How Blue Lock Anime Brings the Action to Life

Blue Lock was everywhere at Anime Expo 2024. Multiple panels, a strong presence at the Kodansha booth in the Exhibit Hall, and countless cosplayers donning Blue Lock's instantly recognizable training outfits, all underpinned by a wildly popular shonen anime and manga on the rise.

I was lucky enough to sit down with three core staff members of the Blue Lock franchise at Anime Expo 2024. Joining us for this interview was Ryōya Arisawa, producer for the anime, Megumu Tsuchiya, editor for the manga, and Kazuki Ura, the voice of the show's main character Yoichi Isagi.

I wanted to know how they felt about Blue Lock's influence around the world and what they hoped the series would achieve.

What kind of effect would you like to see Blue Lock have on the world?

Ryōya Arisawa: Blue Lock is a work with a positive mindset. It's about finding your strengths and using those to push through and overcome adversity. So, it would make me happy if it made viewers think, “I'm going to give it everything I've got,” and go into the next day ready to try their best.

Kazuki Ura: This may overlap a bit with what Arisawa-san just said, but I've always wanted it to be a cheer of support for people who were setting out to try to achieve something. I feel like, especially in Japan, there are a lot of people who give up on their dreams so quickly, like it's pointless to put in effort or that it's not worth doing if they can't become number one. Obviously, Blue Lock is about becoming the best, and that's meaningful in a way, but there's a deeper meaning in the effort itself. So I want Blue Lock to be that push, that encouragement someone might need when they're feeling timid about putting in the work. It's okay to work up a sweat and go for it!

Megumu Tsuchiya: Blue Lock comes out in Weekly Shōnen Magazine, which is aimed at teens. Something I frequently talk about with [manga writer] Kaneshiro-san and [manga illustrator] Nomura-san is that maybe it wouldn't put someone on a direct path to becoming a pro soccer player or a manga artist, but it would be cool if Blue Lock had a positive effect on someone where it helped them choose what they want to do with their lives. Something like, “I read Blue Lock when I was younger, and it inspired me to pursue this or that.” Maybe they're reading Blue Lock now as a kid, and in 10 or 20 years, you could trace it back to Blue Lock's influence on their path in life.

What kind of effect have you seen the series have on real-life players, either at home or abroad? How does that make you feel?

Tsuchiya: I had a conversation with a professional Japanese soccer player at some point, and he mentioned the heel shot that Isagi does in the series, saying that he watched it thinking, “Hey, that's me! I use that move a lot!” Those kinds of conversations are fun.

Also, during the 2022 World Cup, when international fans were watching, there'd be some amazing shot or goal, and they would post online mentioning Blue Lock. That made me realize that it was influencing soccer culture around the world. That left an impression on me.

Speaking of the World Cup, Japan had a historic run in the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. After they won against Germany in the group stage, you saw people saying things like, "Blue Lock is real!!" How did you feel about Japan's performance and people making the connection to Blue Lock?

Tsuchiya: I was actually in a meeting with Kaneshiro-san and Nomura-san at that moment, and we were watching the game. That moment really stands out for me because it was that moment where it clicked for us, like, “Wow, people all over the world are reading and watching Blue Lock!” It was a very celebratory moment in so many ways for us.

One thing about Blue Lock that gets me PUMPED is those moments just as a character is about to take a shot. The crescendo of the music, the increasingly desperate-sounding voiceover delivery, and the sound effects that play as a gorgeously animated foot makes contact with the ball to launch it into the back of the net. I asked about what goes into making that all come together.

The moments in the show just as someone shoots and scores are so powerful and exhilarating. What goes into making those moments so gripping, and how do you keep those moments new and fresh as the series goes on?

Tsuchiya: Each player has their own play style, their own strengths, and their own particular way they create chances to take a shot. There's a rule that it should be a play that could be pulled off in real life, so Kaneshiro-san and Nomura-san would find a real-life shot and use that as the basis for a scene in the manga. It might be one that similarly-aged players like the characters in Blue Lock could pull off, but none of them are impossible to do in real life.

Anyway, they'll find videos and use them as a model, and when adapting it, they'll say, “Okay, for that shot, what angle would look the best? What's the coolest way to build up to that moment?

