Blue Lock

After reflecting on the current state of Japanese soccer, the Japanese Football Association decides to hire the enigmatic and eccentric coach Jinpachi Ego to achieve their dream of winning the World Cup. Believing that Japan has lacked an egoistic striker hungry for goals, Jinpachi initiates the Blue Lock—a prison-like facility where three hundred talented strikers from high schools all over Japan are isolated and pitted against each other. The sole survivor of Blue Lock will earn the right to become the national team's striker, and those who are defeated shall be banned from joining the team forever.

Selected to join this risky project is Yoichi Isagi, a striker who failed to bring his high school soccer team to the national tournament. After choosing to pass to a teammate who missed instead of scoring on his own, he could not help but wonder if the results would have been different had he been more selfish. Using this golden opportunity given by the Blue Lock Project, Yoichi aims to clear his doubts and chase his ultimate desire—to become the greatest striker in the world and lead Japan to World Cup glory.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

Blue Lock won the 45th Kodansha Manga Awards in the Shounen category in 2021.

The series has been published digitally in English by Kodansha USA since March 16, 2021, and in print since June 21, 2022. The series has also been simulpub through K Manga. It has also been released in French by Pika Édition since June 2, 2021; in Italian by Panini Comics since July 29, 2021; in Polish by Waneko since August 5, 2022; and in Portuguese by Distrito Manga since February 2025.

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Bachira, Meguru

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Isagi, Yoichi

Main

Nagi, Seishirou

Main

Itoshi, Rin

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Chigiri, Hyouma

Main

Kunigami, Rensuke

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Kaiser, Michael

Supporting

Barou, Shouei

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Shidou, Ryuusei

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Mikage, Reo

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Reviews

Nov 30, 2025

Zigizmund

Recommended

Preliminary (315/? eps)

A Sports Manga That Actually Hates Sports (and Friendship)

I’ve never cared about real-life sports, yet I adore sports anime/manga… because most of them aren’t really about sports at all. They’re about camaraderie, growth through teamwork, rivals who become friends, and the idea that “the people around you make you stronger.” Blue Lock takes that entire formula, sets it on fire, and pisses on the ashes.

Blue Lock is the most viciously original sports manga I’ve ever read. Here, egoism isn’t a flaw to overcome; it’s the only path to greatness. The premise is brutal: 300 young strikers are locked in a prison-like facility and ...

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Jun 18, 2025

sosmeos

Mixed Feelings

Preliminary (305/? eps)

by chapter 305, readers reach a major milestone, the end of the blue lock facility's selection process, this shouldn't really count as a spoiler, at some point it had to end, and this was endgame milestone 1. We know from Ego Jinpachi that the ultimate endgoal is to craft a team of japanese strikers to compete in the world. By chapter 305, we get closer to our answer but I'm here to say, there's no signs of the story stopping any time soon, maybe it'll get to 500 chapters easily. the protagonists reach a breaking point in their Blue Lock arc and must move towards ... their careers in the sport as they are given a choice to receive a salary from a major league team.

But is the journey worth it? I think so, it's a crazy, fun shonen battle style football game and the main complaint I see from people is that football is a team sport but the whole premise of blue lock is to make the best, most egotistical strikers into a full squad. You can see the flaw here, someone has to be goalie, someone has to play back and be defenders. This sacrifice of realism is just the beginning for readers' requires suspension of disbelief since there will be Jojo stand-like miasma creatures that emanate from these young lads, constant "i'm the only one who can do xyz" superpower creations, elongation of time, consistent hype growing and falling like a heart monitor. There's all the telltale signs of a power fantasy and sports manga where the protagonist must win. But I cannot deny it is entertaining and extremely beautiful to look at.

A major flaw is the aforementioned "im the only one who can xyz," there's a constant mental narration by the main character who is giving us all the information and by later chapters his confidence and ability grows so exponentially that he is mastermind of the field... until he's not: someone develops the exact counter to his situation, it's the classic tale of back and forth growth, and if you're into that, it'll be a blast. Over the whole course of the story there are major consequences for people you think are safe from elimination, this is a sports-based battle royale from the get-go so don't get attached to everyone. A recent decision from these 300s chapters is pretty foundation-breaking and I'm interested to see how a fan-favorite is kicked out from the squad and to see the repercussions.

There's a supernatural element that goes unexplained and we are yet to see the reality behind it, it is with a medically enhanced player but with so many main characters, this character becomes a side character to even more fleshed out players, it's kind of difficult to balance all the attention on new and old. But on the list of negatives being imbalance of attention to all characters, I'd say it's not that big a sin. It's a bit repetitive in its formulas for matches, but there are enough surprises and failures for each character that the narrative constantly inflates and deflates, as volatile as any football match I guess. It is not a football purist's manga, it is a blend of fantasy and Jojo and football, so if that sounds a bit fun, enjoy the art.

