Story: 8/10 B+
Animation/Art: 1/10 F
Music: 5/10 C-
Acting (Subbed): 8/10 B+
Enjoyment: -17/10 F—
Overall: 2/10 F
TLDR:
FUCK!!! FUCKING FUCK FUCK FUCK!!! GOD FUCKING DAMNIT MY EYES AW FUCK! AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!! Why? Why god? Why do you allow such beautiful works of art to be decimated? Why do you allow those of greed to place their hands on a masterpiece and turn it to shit? (curls up in a ball). It hurts. It hurts so much. My soul is in pain. Ow.
Story:
The Blue Lock U-20 Arc in the manga is widely regarded as the best arc in the entire manga as of writing. It’s one of the most hype, intense, and rewarding arcs in not just sports animanga history, but of the entire industry as a whole. A beautiful battle of soccer, each team attacking, defending, and retaliating to form a story of 2 brothers fighting over their past, and a team of soccer players in a hunt for glory and survival. The pacing is feels lightning fast and yet it lasts for such a long time, giving you plenty of enjoyment over the period you spend gazing over the masterpiece of an arc. The show adapts it well, although I criticize the pacing a bit. As a result, I’ve knocked it down just a little bit, but it has not done nearly enough to completely ruin this aspect of the show. The tension, intensity, stress-making, sweat-inducing story is still just as present as ever, and in the best moments of the manga, the show even sometimes exceeds its source material.
Animation/Art:
By this point, we all know of the controversy surrounding the show. Blue Lock Season 2 was one of the most anticipated anime of the year. Blue Lock was the best-selling manga of 2023, setting up for what seemed to be a guaranteed spot in the sports anime wall of fame. Instead, it got put on the wall of shame for the absolute DOGSHIT animation. HOLY SHIT! IT’S THE WORST I’VE EVER SEEN!!! FUCK FUCK FUCK! WHY!?!?!?!?
The animation isn’t just bad. It’s an abomination. An affront to art and creativity itself. A tragedy that befell the entire industry of animation. Allow me to elaborate:
The animation is bad enough to actively detract from the viewing experience and make it difficult to follow. For example, when Shidou does a cool kickshot, the ruined sense of scale and lack of movement result in a hilarious panel in which the characters behind Shidou are disproportionately large and you can’t tell what the hell Shidou is doing. His leg seems to be broken, and the angle at which he is trying to hit the ball is difficult to interpret.
This isn’t the only issue with Shidou, though. Shidou is undeniably the biggest victim of the change to a more detailed artstyle for Blue Lock. Likely due to a lack of time, Shidou, whose face is the most detailed of all the characters, ends up having his face completely change to a children's cartoon art style every 30 seconds in the early episodes. And even in the later episodes, where the animation improves significantly, the lack of detail is often noticeable. It’s to the point where Shidou has more in common with Caillou and his art style than the rest of Blue Lock sometimes.
But I’m not done yet, oh goodness no. The lack of any movement in the show results in laughably bad panels, with minimal detail, staying on screen for several seconds. This gives plenty of time for the eyes and brain to realize in unison, “hey, why do they look like wet cardboard cutouts?”. This results in being instantly drawn out of the immersion of the show and losing all sense of sweat-inducing tension that the manga and season 1 had in abundance. This happens continually, throughout the entirety of the show until the very final few episodes, but by then it’s already far too little and too late, and even then, the animation is noticeably less fluid than any part of season 1.
The first season's animation was dynamic, fluid. You saw their feet kick the ball, their bodies push and interact with one another. It created stories of fighting without words and just visuals. Something so completely impossible with season 2 that it hurts. A direct result of a complete lack of movement is a following, lack of impact. When someone collides with something, both the collision and the movement towards the collision are vitally important to show the force and effort exerted. Whether that be feet slamming on the ground in a desperate sprint or kicking the soccer ball so hard it bends, that movement which conveys force and emotion is absent.
Animation can even characterize an individual. Take the two brothers, Sae and Rin, for example. The animation undergoes a tremendous improvement in the final episode, resulting in us finally being able to see the unique playstyles between Rin and Sae. Rin is in the flow, he moves looselye, chaotically, and instinctually. It’s clear from his actions that his mind is totally and completely obsessed with a singular idea: the domination of his brother. It makes up his world, and soccer is his weapon to kill. Sae, on the other hand, is smooth, controlled, almost effortless. His actions show how much Sae believes he outclasses, not only Blue Lock, but the very soccer match itself. He is in a league of his own here, and that much is made clear entirely through his soccer playstyle. This type of characterization through animation isn’t possible for most of the season because THERE’S A COMPLETE FUCKING LACK OF ANY MOVEMENT!!!
Now, the elephant in the room, episode 14 of Blue Lock Season 2 does indeed have the best animation of any episode in the series. In fact, it so completely outclasses any other episode, you would think it came from a high-budget movie instead. An unparalleled level of dynamic viewpoint movement, fluidity, and art style. The moment the movie bars came down from the top and bottom I knew I was in for ABSOLUTE CINEMA!!! It was such a huge improvement that even the NFL, YES, THE NATIONAL AMERICAN FOOTBALL LEAGUE, COMMENTED, “Imagine a whole season of this”. The loss of shading and detail, a technique popular nowadays called Kagenashi, gave the animators an incredible chance to prioritize fluidity and motion with never-before-seen quality in Blue Lock. And then, right after that, all the detail returns to the climax of the entire match, with an even more detailed art style than the rest of Blue Lock, with a more cinematic lighting, yet keeping that same fluidity from before. It’s a true masterpiece of an episode, and my personal favorite episode of that entire year.
But… one episode can not save the season from a whole season of SHIT!!!
Music:
Now, Blue Lock does have some pretty great music. During the latter episodes of the season, the music was used to great effect when the animation received a boost for some particularly well-animated scenes. The usage of the main theme in the final episode, especially, was beyond hype and completely sent me into a fan-crazed frenzy.
The problem is that for most of the season, I feel the soundtrack was horribly mistreated by the animation quality. Oftentimes, you’ll receive some genuinely banger soundtracks, but it get associated with a hilariously bad frame. The mixture of the two results in one moment is so horrendously bad, I feel like puking. It genuinely makes the entire scene laughable.
And truth be told, there are a few standout tracks, but there are also some tracks that I genuinely can’t understand. During one of the most intense moments in the show, this almost calming, quiet soundtrack is played… what? Why? I feel like there was a complete disconnect between the director and the composer on the intentions of this scene, or one of them was an idiot. It doesn’t match the required intensity or tension at all.
There’s just stuff that drags it down.
Acting (subbed):
Not much to say here besides the fact that the voice actors did an excellent job. Each one of them really worked hard for this, and you can feel it. Isagi and Rin’s VAs in particular did exceptional jobs, completely blowing away the rest of the already good cast. Nothing but praise here, an overall great job, although not the absolute best.
Conclusion:
Blue Lock, a manga that is destined to sail the canals of the sports manga industry, seemed equally destined to have an anime follow in its footsteps. Yet, against all expectations and reason, 8bit studio completely failed at this. It was a surefire success, just don’t do anything egregiously bad, and it would be all good, yet somehow they decided to do exactly that. I suspect that a splitting of time, budget, and manpower with the completely unnecessary Episode Nagi movie is what caused the complete lack of animation quality. I’m unimaginably disappointed that one of my most anticipated anime, adapting one of my favorite arcs in animanga, was treated so horrendously. I can only pray that the next season will get better treatment.