Arisawa: It's pretty much the same for the anime. Things in the manga, even the very steps the characters take, are drawn with such care and detail. So we're, of course, faithfully doing the same for the anime. We also try to pay a lot of attention to how we depict the tempo of how things unfold in a way that feels good. If it's the manga, you can read along at whatever tempo feels best to you as the reader, but because it's anime, it's got to flow at a determined pace. So, at each phase, whether it's the overall scene or the storyboards, or when we're editing, we're paying a lot of attention to the tempo.

That's important for the action, of course, but we also want the emotion and drama of it to keep pace with that, too. For instance, “How are a particular character's thoughts going to flow as they build up to taking a shot?” That's the kind of thing we take great care to align in the anime.

Ura: As the voice of the character, I try to give careful consideration to the real-life situation. Obviously, in a real match, no one would have time to give a long monologue in their head. But that's one of the great things about anime. You can make those moments FEEL real. That's the tool of the voice artist, which is to come in during that last phase of production and give it that emotion and drama that makes it convincing. You're trying to sync up with what's being shown on screen, and the intention behind it, and you're delivering the lines in a way that will feel good for the viewer.

The voice work in Blue Lock is critical for making those moments so powerful, as we were just talking about. What kinds of methods do you use to get into the mindset to deliver the lines for scenes like those?

Ura: Isagi is always in a situation where he's being chased to begin with, so he's depicted as struggling frantically in some way, and you want to get people to relate to that feeling. You know that feeling you get in a situation where you're done working on something, and you find that you had some energy left over and think to yourself, “Hey, you didn't really give it everything you had, did you?” I really try to get into a headspace where I feel like I don't have even a millimeter to spare. I forget that I'm standing in a studio recording lines in front of a microphone, and I try to channel that feeling of desperation for those kinds of scenes. I'm basically in a kind of trance.

Soccer naturally focuses on players' feet as their primary tool when playing the game. The series puts a lot of care into how it depicts feet on screen. What's behind the special treatment of feet in particular?

Tsuchiya: Nomura-san pays a lot of attention to things like players' footwork, posture, and proportions. So, for the feet, they'll have a player who has a particular play style, and they'll pay attention to the musculature of their feet and what aspects are specific to them. Then, in the manga, you have panels where things are shown at a fixed angle, and he'll have to consider how to draw the feet in a certain way when going from one frame to the next.

Arisawa: Similarly for the anime, the bodies are drawn so meticulously, so the anime production team pays a lot of attention to those details. But you can't really change the shape of the panel the way you can in a manga. You're always going to be showing things in a 16:9 rectangle, so to fit things into that shape, you might have parts that won't fit into the frame. For shots where it's only a foot, even though the rest of the body isn't on screen, you still have to keep it in mind so the foot will look correct.

Then, there are times when it's hard to make sure the characters are drawn in a way that's visually distinct from each other. We have detailed CG models of feet that are really well-made. Of course, there are times when it's just a foot that's shooting or passing, and it looks the same, but the CG models help us in devising how it'll look in motion, deciding the colors depending on the character, and helping make things not look fake.

Our time was nearly up, but having staff from both the manga side and the anime side in front of me, I wanted to ask about what makes the anime so distinct.

What kinds of things does the medium of anime allow you to do for Blue Lock that the manga doesn't?

Arisawa: Well, the obvious thing is that there's movement, but Nomura-san's work has a lot of action to it already, so translating that to animation and making it all move is really quite difficult. But what anime allows us to do is show visual changes and transformations, which we place a lot of importance on. For instance, the color of a character's aura, like if Isagi's having some realization or awakening and his blue aura turns yellow-green in an instant. Transformations like that, where it happens in a flash, are something you don't have at your disposal in a manga. We add a lot of those kinds of things in as we translate the action of the manga to the anime.

Changes in a character's eyes are another example, like gradually getting more swirly or those moments where a character suddenly opens their eyes wide, and there's a change. You see this with Bachira a lot. Those kinds of changes let us accentuate the action or a character's emotions to further enhance Nomura-san's work, so the anime adaptation is more than simply adding motion.