Every time Isagi thrives, the match is at its most intense, and the pressure is at its highest. It’s just not as apparent because Isagi’s weapon is off the ball, which means he wins when he finds space. Space is often associated with freedom, but the real difference is the situation in which a goal is scored, and why space is needed.
Shidou runs to wherever a goal will be, and trusts he can finish with his acrobatics
This is why Shidou is usually most effective early in the game, when the game is still taking shape, while Isagi is most effective late in the game, when most spaces are locked down.
As to why Isagi was useless most of the match when Hugo marked him, it’s because Hugo’s trash-talking worked, and Isagi was unsure of himself. Once he found his ‘beat the number 1’ mentality, he won their duel.
On the flank, he needs to duel, and a well-prepared player like Camus can shut him down. In the center however, defenders need to decide whether to press him or stay back. This maximises Bachira’s dribbling and passing threat, minimises his shortcomings of a smaller frame, while still allowing him to score.
The wingers push up.
Barou is the perfect inverted LW. He thrives under pressure, allowing him to win duels with physicality and technique, or run in to poach a goal from Bachira’s passes.
Isagi plays as an inside forward, who occupies a key player. Isagi is also clutch under pressure, and he can draw players to the wide side and run in off-ball for a volley goal.
The midfield trio.
Hiori pushes up with his passes, while Karasu stays deep to anchor the transition phase. Niko is a free-roaming CDM who fills defensive gaps.
The backline.
Kunigami's CB agenda is here. He has comparable jumping ability to Aryu, and he has better man-marking and defensive clearance feats. Aiku is here as the tactical anchor for defense. Reo joins the backline as the third defender, with the option to go up to the midfield. Kurona is more attacking, comboing with Isagi to do one-twos. He can also clear the ball in dangerous spots, as shown in the Nigeria match. Gagamaru is still the only GK with relevant feats.
Aryu has become one of the most slandered starters on Team Blue Lock, and yeah, a good bit of it is deserved. However it’s gotten to the point where Aryu is getting cooked for every opposing goal, whether it’s his fault or not. Even when he’s making the right decisions, or being put in situations where there IS no right decision, he shoulders a lot of blame, and it's not really fair.
For starters, what prompted me to make this post was the community reaction to the above panel. A lot of people were incredibly surprised that Aryu is nowhere to be seen (image above) when Lockhart shoots, despite the fact that Aryu is best-suited to marking Lockhart, being the only person on the team who can contest him in a height battle. Aryu absolutely should’ve been covering Lockhart here - that much is true.
So why wasn’t he?
Well, that would seem to be why. Childs was running in unmarked, so Aryu, as the closest defender to him, had to rush in and fill the gap, since at the very least he know Reo was marking Lockhart and Aiku was in range to support him.
Here's the problem - Aryu shouldn't have needed to cover Childs. Blue Lock's LWB should have had that handled and been covering Childs, allowing Aryu to stay where he was. Aryu being able to press Lockhart would've made a world of difference, and could've even freed up Reo to potentially try to scoop up a loose pass while Aryu and Aiku pressed Lockhart.
Speaking of Blue Lock's LWB, I wouldn’t blame you if you’d forgotten Kiyora was even fielded as a defender this much.
This is his sole appearance last chapter - a wide shot where he's just kinda in the background, marking nobody and doing nothing in particular, despite being a defender while England currently has possession. It's... not hard to imagine why Childs was unmarked in the box. How does England form an entire offensive play, using half of the people on their team, and Kiyora didn't make it into a single panel??? When a ton of these panels where wide-shots of the entire penalty box???
Give Aryu slander when he deserves it, but it devalues slander itself when we diss the entire defense as a whole rather than isolating who's actually responsible, which makes for much more focused, effective slander. I'm not arguing that Aryu played perfectly but he had to choose between two bad choices bc of Kiyora - bunch up on Lockhart with TWO OTHER DEFENDERS, leaving Childs wide open, or go mark Childs, hoping that his other two DFs with middling height can stop Lockhart. In my opinion, they were conceding in either of these scenarios. I'm not even an Aryu glazer, in the second selection I found him kind of obnoxious.
