BLUE LOCK 2nd Season

Episode 33

While I am a little disappointed we didn't spend much time on the second half of the match, there was a lot to unpack during the break. The bet between Sae and Oliver comes full circle with Oliver admitting that his team just isn't good enough to compete with the unique idiosyncrasies of the Blue Lock team. Now we have the devil child Ryusei being set up and, like I said last week, he will cause a stir here. But I'm more interested in why Sae is fascinated with Ryusei.

The relationship between Rin and Sae is at the heart of this episode. I love how it revealed a lot while leaving the implications of this broken brother relationship open. I have a couple of theories. We see Rin and Sae as inseparable brothers who shared a dream when they were young, but something happened that caused Sae to abandon it. That's when the two had a definitive falling out. What's interesting is that the dream of being the best strikers in the world seemed to have been abandoned for rather practical reasons. We can assume that Sae saw how intense the world of being a global soccer player was, and simply adjusted his expectations. He didn't say he wanted to stop being the best: he just wanted to stop being the best striker in the world and instead focus on midfielding. It was nice that he still left the role of the world's best striker to Rin. He still wanted to share a dream with him. I wonder if that was an internal compromise, given all of the pained expressions we saw on Sae's face. Maybe there's something beneath the surface about him seeing more potential in Rin to be the best striker in the world?

However, Rin did not take that well. Now Rin took the original dream and twisted it to fit his current one. He's not even really concerned about being the best striker in the world; he just wants to crush his brother. You could argue those two goals are linked, considering that Sae is one of the best players in Japan who can compete on a global stage. Beating him would mean that Rin would have to be the world's best striker. However, almost everything Rin does revolves around his brother. He doesn't really have any desires outside of his connection to his brother. Could the show be setting that up as Rin's downfall? Sae even points out to Rin constantly that he needs to stop focusing on him. It's often played up as Sae being dismissive, but could that sentiment be a twisted act of brotherly love this whole time? There's a lot to unpack there and I hope we get more of it as the match plays out.

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