Manga / Blue Lock

May the best striker win.

In order to claim victory in the World Cup, the Japanese Football Association decides to enlist the help of an eccentric coach called Jinpachi Ego. He decides that the proper course of action is to raise an egotistical striker with unparalleled hunger for scoring goals.

His plan? Confine 300 players from all over the country into a prison-like facility called Blue Lock and pit them against each other until only the strongest one remains. Those eliminated will be banned from playing football in a professional capacity, while the sole survivor will become the national team’s striker.

Enter Yoichi Isagi, a striker who failed to bring his high school soccer team to the national tournament because he chose to pass to a teammate (who missed) instead of scoring on his own. He then receives a letter of invitation to Project Blue Lock, and he decides to join and chase after his dream of joining the national team and becoming the world’s best striker.

This unlikely blend of sports and survival game manga is penned by Muneyuki Kaneshiro (of As the Gods Will fame) and illustrated by Yuusuke Nomura (Dolly Kill Kill) and began serialization in Weekly Shōnen Magazine in 2018. A TV anime adaptation aired in October 8 2022.

A spin-off manga named Episode Nagi is released in June 9 2022 focusing on Nagi Seishiro which can be read online here. The illustrator for the spin-off is Kouta Sannomiya while Muneyuki Kaneshiro returns as the story-writer of the spin-off.

Spoilers up to the end of the first anime season are unmarked.

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Provides examples of:

