BLUELOCK

Episode 18

I have to admit, it's kind of refreshing to have a character just openly come out and say “I'm an asshole” in a sports anime. This episode is all about Baro's crisis of identity when he had his throne pulled out from under him by Isagi. Baro is the kind of guy who genuinely thinks that everything in the world revolves around him. Even in Blue Lock where he's not technically ranked that high compared to the top players, he still thinks that everything he does should be treated as gospel. The best part is, he doesn't just call himself a king because of his overwhelming confidence, he also does it specifically to put other people down. Make no mistake, Baro is 100% a terrible human being and that's part of the reason why the last episode felt so good. Ironically, I was riding the high of seeing HIM being put down, but that's just how the world works. Like Ego says, you need to experience defeat and push yourself to a place of “I never want to be underneath anyone ever again”.

Here, BLUELOCK does an interesting bait-and-switch: instead of Baro learning to be humble, he doubles down so hard that he ends up basically getting a power-up. I guess this is what accounts for teamplay now—everyone is just going to try to outdo each other and evolve on the court in real time. This is kind of the approach I thought BLUELOCK was going to take early on, and even though it took a while, I'm glad we're finally here. Not only did Isagi and everybody else win, but now we have the added intrigue of figuring out who they can add to the team that can best facilitate those types of evolutions. I'm gonna take a wild guess and say it's Chigiri. He arguably did the most on the opposing team and I think Reo needs to calm down. But I guess we'll just have to wait and see what the next stage has in store for us.

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BLUELOCK is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.