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Dec 2, 2025

tabbycatcircus

Not Recommended

Preliminary (321/? eps)

First of all I know nothing about soccer/football (or rather just "sportsball" to me) and have never completed a sports anime or manga, so this isn't coming from a place of feeling like the manga is inaccurate or over-the-top or battle-shouneny or whatever. After binging about 100 chapters in one day and having caught up, I'm currently trying to process everything that has happened to this point and its thematic value. But let's start with the easy stuff.

A point that has bothered me ever since the beginning of the manga: the idea that Japan's collectivism makes them shit at soccer/football. Ok, that's a compelling premise ... that really makes me feel the subversiveness of the cultural context, except for the fact that their women's team has already won a World Cup, which is never addressed. Makes me wonder what the author is trying to say about women and their achievements by omission, because if Japanese women were able to win against women from non-collectivist societies in a sport that's more individualistic, then collectivism isn't the main problem. Also, it shouldn't matter that women's soccer is "less intense", because intensity or high stakes or popularity of women's sports should have nothing to do with collectivism vs. individualism. To counter this, you can say “well maybe the women’s WC win didn’t exist in the Blue Lock world” which… is a fair point, however, the new problem now has to do with the wider societal commentary on what improves a nation’s international standing, because all the focus in now on improving the men’s team when more “ego” would help the women’s team win world cups, too.

On that subject, I don't expect any focus on female characters in a story about men's sports (which is why I avoid men's sports manga), but the only named, regularly appearing female character... hm, not sure how to feel about her portrayal. Her large chest is pointed out constantly but at least is never drawn in a distasteful way, and you do get many panels highlighting the male character's nude bodies and focusing on what makes them attractive; but then again, the males get character development and thematic value on top of that, she doesn't. Sure, everyone is an object to some degree but she is more of an object than other characters and that's bothersome, especially when there's potential for a compelling dynamic with Jinpachi Ego and we only get crumbs of relationship development (platonic or romantic doesn't matter).

TLDR; I'm dissatisfied at the very least with the messages about women in this manga, something exacerbated by the point of women's sports earlier.

The hype of binging successive matches and beautiful artwork has finally passed (there is a reason why I binge read this), so let's look at the thematic value of everything else. Anyway, from the start, Jinpachi says that your soccer career ends if you don't make it in Blue Lock. First of all, that just ends up not being true for no reason, Blue Lock ends up producing a TEAM not a single player, and second of all, it was obviously all talk; there was never any reason to believe that losing in BL would end soccer careers, what measures were even in place to ensure that, the soccer higher-ups aren't even united on their sports ideology or whatever. This is a very poor foundation for the rest of the manga, because it's all about what makes a good striker, you shouldn't pass to others, etc, yet to filter people out, they make them play in teams. But in the end, even someone like me understands, it's a fucking team sport isn't it? Hence why a "team" was formed at this point in the story, lmfao. My suspension of disbelief finally broke when the Blue Lockers inspired some foreign team to be individualistic and completely changed their playstyle. Nah that's enough for me. I read this because I had a feeling that it would be a while before I'm in the mood to read a similar manga, and I guess I found out part of the reason why.

Character relationship wise, for a manga that can be abbreviated as "BL" and features a lot of "character x character" titles for combos, of course there's going to be intense relationships between male characters; however it was very underwhelming, even for someone like me who doesn't even read Boy's Love. Nobody really has friends or people they like being with, and nobody really is friends with Isagi the damn protagonist because the whole point of his character is that he inspires people to develop their own ego and evolve, so even if they do develop a friendship with him they're eventually consumed by ego or whatever and they stop having powerful moments together beyond a sick combo, and it doesn't help that protagonist-kun keeps insulting everyone to the very end. So do these people even like playing soccer with their teammates? There's only one relationship that can truly be classified as good friends, but the current development of one of them isn't satisfying because it was setting him up to believe in friendship and teamwork instead of hyper-individualism, but then he gets an ego-fueled reason to play soccer out of nowhere in the recent chapter.

Overall, this manga is not completely my taste at best and thematically worrying at worst, but I can't really hate this manga with its questionable themes because the ideology really resonated with me at this point in my life. All aspects of life are just extensions of the need to survive, and if you don't believe in yourself, you die; there's a very raw and evolutionary message here. There's the point it excels best at, drilling in this idea of never being content with where you are and always aiming for growth and surpassing all your obstacles, also very impactful, because for me, when you do develop "ego" your life really changes, you know how to advocate for yourself, and it really does feel like you're actually living.

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Poll: Blue Lock Chapter 328 Discussion deg - Dec 9	16 replies	by PrinceLied »» Yesterday, 11:19 AM
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