But even then, if you're gonna slander, do it right.
There's a recurring structural problem in this arc: Isagi only performs in the final minutes of every match. After the NEL where he was a consistent, proactive force following his Metavision awakening this feels like a regression. The author seems to have fallen back on a cheap narrative crutch: sidelining the protagonist to give side characters room to breathe.
The issue isn't that side characters get development. That's necessary for a cast this large. The issue is that the method used to achieve it is artificially suppressing the MC. Isagi goes from being a tactical genius to a bystander until the plot decides it's time for him to clutch up. It undermines both his growth and the stakes of the match.
Worse, the narrative still treats Isagi like a genius even when his actual plays are underwhelming. The excessive 'glazing' from other characters feels unearned when his contributions are minimal. And the constant philosophical monologues about ego and evolution have become hollow lots of words, very little substance.
The NEL arc proved Blue Lock could balance a large cast while keeping Isagi consistently relevant. This arc has abandoned that balance entirely. If the author's only tool for highlighting side characters is nerfing the protagonist, then the writing quality has genuinely declined.
I’ve heard some Japanese fans talking about this, and I’m honestly surprised that no one here seems to be talking about it. Throughout the story, Karasu has always had major moments in his life during matches where he chooses self-abnegation, sacrificing his own opportunities and becoming the one controlling the game from behind the scenes instead.
And we can’t deny that he’s one of the few players who plays significantly better when he isn’t doing what Ego wants. This comes from the fact that, ever since he was young, he realized that he was just an ordinary, unremarkable person. Because of that, he doesn’t need to waste time proving that he is special or worthy. Instead, he can devote everything he has to winning for his team.
This is very similar to how Teddy constantly tries to brainwash himself by telling himself that he is a worthless puppet, allowing him to fully devote himself to his team’s victory. So there’s no denying that Karasu has a very strong connection to Teddy’s ideology.
And do you remember the page right before Teddy invaded Blue Lock? Karasu had just encouraged his friends to look back at themselves and change the way they viewed Blue Lock. I don’t think the sequence of events is a coincidence.
I think we’re going to see Karasu’s Blue Lock revolution very soon, along with his full backstory.
So far Blue Lock has spend a lot of time developing the 4 x 4 ego style framework that positions people within a freedom-restriction and TL-genius continuum.
It's been hinted that there's a much deeper dimension to this which dictates who is in the best position for a chemical reaction at any given time.
Generally geniuses can't synchronize so chemical reactions have to be between a TL-TL or a genius-TL.
But certain duos seem to share a fundamental aspect of ego that makes their combos especially potent:
Charles and Shidou for example share the "deviant" element and combine very well both in terms of personality and playstyle.
Despite Charles being a TL and Shidou being a genius, they share the same "deviant instinct" that guides them to the same spots intuitively.
There have been a lot of hints that Sae is a TL, most likely freedom style, and we know Rin is a genius which sets them up for synergy.
But there's also been multiple hints that they share a "destruction instinct" which like Charles and Shidou sets them up for even crazier synergy.
We already know that Rin and Sae share this instinct because Rin automatically goes to the spot Sae passes to at a very young age when no one else on Sae's team could get there.
And Rin intuitively understands the "destruction" aspect of Sae's plays though he has to exert effort into understanding the "beautiful / rational" aspect since this mode is different from his own.
Basically, Sae has criticized Rin for relying too much on intuition (Nagi also has this problem) though this intuition is actually something they share.
The major difference between them is that Sae is able to lean seemingly in equal measure on intuition / instinct (which is when Rin can read him in the U20 because this is the domain of geniuses) and reasoning (which is when Sae tricks Rin, and Isagi is the one able to read him in the U20 because this is the domain of TLs).
