Blue Lock has officially unveiled the title and several major visual themes for its highly anticipated second season. With plenty of enthralling action, emotional drama, and soccer moves, season two looks set to be a genuinely heart-racing performance. It also seems quite likely that the aftermath of Kunigami’s exit and its subsequent effect on Isagi will be a crucial focus of the early season.
Blue Lock: Individual vs Team
One significant difference between Blue Lock and most conventional sports anime is where the focus lands. The majority of sports anime centers on themes of teamwork and shelving one’s ego to work as a group. Blue Lock is quite the contrast, focusing squarely on what the individual can accomplish. It has themes of ambition, rivalry, self-discovery, and Isagi’s drive to become Japan’s best striker.
The new season adapts the next major arc from the manga source material, in which Blue Lock participates in their upcoming competition against U-20 Japan for the National Representative match for the National Team. Blue Lock season 2 is 14 episodes long, a step down from season one, which was 24 episodes long.
Teamwork vs Ego in Sports Anime
Most sports anime focus on teamwork, implying that success or failure is entirely on the team, not the individual. While the particulars often vary from one show to another, a common theme is how a team will commonly struggle on the field when they have trouble working together. One great example is from the anime “Stars Align,” where one episode showcases several of the cast working as individuals and refusing to cooperate and how their opponents take advantage of their lack of teamwork. They only start winning when they work together.
Blue Lock heavily focuses on what individual players can do independently. Doubling down on this trend, during season one, protagonist Isagi Yoichi has a reverse teamwork character arc where his focus shifts from being more of a team player to prioritizing himself as an individual. At the show’s start, Isagi is shown participating in a school game where he passes a ball to his teammate, who fails to score and costs them the game. He is shown to wonder if he could have changed that by just taking the shot himself.
Season Two Predictions and Guesses
The trailer for the new season takes a dramatic stance right from the get-go. Ego, the creator of the Blue Lock project, says the project’s fate depends on whether the Blue Lock team succeeds or fails while playing against the national team. Then, he says that the team will be narrowed down to its top players before the match, forcing players to compete to be chosen for the limited available slots.
With the high stakes and the focus on who will get the limited slots available, as well as the knowledge that if this doesn’t work out, the Blue Lock project could potentially be shut down for good, there’s the potential for plenty of inter-character drama and fierce competition even before the match against U-20 Japan.
Final Thoughts
Blue Lock is unique among sports anime because its primary focus is on the individual, not the group. The focus on finding the best striker and having them be the one who leads the team to victory is a unique approach to take, especially since the trope inherent in sports anime and manga is for it to be all about teamwork and cooperation with most of these series scorning individuals who look out for themselves above their collective. From the beginning, Blue Lock bucked that trend and even went as far as to name the creator of the show’s titular Blue Lock Project “Ego.”
With this season set to center on the elimination-style leadup to the big showdown with the national team and the project’s performance deciding if Blue Lock will even have a future, the fierce competition has plenty of action to show as it narrows the team down ahead of the final clash with the national team.
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