• 11th-Hour Superpower: Characters routinely enhance and expand their abilities during heated matches.
• Accidental Athlete: Nagi Seishiro was dragged into playing football because Reo could see his potential. Rin Itoshi started playing football when he accidentally scored a goal during one of his brother's matches.
• The Ace: The goal of the eponymous project is to make one in the form of a striker who will lead Japan to win a World Cup. In a smaller scale, this trope can be applied to quite a few characters in the story.
  • Rin Itoshi is the main one in Blue Lock, with his introduction in the Second Selection (hitting a ball he put in the air himself with another shot) quickly establishing him as this and his later Rank 1 only confirming it.
  • Noel Noa, the current best football player in the world and an idol to many of the main cast.
  • Isagi Yoichi is quite literally called "Blue Lock's Ace" after his showings in the Blue Lock vs U-20 match.
• Actor Allusion:
  • Katsuyuki Konishi voices a stylish and flamboyant character. Sounds familiar?
  • This is not the first time Takahiro Sakurai and Kōki Uchiyama voice a pair of siblings either, with the role of the elder and younger brother respectively.
    • Talking about Kōki Uchiyama this is the THIRD time he's voiced a sports character with complex towards their older brother.
  • Soma Saito apparently has a few roles involving Long-Haired Pretty Boy Bishounen.
  • Nobunaga Shimazaki and Yūma Uchida have again, voice a close duo who had a breakup arc due to Poor Communication Kills.
• Alliterative Name: A few of the characters are named like this such as Noel Noa, Isagi's idol, and Haru Hayate of the U-20.
• All for Nothing: After being beaten by Rin's team during the start of the Second Selection, Isagi vows to beat Rin and reunite with him. He goes through quite a few difficult games, evolving each time and almost being eliminated at one point... only to lose to Rin again later in the rematch. At least he got to reunite with Bachira!
• All There in the Manual: The Blue Lock official twitter has trivia and Q&A's for the characters in the #ブルーロックキャラクターに１問１答！ hashtag.
• Always Someone Better: Rin for all the boys at Blue Lock. Sae for Rin.
• And You Thought It Would Fail: In-Universe example in regards to how the rest of Japan saw the Blue Lock project. While the proposal to run the project was officiated and accepted, public opinion of the project, including the JFA thought that the Blue Lock project is a waste of time and won't succeed. And when the JFA pulled an In-Universe Executive Meddling in order to stomp down the project, they easily accepted Ego's deal that the surviving 35 players by the third selection will fight against the current U-20 roster along with Itoshi Sae, snickering at the thought of having to fight a bunch of Forwards who are not even pro's and thinking that they had it in the bag. Not only did the Blue Lock eleven won against the U-20, the project has also gained international attention through the match against the U-20 and thus, the JFA had no choice but to let the project continue and no longer had the means to defund or shut down the program and facility.
• Artistic License – Sports: There are no superpowers in Blue Lock, but the author sure does have a bit of fun with his portrayal of football.
  • An easy example is that a team made up of 11 strikers (one playing as as a GK for the first time ever in an official match!) wins over Japan's official U-20 team.
  • The idea of players stealing the ball from their own teammates is unheard of in actual football, much less basing their entire playstyle around it such as Barou does with Isagi during the Second Selection.
  • The "Blue Lock Man" is a funny case: the hologram made with data from the top goalkeepers in the world... can't seem to catch a single shot.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: Jinpachi Ego’s philosophy on what is needed to be the ideal striker. Baro’s philosophy before his metaphorical defeat to Isagi.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Isagi's playstyle, making up for his lack of innate physical ability and individual techniques such as dribbling. Metavision is this cranked up to eleven.
• Breather Episode: The 2 week day off after the U-20 vs Blue Lock Eleven match serve as this as everyone goes on a break.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Nagi Seishiro. Besides having a natural talent for trapping and shooting, he has some of the better physical specs in Blue Lock - being taller than most other characters and not really losing a lot of physical duels. He makes up for it in lack of motivation most of the time.
• Cain and Abel: The relationship between the Itoshi brothers is pretty much non-existent on Sae's part and very troubled in Rin's part.
• Can't Catch Up: During the Second Selection, Naruhaya has this realization towards Isagi when the latter manages to adapt himself to use Naruhaya's ability when he failed to do the same thing just before.
• Cast Full of Pretty Boys: While every single character had their own distinct character designs, the male characters particularly have a varying range of appearances from Bishounen to Hunk.
• Cast Of Snow Flakes: Each of the cast had their own distinct designs from eyes, body shape and face. Even the minor characters also had their own unique designs.
• Career-Ending Injury: Chigiri. He almost got one in the past, and it’s the fear of finally getting one such injury that prevented him from giving it his all.
• Characterization Marches On: After the end of the first phase, many of the Blue Lock participants focus have gone from improving themselves in order to stay in the program to improving their own talents and skills to the world as the Blue Lock project's philosophy and how much the Blue Lock participants apply that philosophy is going to be tested against world class players. While the Blue Lock projects core It's All About Me mentality is still in play, the participants are no longer under threat of being evicted and having their careers as football players jeopardized through said eviction.
• The Chess Master: Rin Itoshi's playstyle revolves around this. He manipulates the other players in their matches. Isagi is also this to a lesser extent the more he develops as a football player.
• Chromosome Casting: As this is a manga focusing on professional male football, there are hardly any female characters of importance in the story. The only one that is plays commentary when she appears due to her main job being administrative and dealing with all the legal issues to do with the Blue Lock project together with Ego.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: There's been a few...