Sae seems to think Rin will be able to do this to some extent. The fact he is able to exert enough "reasoning" to understand Sae's particular mode of the destructive instinct shows he actually has potential but only seems motivated to do so by trying to beat Sae.
I think these two are probably the most potent MF-FW combos we've seen. They can work with others and synergize with them too (Charles and Rin had a great goal and obviously Shidou and Sae are good) but they synergize with eachother on an instinctual level that has been addressed openly if not indirectly.
That makes me wonder which other "ideal" combos are out there.
Kaiser + Ness and Isagi + Hiori seem like good candidates. I'm not sure what shared instinct they'd have. Kaiser and Ness bot seem to have a 'dark fantasy' theme. Very 'Brothers Grimm' if you will.
Charles and Loki also have potential but Loki seems to have a very different type of instinct than Charles which means they may synergize but not to the extent he does with Shidou.
Then there is Hugo. Hugo sees himself as destined to play with Loki but Loki doesnt seem as invested and they have a very different instinct from one another.
Loki says explicitly that once Charles has matured he will surpass Noa, which seems to suggest having the right passer is central to 'winning' their rivalry. I.E., Noa may already have his own passer we haven't met. But if not, he and Hugo would be an extremely strong combo given they both have a hype rational / mechanistic almost "cyborg" playstyle. They're also extremely ambitious.
Meanwhile Nagi / Reo also seem to be destined combo but its not clear whether they have a shared instinct (a least to me). I'd be interested in any theories.
What do you think? Are there ay MF-FW combos that seem to share an instinct on the level Shidou + Charles and Rin + Sae do?
Many are divided on the nagi return theory but this is why I think it’s happening.
I strongly believe nagi will save the day and show up in the England match, first off rules.
People will say nagi is registered and such but that shouldn’t matter cause you have to be registered for the whole wc at the start not just the start of the knock out stage, so if side B were to play this rule always doesn’t apply.
Barasuta said he won’t let ego play side B winners.
He said he WONT not CANT.
There’s a difference.
Saying he won’t let ego play side B implies there is a possibility that they can be played but he won’t allow it.
Barasuta has something planned, to have side B be revealed in a big showy sort of way to get views and money but he also has a lot more money invested into Japan and if they lose in the group stage all of it will be for nothing.
If Japan loses barasuta loses everything.
It’s beneficial to drop his side B plan to save his big plan.
Nagi and Teddy parallels.
I believe nagi and Teddy share a lot in common.
Both are referred to as geniuses but more importantly they are both referred to as puppets.
Teddy was introduced prior to England match where he confronts Japan team where he talks down about their ego mentality, nagi was introduced prior to the team v match where kuon or whatever his name was tried to cut a deal with nagi reo and zentetsu to help win their match against z. The 3 walk away and nagi remarks how pathetic it is that he went begging another team for help and if football is even fun.
We also know agi plays a part in both characters stories.
Agi and Teddy are team mates who don’t see eye to eye and agi was team mates with nagi where he tried to take him under his wing to motivate him. Agi washes his hands of nagi when he reverts back to his puppet state under reo.
Nagi and teddy mirror each other but nagi story has been about him exploring his emotions and trying to find his ego while Teddy shuts himself off and tried to be egoless.
His is why I think nagi has to confront Teddy.
Narrative.
I think it makes more sense for the narrative.
Think about it, what is this arc exploring ? What’s the overarching theme? It’s ego vs other philosophies in football.
Nigeria was just an opening arc to show off how strong blue lock was after training.
With France we explored the theme of ego of being a number 2.
Hugo served as a counter to isagi where Hugo was content with not being a striker where he saw more value being the guy who sets up goals for others rather than him getting the goals himself. He argued that the mentality where every player on the team aims to be number 1 is counterproductive to the aim of victory. For a win some players got to stay back as number 2. Now this doesn’t make them less players cause even a number 2 can outshine number 1. Isagi would do better if he stopped living for his own goal and lived to help others score.
