Bluelock Season 1 Review: Squid Game Meets Football in One of the Best Anime Shows

Bluelock adapts the first and second selection arcs from the manga. Story-wise, it does a solid job adapting the source material. Animation-wise, it's a hit-and-miss. It can be best described as football mixed with Squid Game. It has the madness of both and some more. I highly recommend that you check this out. Let's dive deep into the positives and negatives.

Bluelock - Official Trailer | AniTV

In 2018, the Japanese national team finished 16th in the FIFA World Cup. As a result, the Japan Football Association hires the football enigma Ego Jinpachi. His master plan to lead Japan to stardom is Bluelock, a training regimen designed to create the world's greatest egotist striker.

Positives

Narrative

The narrative throws some nasty curveballs at you periodically, which will stun the viewers. I can't give specifics, but oh boy!

I was left stunned after each one of them. This is due to the notion that when you watch a sports drama, you think of a set of people as teammates. But as the narrative starts to shift, it gets to a point where I don't trust a set of people as teammates anymore. You'll relate to it if you have watched it.

Those curveballs transform or, should I say, rather terraform into a teleplay that is so subversive that it keeps you guessing about what will happen to go further. You can’t know what will happen anymore. Who will stay in the Bluelock, or who won't stay? The teleplay, just like the source material, takes football/soccer, a known game, and twists it so that it becomes a royal rumble of sorts where it's a do-or-die situation.

Characters

In a sports genre, you'd find dialogues like "team work,” "for the team," etc. But what if they are selfish and play for themselves? Instead of working together, they work against each other.

How does that sound? Selfish? Narcissistic? Different? That’s how this anime’s characters are, making for an engaging watch. It reflects the grind in the corporate world, where everyone is eager to climb up the ladder.

Voice acting

Voice acting feels often ignored among mainstream audiences. This is because sometimes, as an audience, we tend to focus on the content rather than the way it is expressed or the way it's pronounced. So we just go with the flow. But to do that, to ignore them is a kind of injustice to their hard work. You may love or hate them, but just don’t ignore them, as they bring your favourite characters to life along with the animators. I still remember crying at Erwin Smith's speech in Attack on Titan. It was so powerful, emotionally resonating, and incredibly tragic.

Barou's voice actor was my favourite when I was reading the manga. I felt some strong voice that has the right kind of bass. You see, Barou is a person who thinks he’s the main guy, and the others are supporting roles. His nature is a double-edged sword that progresses interestingly as the show proceeds. So many emotions are associated with the character, like brashness, arrogance, skill, and ego—the unmaking of all that and remaking it into something new. There are a whole lot of emotions there. I was afraid that all these might not resonate, but the voice actor not only successfully brings them out but also enhances them multifold.

Negatives

Animation

I can't say this is as bad as The Seven Deadly Sins, but the animation is mediocre. The manga art is on another level, and the character design is alright, but the long takes and action shots feel hastily animated and edited. From the looks of things, it feels rushed.

Score

The score could have been better, given how intense the action feels during a football match. Instead, it feels very basic and generic. The intensity could have been revved up with some solid background score, but it feels watered down.

Honourable mention

The English dialogue and dubbing for The World’s Five in the last two episodes was as bad as the Squid Game VIP episode. It was laughable. For example, why does a British guy speak English with a Japanese accent?

Overall, Bluelock is entertaining and interesting to watch, and I highly recommend it.

Beta-Score

★★★.5

If you'd lack to watch Bluelock for yourself, you can watch the English dub or Japanese sub on Crunchyroll with a subscription or you can buy the Simuldub or Japanese sub on Amazon.

Until next time!