  • Team Z’s first match against Team X ends in disaster.
  • The first time Isagi’s team played against Rin’s team in the second selection.
  • Rin, Isagi, Bachira, Aryu, and Yokimitsu against the Team World 5.
• Dare to Be Badass: The entire story is predicated upon this. Part of the mindset being developed is not being afraid of making clutch plays, especially in seemingly impossible situations.
  • Isagi in particular fits this, especially during second selection as he picks on players far stronger than himself to not just test his skills, but to evolve.
• Darker and Edgier: Than sports manga like Captain Tsubasa. Blue Lock is the kind of The Spartan Way training that other stories explicitly show as the wrong way of creating athletes.
• Deconstruction: A lot of traditional sports manga tropes are taken to task here, especially when viewed from a anti-spokon lens.
  • Team Spirit is taken to serious task by the plot. For starters, coordination in a group game like soccer is important, but there's only so much improvement that can be had when coordinating. If the team focuses too much on coordinating and working together instead of making strong plays as an individual, then you just end up with a weak generalist team. The Blue Lock project is designed to cultivate players who seek out strong plays to be the best, so that the team can be supported by players who are willing and capable enough to make the plays that ultimately clutch out the game.
  • The Determinator trope is usually seen as a benefit for the main character of a sports manga, since it shows their willingness to push past their limits and succeed. Here, Isagi gains his own determination to be the best... by "devouring" the skills of other, better players. This is treated with a disturbing level of malice, especially since Isagi begins to enjoy kicking other players out of the program. Thus, Isagi can be seen as the beginning of the traditional Might Makes Right villains that populate sports manga, except in the protagonist position.
  • Notably, the series also deconstructs the idea of being the "protagonist" in a team sport game. As the Blue Lock program continues, Isagi realizes that egocentric players are predictable due to their need to be the "protagonist" of the game. They are the ones who want to make the big plays and be the star, meaning they often purposely cultivate situations that make their skills stand out. By chapter 198, he outright realizes that each egocentric player fits together in a team and must play off of each other to be successful. Thus, Isagi avoids going after other strikers, and instead goes after where they will act, allowing him to defeat players better than him. Natural skill means nothing if you become predictable, even against natural-born monsters like Nagi.
• Decon-Recon Switch:
  • For the first 150 chapters centering on the first phase of the program, Blue Lock deconstructs teamwork-centered sports stories and makes it a plot point to why the project is set up the way it is. Ego drills into the players that relying wholly on team dynamics makes an individual player less prepared to go up against world-class players on their own, and encourages drawing out their ego and strengths to prevent the players (and the Japanese pro scene) from growing stagnant.
  • By the end of the first selection, however, teamwork is not entirely thrown out — Team X playing second string to their striker Barou, as the initial Blue Lock philosophy encouraged, means only Barou makes it to the next stage, while Teams V and Z are able to get out of the first selection with their teams fully intact as they grow to have a roster of members who are all capable of scoring on their own outside of their assigned positions on the field. So the core theme was softened to "while football is a team sport that isn't meant to be played fully alone, that doesn't mean that you have to throw away your individuality for the team".
  • This is further emphasized in the Neo Egoist League, where a team like Ubers emphasizes teamwork and business-like organization, even if it's based on exploiting each individual players' ability to the max..
• Defeat Means Friendship: Most of the boys Isagi ends up being close with are players that he defeated or had defeated him. Nagi Seishiro being the most prominent example of this.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Micheal Kaiser calls Isagi by his first name which is considered presumptuous in Japan, if not outright rude. Although Kaiser is a foreigner he has definitely interacted with enough Japanese players to be aware of this, which implies that he does it to mock Isagi and display the lack of respect he has for him.
• Desperate Object Catch: When Reo first meets him, gaming-obsessed Nagi performs an acrobatic maneuver in order to stop his device from hitting the floor. The incident convinces Reo that Nagi is capable of becoming a star football player by his side.
• Down to the Last Play: Most of the matches end up being fairly close with the scoring of a single goal be enough to determine a match. This is also the case for the U-20 match, with Blue Lock's all-striker team barely making a 3-4 win in their favor. This is also purposely invoked by Ego, until the clock hits 0, there is always a chance to score a goal.
• The Dreaded: Sae Itoshi. He’s a prodigy football player touted as the future of Japan’s men’s soccer, a member of the New Generation 11, and a member of the Real Madrid Youth Team and his genius makes him a more formidable opponent for everyone in Blue Lock to face.
• Dwindling Party: As the story continues, many more participants of the Blue Lock project were eventually unable to make it into the cut of the first phase of the project and only 35 ^noteBefore The Reveal that Kunigami entered the Wild Card room and caught up to everyone else who managed to survive and pass the first phase, that is of the participants made it after the third selection.
• Enlightened Self-Interest: Ego argues, that in the Team Sport of Soccer, Egotist Strikers are the best ones.
• Evolutionary Pressure Cooker: The manga uses this concept to produce a powerful striker, trapping the best amateur strikers in Japan in a building and forcing them to compete against one another, with all defeated banned from professional play, so that the desperation to survive at the cost of others will both further hone their skills and force them to develop a ruthless, self-centered mentality the organizer believes necessary for the strongest striker.