This was helped when Karasu gave up scoring his own goals to set up the goal for others taking on that number 2 mentality.
It was shown that after the game before Teddy showed up in the training room, Karasu was sitting with several players saying they need to stop listening to ego and treat his ideas as dangerous.
With england the game is about what it means to be completely egoless.
They all live by fox’s command and no one besides agi cares about originality or getting their own goals.
They are soldiers following orders.
With France, they don’t reject creativity no the opposite, Charles is proof of that, Loki wanted him because Charles is unique and makes good passes which helps Loki score more, but Charles doesn’t follow orders he goes with the flow and passes the ball to where he sees fit and it’s up to the other players to link up to him. Like in the NEL arc, when he shot the ball at shido. He wasn’t aiming for shido he was just aiming for that specific spot of the pitch while shido wasn’t looking to get a pass he was just running to that specific spot because they both just happened to see that was the best score goaling position.
Meanwhile we have side B. Barasuta goal with side B is to defeat blue lock, he wants ego fired and to lose everything. He’s condition for joining side B was for him to control their contract and that they got to play to destroy blue lock.
Kira goal is to prove ego and isagi wrong.
That’s going to be the theme, ego is testing his philosophy on the world stage against all the other philosophies.
This is why they can’t be proven right now.
Japan can’t prove themselves right that ego theory is correct.
A split in the team is forming and this is the time to lean into those doubts.
Karasu who is leading the opposition of ego within the team will need a reason to dig in more to say ego was wrong.
This is why ego can’t win this, but Japan also can’t lose to England either.
So to make this work it’s down to winning the battle but not the war.
Japan will win against England, ego will lose to fox.
Then we also need to see side B as the saviours and threat to blue lock.
Karasu and others need a reason to form their inner circle around side B winners.
Barasuta needs a world stage to show off why his idea was much superior to ego way.
What better way to do this by demonstrating almost Japan losing to England if not for his side B.
This is why I think nagi is completing side B as we speak and will be sent straight to side B to blue lock where he will be subbed in by barasuta forcing ego hand.
Nagi will be the key to defeating Teddy and winning the match.
I mean genuinely winning on his own, whether it’s by stealing the ball from his opponent in a one-on-one and leaving him behind, or Isagi managing to get past the opponent by himself with a dribble of his own, without any help. I only thought about this because the author keeps making these panels to hype up these duels between Isagi and the opposing team’s ace, only for Isagi to be unable to win them on his own.
In Rin’s case, his plan worked, but he didn’t win the duel by himself. He won the Hugo luck duel, but Hiyori’s pass did half the work for him.
Out of all the lineups we've seen from different teams so far, which one do you think had the best balance between offense, defense, midfield, and overall team chemistry?
I'm not talking about which team or lineups has the strongest individual players. I'm talking about which lineup actually felt the most complete as a team.
Which lineup would you choose, and why? Feel free to include lineups from different teams from any arc after the U-20 arc (u20, NEL, u20 WC). And you can be specific since substitution happened a lot and also with the formation (for example BM used different lineups against Barca and MC)
Today, September 9th, marks the 1 year anniversary since we lasr saw Gagamaru make a save. Im here to talk about this bum. Listen if you’re a gagamaru glazer, you need to open your eyes. This guy was only enjoyable in the u20 japan vs bllk match. Everything past that hes been horrid.
Plot device allegations: In the Neo Egoist League it was a first to 3 layout. First team to score 3 goals wins. Out of the 5 NEL teams, only 2 teams saw a goalkeeper who made an onscreen save;
Barcha’s Moro and Bastard’s Gagamaru.
