BLUE LOCK 2nd Season

Episode 37

There is a lot to unpack with this two part finale, but I'm sure the main thing that is gonna be on people's minds is just how good it looked. I advocated since the beginning of the show that the rather stilted animation quality would probably get better by the time we got to the main soccer match, and while the quality definitely got better with each passing episode, I think a lot of us were hoping for this level of quality sprinkled more evenly throughout the season. While there were still occasional moments of still frames, this was a gorgeous looking finale, and it's arguably the best the show has ever looked. We had strong facial expressions, detailed camera work, and that final confrontation between Rin and Sae was just beautiful. They earned the right to use those black bars to create a cinematic aspect ratio because that final part before the last goal in particular felt like the climax to a big movie.

However, the finale of this match wasn't just good from an animation standpoint, it was also incredibly strong from a narrative one. The main theme this entire match has been evolution. Almost every character on this field improved their play in direct response to everybody else leveling up. We knew this was going to apply to the main characters and rivals like Rin and Oliver, but I like the fact that the show highlights how everybody saw some type of growth here as that egotistical desire to win took over. Ego was right, even if they lost this match, his philosophy was proven correct, but we all know that it wouldn't be satisfying if Blue Lock lost here, and I like how the show built up yet subverted Rin's place in the whole thing.

Rin and Sae's relationship exists at the heart of this match to the point where you can almost argue that Rin was being framed within the show as the main character. The entire Blue Lock team was supposed to revolve around him, and the whole match was set up like a direct confrontation between brothers. However, when you're at the center of everything, it's very easy for your placement to get taken advantage of. So while I do believe everybody when they say that Rin was more or less the driving force, he definitely wasn't the one who shone the brightest. I love how the show sets up that Rin is going to have this typical sports anime moment where he's thankful that his teammates have been there to support him, only to turn around and basically call everyone trash that's holding him back. It's ironic that a character who is so obsessed with the thoughts and opinions of his older brother came to the conclusion that he needs to disregard all labels that other people project onto him in order to succeed.

I think there's a lot you read into Rin's philosophy because while it is definitely egotistical, I also feel like I can't disagree with Sae's assertion that it's still nothing impressive in his eyes. There's a lot of projecting going on here where Rin is renouncing the titles that people give him but his fighting style is still all about his brother. He wants to destroy people for the sake of proving himself superior, but unlike Isagi and a lot of other characters, it doesn't seem to come from a personal sense of wanting to improve. Instead, it comes from a desire to tear everything down that frustrates you. That's probably why his egotistical sense of destruction is so personal as we see with him directly confronting people's strengths on the soccer field, and then dismantling them one at a time. But on the other hand, it makes you wonder if Rin would ever be able to achieve this level if he didn't have this anger towards his brother.

Can you be truly egotistical if your desire to be superior stems from your relationship to somebody else? In the end, Rin technically won his final confrontation with his brother in a brilliant mirror to their last match, but then what happens after that? I know Rin explained that he also needs to strip away his relationship to his brother, but it really doesn't feel like he's done that. and at the end, he hypocritically forces the title of rival onto Isagi after he feels like he stole his thunder. I feel like I could write a whole dissertation about Rin's character, and I feel like you could go back-and-forth on whether or not the writing for him is intentionally hypocritical in a brilliant way or poorly laid out for the sake of spectacle. I lean a bit more towards the former personally.

Isagi is a player who is more about looking at the full picture. He takes as much information as he can on the field and tries to position himself in the best place possible. If Rin is set up as the main character of this match, then Isagi recognizes that he needs to be able to upstage Rin in order to figuratively and literally take a shot. I think it's interesting that Rin's philosophy is about destruction and tearing things down while Isagi is more about creating the best opportunity possible by using every piece he has on the field. You could make an argument that he didn't accomplish as much as everybody else on the field, as he lost a lot of one-on-one encounters, only really scored a goal at the end and was outplayed just as much as he did the outplaying.

However, he was undoubtedly at the center of almost every major goal that happened on the field, he was the one who facilitated the evolution of most of the characters, and that final shot was arguably the culmination of everything that he had learned in season one. Isagi was rewarded for paying attention to the situation and putting his faith in Rin succeeding. He positioned himself in the place where he personally felt like he could've scored the best goal. Yes, it did come down to luck which ended up being the final piece that he was missing throughout this match but that's just what a lot of sports come down to. Plus, this was foreshadowed all the way back in season one as one of the main deciding factors in how Rin beat Isagi during their last match. If Rin didn't have luck back then, then the layout of things would've been much different. So I think the show earns luck being one of the final deciding factors of this match.

I find it interesting that Isagi functioned as a fantastic center for most of this match and then saw the opportunity to be the definitive striker who scored the final goal in the end. Compare that to Sae, who started off as being a fantastic striker, but then settled for being someone who sets up goals for others. There's an interesting mirror between the two that I wish was focused on a bit more, but I like that the show sets up that Isagi has what it takes to be the striker that Sae always wanted to see in Japan. It makes that bold declaration at the end all the more impactful because this is the moment where soccer is going to change forever. I hope we get a season three to see what the next phase looks like and I really hope that if we do, the production is handled a hell of a lot better than this season was.

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