• Executive Meddling: In-Universe example. For the third selection, Ego plans to run it so that only 5 of the remaining 35 participants would remain, but complaints from the other participating students' parents and that of the JFA, who all plan to shut down the Blue Lock project completely, cause Ego to change the third selection's plans as a round to choose the main players who will play for the match against Japan's own U-20 and showcase the Blue Lock project's participants growth live for the world to see. Had it not been for those complication, Ego would have continued to run the project until there is only one participant left.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Though he keeps his unkept cut from before the start of the series, Kunigami comes back from the Wild Card with longer hair and bangs that barely manage to not cover his eyes.
• Eye Colour Change: A character having achieved Flow is mainly indicated by their sclera becoming black during a significant play, as seen when Isagi manages to go past Rin and Shidou to score a goal himself during the U-20 Blue Lock tryouts.
• Fallen Hero: Kunigami comes back from the Wild Card as a completely different person, refusing to acknowledge his "hero" discourse from the start of the series. Though he doesn't become an antagonist, his new personality is pretty much the opposite from his old one and his relationship with the other Blue Lock players become a more explicit rivalry than before.
• Famous, Famous, Fictional: Noel Noa, a fictional German player, is often spoken of in the same vein as Messi, Ronaldo, Neymar, Kagawa and many other real-life soccer players in Blue Lock.
• Fanservice: For female readers, due to the gratuitous amount of shirtless boys working out and bathing.
• Furo Scene: Quite a few already! A plot relevant one happens when Isagi meets up with Kunigami in the baths during the Second Selection, leading them to set up their 3v3 match later.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Nagi towards Isagi after their defeat to Rin's team during the first match of the Second Selection. The latter becomes hopeless when he realizes Nagi would be chosen if they got defeated again, prompting Nagi to outright tell him to "get it together" and even "work harder" (ironic, considering who is saying it). Isagi gets over it quickly though.
• Gilded Cage: Technically what the Blue Lock facility constitutes as. It is a hi-tech facility that allows the participants to practice and improve their own skills whenever and however they want... but they are not allowed to leave the facility in any form unless they performed well throughout the matches in the selections. While the goal scoring points allow players to be given some leeway such as having a day outside the facility, very few players are skilled enough to score that much. The participants' access to whatever is going on outside the facility are also limited with their phones confiscated unless they perform well throughout the selections, thus defaulting the participants to focus on improving their own skills and limits as football players than to worry about opinions of the whole world weighing and pressuring them, and thus giving most of the participants the incentive to improve by their own accord. It's hardly a wonder some of the parents were incensed when they learned what was really going on in Blue Lock that an In-Universe Executive Meddling had to be done.
• Good Parents: Isagi's parents are present (which already puts them above most shonen protagonist parents) and constantly supportive of his goals of becoming a professional football player, even though they remark themselves they don't really get the sport.
• Hot-Blooded: All of them, in one way or another.
• Improbable Sports Skills: High-school footballers display skills even professionals would gawk at. The players' weapons range from only somewhat improbable (e.g. Chigiri's speed and Bachira's dribbling) to nearly impossible (e.g. Nagi's super-traps and Reo's ability to copy any move with 99% accuracy).
• Individualism vs. Collectivism:
  • One of the manga's main themes. To Jinpachi Ego, while a "collectivist" player can make their team better, they'll rarely be game-changers. This creates a balanced team, but not exactly a winning one. The Blue Lock project aims to create "individualistic" strikers focused on their own success (in the form of scoring goals) that'll be game-changers, something the Japanese national team currently lacks.
  • This is later showcased in the U-20 match against the Blue Lock Eleven. The U-20 team had a strong defense against the Blue Lock Eleven's offense at first, representing the "Collectivism" of the current Japanese football mindset, they eventually fall short against the Blue Lock Eleven's raw offensive power and had to rely on Sae and Shidou, who are technically "borrowed" players, to even score a single goal. Meanwhile, the "Individualism" of the Blue Lock Eleven showcases that everyone member of the team can both defend the goal and score, and thus had a stronger offensive power with just as good defenses in the team.
• Irony: After the U-20 match which ends in Blue Lock's victory, Isagi meets up with an old friend, the forward that Isagi passed to back in the first chapter but missing, costing his school's goal, with said friend talking about Isagi being lucky with his last shot at the U-20 match, and of how lucky Isagi was to be chosen for the Blue Lock project and how he wished to be chosen as well. This downplayed and ignores all the hardships that Isagi has gone through in his time in Blue Lock and how everything that led up to that moment are all through Isagi's own skill and merit. Isagi notes the irony that had he not been chosen but said friend did, he might have said the same thing to him.
• It's All About Me: Invoked. Ego's idea of cultivating the best football striker in the nation is based off of examples of other highly successful foreign teams and their common thread— that their success was tied to a striker who would only think of themselves as the star and their teammates as just a means to an end. All of the protagonists' training is meant to make them more honest with that selfish desire. Amusingly, by the second major phase of the program, that same mentality is put under just as much scrutiny; a player that is exclusively trying to make themselves the MVP of the group and only works to make themselves look good isn't a reliable asset on a football team and proves themselves to be predictable.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • Ego's reason for focusing on creating the best striker, and his disdain for teamwork-based football is drenched in this trope. As he himself states, Japanese football has top-notch organizational skills, but that doesn't matter if it means those skills don't result in scoring goals.