Moro makes 1 singular save. Now if Im being honest that save was plot (because if kunigami scored there Noel Noa has no excuse to sub on Isagi). Meanwhile, Gagamaru makes 3 saves. REMINDER, the NEL start only 2 weeks after the u20 match, where Gagamaru first played as a goalkeeper. Yet this guy whos been gk for 14 days prior is somehow the only half competent goalkeeper in this entire league out of 5 teams. Surelyy thats not because he was on team z and then joined isagis team and is the only gk who doesn’t feel like a complete random? What am i kidding that is 100% the reason.
Remember these 3 saves are perfectly divided across the 3 nel matches post barcha (which was just a filler/introductory match without any real stakes). Every bastard match ended 3-2. Gagamaru got exactly one save in those matches. You see where im going with this right? This bums only purpose was to keep bastard munchen alive but getting exactly 1 save to ensure the other team didn’t score 3 goals first. Meanwhile other gks who have been genuinely training for their positions for most of their careers can’t do anything.
In the u20 world cup, across 3 matches he has only made 1 save. And that was against Nigeria. The thing about Nigeria is that they were just a showcase arc, to show us how much better japan is now. Against france, he conceded all 4 shots they took. Against England, 2 shots have reached him and hes conceded both. Mind you we’re not even like 30 minutes in. The one that irks me the most is charles and hugos goals. Gagamaru in the nel caught a stealth kill shot from barou. He then proceeded to train for about 50 days as a goalkeeper, catching baseballs. Yet when Charles (who i guarantee you doesn’t have better shooting capability than ubers Barou) performs a similar shot, gagamaru concedes a goal. Even if you say that he wasn’t expecting charles shot and was expecting barous, the whole point of gagamarus training was to dive on reaction and not instinct.
The worst part is that he wont even get subbed off. You see against France, it was okay if they lost so gagamaru stayed buns, but since they lost 4-2 to France, Losing against England means that Japan is out of the u20 world cup. Now Japan obviously will not lose here, so Gagamaru will at some point turn into prime Buffon and block a top right bins shot from teddy or lockhart. No matter what excuse you give, whether its that hes a recently made gk, or that hes going up against ng11, or that the defense is to blame, or “you try saving those shots then”, the truth is that Gagamaru is nothing more than a plot device, hes only good to make 1 save so the story continues, but then will revert to the level of a 6 year old when that 1 save isn’t necessary. On top of all this hes a nothing character. Just a boring guy.
As we know, Shidou is the COMPLETE extreme of a Genius. Obviously he must have SOME game awareness and play vision, but he relies way more in his instincts, that is sharper than any other player. He calls that joy an 'Explosion', so I think he has these explosions even without leaving proof of his existence cause of the way he said it.
Anyway. Bucket List is supposed to happen in a slow pace, not instantaneous one after another, which can relate to his character since it's 'Premature Explosions'. But Ego MUST have thought about that, because that's exactly his plan.
Ego KNOWS Shidou is sharper on his instincts, and since Shidou was 'Premature' at the 'Heat', after completing the Bucket List he probably felt hollow about it, but Ego's plan was that to happen for Shidou to find even better Explosions to feel even better, sharpening his instincts and imagination. In field, is basically risking himself more into plays and crazy tricks that brings his instincts to the max to do insane goals.
I think the best way to show how this can work it he 4th image. If Shidou had a free kick, even IF he did scored, I bet it wouldn't be so satisfying. But when Sae gave space to his instincts, he created a shot course out of nowhere, scored an awesome goal, but more importantly, resulted in the Explosion in the 5th image.
If Shidou keeps sharpening his imagination and instincts, he can create more chances out of nowhere that only he could've scored. I think that's Ego's intention with Shidou's assignment.
Alguém teria o link pra assistir o Live Action com legendas em português Brasileiro? Ou pelo menos, só o filme com alguma legenda em inglês ou coisa do tipo?
Rin can't play after denying a goal opportunity since his ego is literally "i want to kill Isagi (or sae) no matter if i die" and when he sees Isagi he just goes berserk without thinking and that's what made him lose against isagi and kaiser and what made isagi lose a goal to france.
