screaming “GOOAALL” as if it were a real football match.
The main character “Isagi Yoichi” has amazing character development like no other sports animanga main character. Starting from 299th place to constantly rising the ranks and on his way to becoming 1st. On his way to his dream of becoming the world’s greatest striker, he acquires fast adaptation, direct shots, high field IQ, and meta vision. Within Blue Lock, there are many exciting rivalries and many chemical reactions between players making the animanga even more thrilling than it already is.
Absolute 10/10 sports animanga
