BLUE LOCK 2nd Season

Episodes 1-2

As a fan of the first season of BLUE LOCK, and as someone who has read as much of the English manga as they could get their hands on, I was thoroughly excited about the announcement of season two. Things are only supposed to get more intense from here with more characters, bigger stakes, and more psychological breakdowns on the soccer court. Having our originally evergreen protagonist Isagi constantly break himself down and reinvent himself into a stronger soccer player is always satisfying. But now we're taking all of his growth outside the world of Blue Lock as this training facility needs to be able to prove itself against star players who already have years of experience under their belts. It's a tall order but you can't consider yourself the best striker in the world if you're not willing to compete on the largest stage Japan has to offer.

But before that, we have to establish who is going to be part of this team, and I like the way the general structure of the narrative sets itself up. Despite all his growth, Isagi is still not even close to the top as he now also needs to compete alongside new characters that none of us have ever seen before, for better and worse. I did find it funny that season one ended by introducing roughly a dozen characters that all carry this sense of importance and now season two is trying to reestablish who these characters are. You can argue that's just shounen in general; our main character has reached a certain point of growth so now we have to introduce new people for him to dominate. I am a bit worried because it feels like the cast has grown to Bleach levels of bloated and I think it's very clear from the jump that not all of these characters are going to get equal attention. In fact, the very nature of these opening episodes being all about determining who is going to start off on the main upcoming team heavily implies that a lot of these characters are probably going to get cut after episode three or four. But for now, I just hope that they serve their purpose well on the court.

However, that's gonna be a little bit difficult after watching episode two which showed us our first real match of season two and you can already feel how different things are compared to season one. I'm not saying this drop-off in quality is anywhere close to the drop-off that we saw with Uzumaki just last week, but it's hard to ignore this clear difference in style. I would argue that the designs and artwork for season two are actually better compared to what we saw in season one. Everyone does have a bit more detail and shading to their designs, and all of them are accompanied by these really thick outlines that help them stand out in the foreground. Season two also seems to make a lot more liberal use of CG for dynamic camera angles and even some trick shots are utilized using 3D body parts.

My problem comes with the directing and use of still frames. The amount of cuts and dynamic shots that took place in episode two exceeded what we saw in three episodes of season one. It was admittedly a bit disorientating with how often the show would cut between different characters with minimal character movement and animation. Speed lines and motion tweening seemed to be used in order to create the illusion of motion but you can't deny that a good chunk of this match was just a bunch of literal talking heads monologuing or yelling at each other. The impact of the soccer shots doesn't feel very satisfying and while I think the analytical sections are done just fine, the actual soccer playing itself feels like there is a noticeable dip in speed compared to before. When we get to the big moments like Chibiri dashing across the field, it can be exhilarating. But I would argue that one or two big moments in a match don't make up for everything else in between.

This is only episode two and I am already concerned with the rest of the season, especially since it is shorter than season one was. Maybe the animation staff realized that these early matches aren't as important as the larger match that is supposed to dominate a majority of the season, so we're holding back for those moments. Or maybe this episode is just a one-off due to a scheduling conflict? Hard to say, but I really hope that arguably the biggest match of the entire show thus far is given the amount of attention that it rightfully deserves.

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