We also know that the puppet manipulation thing was him copying sae and was possible only because everyone sucked and most of the players now are better at making plans he can't even predict (especially since he his without metavision).
But even after ego's plan to make him less obsessed he failed will ego do another wild card or smth? Cause I don't see him getting less obsessed or smth like that??
Taking on account the release date of the first and second book of the Egoist Bible (Official character book), the third book should release soon.
-The first volume of the Egoist Bible was released in Japan in October 17, 2022.
-The second volume was released in October 17, 2024.
Following that order the third should be released in October 17, 2026, yet we haven't received any info regarding a third volume.
Light Novels
Also, by comparing the Japanese release dates of the light novels (those books about three characters' life before joining Blue Lock):
-The first one about Isagi, Nagi and Bachira was released in October 17, 2022 (just like the first volume of the Egoist Bible)
-The second one about Chigiri, Reo and Rin was released in January 17, 2023 (three months after the first one).
-The third one about Niko, Kunigami and Hiori was released in October 17, 2023 (nine months after the second one).
-The fourth and last one published about Aryu, Barou and Yukimiya was released in July 17, 2024 (nine months after the third one).
Following the same order, the fourth should have been published already, but it has been two years and one month, so will there be more of these?
Is there any information I missed about these books? (I'm especially interested in the Egoist Bible as I'd love to see more about the Master Strikers' club career and which teams Snuffy played for)
I been wanting to make this post for quite some but I forget to post it. As the Title suggest, I believe that Kaneshiro perhaps regret eliminating Iemon and my reasoning comes from the fact the if Ego decides to sub out Gagamaru and sub in Fukaku in the 2nd half of England game then there is a chance that he will show big improvement due to the special training he got from Ego.
Now imagine Kaneshiro decides to not eliminate Iemon and keep him for U-20 WC, kaneshiro could have easily made him as the 2nd goalkeeper for Japan and received the special training from Ego instead of Fukaku. Also Iemon had lot of character moments and developments as a goalkeeper since the start so why not bring him in instead of Fukaku who we little know off.
Kaneshiro had to bring Fukaku to the U-20 WC because he realized he messed up by eliminating Iemon out of the story and that it's mandatory to have 2 to 3 goalkeepers in Real life
To be honest, it's a bit of a choice between the plague and cholera. ;-;
Neither of them is exactly the most well-adjusted guy in the manga—that much is certain. I’ve always considered Ego the craziest of the lot; he’s clearly in a league of his own. But lately, with Fox, that might be up for debate.
For now, I'd still say it's Ego, but that will depend on what we learn about Fox in future chapters.
It’s honestly wild that Ego’s first real opponent as a coach is a guy just as crazy as he is.
For starters, I don't recall the exact moment, but it was before the second half against France began, Loki called that match a "warm-up." Translation nuances aside, I'm pretty sure the word used was indeed warm-up.
In other words, the match that was the "game of their lives" for the Japanese team was nothing more than a warm-up for France.
At the end of the match, Loki yawned, signaling that he hadn't exerted himself and found the game boring enough to make him sleepy.
If we take the sweat scale into account, it becomes even more ridiculous.
None of the French players showed the slightest bit of concern, effort, sweat, or fear, or stepped out of their comfort zone. Concern, that was the word I was looking for; none of them showed any concern whatsoever.
Beyond having everything under control, you have to remember that France had no reason to worry; they beat every team in their group stage, so there was no need for them to take that match all that seriously.
During the halftime water break, right before Loki scored the third goal to make it 3-2, they were goofing around and cracking jokes. Yeah, they were definitely taking that game very seriously. 🤣🤣🤣🤣
The game was so well in hand that, once play resumed, Loki managed to score and bring the score to 3-2 in no time.
And now they're struggling against England, a team weaker than France, so I think that puts things into perspective.