  • Itoshi Sae early on has a "The Reason You Suck" Speech about Japanese soccer as a whole which comes out as a complete insult to football players all over Japan, but he isn't exactly wrong that Japan as it is wasn't a big power in the universal football scene as people believe and that's not getting into the fact that except for Anri, the other faculty members of the Japanese Football Association are all Corrupt Corporate Executives in one way or another as they don't see any interest in improving Japan's soccer scene and are only satisfied with raking in cash from the matches and the teams.
• Jerk Jock:
  • Shohei Baro before his awakening due to losing to Isagi who kept "devouring" his plays.
  • Sae Itoshi spent a good portion of his time insulting and pulling pot shots at the Japanese football players due to his own disappointment at how stagnant the Japanese football scene is. However, he is willing to give praise and respect when it is due such as respecting Shidou's skill and Isagi's own talents.
• The Lancer: Nagi is this to Isagi throughout the Second Selection, with his innate talent making up for Isagi's lack of abilities to go along with his analytical brain.
• Light/Darkness Juxtaposition: Invoked explicitly with Barou's awakening during the Second Selection 3v3 match, when he adopts the idea of being the darkness that will devour other players' (in particular Isagi's) light as his play style.
• Lighter and Softer: Due to the first two chapters of Episode Nagi taking place months before Blue Lock officially began, it lacks most of the brutality of the survival game-esque nature that Blue Lock has and hence, lighter in tone. At least until the second half of Episode Nagi chapter 2 where Blue Lock officially began in earnest.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Due to the Gilded Cage nature of the Blue Lock program and facility, all of the participants are unaware of the going-ons outside, including how there were attempts by the JFA to de-fund the program and how complaints over the program eventually grew that the JFA had to step in and change Ego's plan for the third selection. The bright side to this is that this allows the participants to actually focus on improving their existing abilities without worrying about external factors and opinions of the world breathing down their necks.
• Meaningful Echo: Isagi's use of Barou's own "You need to move so I can score" during the 3v3 Second Selection match, emphasizing just how hard the roles had been reversed by that point.
• Motivational Lie: At the end of the First Selection, it's revealed that the upper four stratums and thus the player rankings of 220 upwards did not exist. Every single player in the project was led to believe that they were in the bottom group of Blue Lock, for the express purpose of getting the players to fight even harder to survive. It is only after the first stage of the Second Selection that actual rankings are doled out.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Several professional soccer clubs and soccer players have some likeness to actual soccer players such as Messi and Manshine City being a ringer to the real life Manchester City.
• One Cast Member per Cover: The manga volumes have a different character on each cover.
• Personality Powers: "Weapons" is more apt, but most players tend to fall into this trope.
  • Isagi's Direct Shot weapon is one of the most simple abilities in the series but it's high speed and precision makes it very effective. Fitting for the protagonist who is meant to be a generally average highschool kid amongst varying levels of eccentric geniuses.
  • Bachira's dribbling often sees him compared to a bee buzzing around the field due to how hard it is to catch him when he gets going. He is also regarded as one of the most unhinged players in Blue Lock which is saying a lot.
  • Kunigami's weapon is his cannon like left footed shot which is extremely powerful to the point of making Isagi keel over when he's hit by it in the stomach. Not unlike a powerful punch from a superhero which is what he aspires to be on the football field.
  • Chigiri at first, is too afraid of tearing his ACL again and never playing for the rest of his life. But after breaking out of this mindset, he decides to leave the past behind and look ahead as the new version of himself, as if he's only moving forward without looking back.
  • Nagi's trapping ability brings the ball to a complete stop and allows him to change the course of the game at his behest. His most notable character trait is his laziness, and he only gets motivated when an external force provokes him.
  • Reo is an all-rounder who excels in all aspects without having a specific weapon. At least until the 3rd selection when he develops his Chameleon Style copy ability He's also a rich kid who has had everything in life handed to him.
• Persona Non Grata: The consequences of failing to survive in Blue Lock is to basically lose all your chances of becoming a professional football player in Japan. While that means a hopeful could still seek a place in local clubs or international leagues, they're still normal teenagers, so that's not always going to be an option. Kira Ryousuke was the first named cast to get this hit him before more followed over the course of the series. Phase 2 is far more merciful, as while the top striker will supposedly still be on the new World Cup team, the rest of the survivors have the world's best leagues watching and will be able to get requests to join their clubs.
• The Power of Friendship: Subverted by definition. Blue Lock's purpose and emphasis on players developing their ego makes for a story where friendships are a non-factor in character power ups - or have the opposite effect. This is quite explicit in Rin's case during the U-20 game, when his final awakening happens partly because he strongly rejects the idea of the other Blue Lock players "being there to help him", considering it disgusting.
• Prequel: The first chapter of the spin off, Episode Nagi, takes place half a year before the main story officially began as the end of the chapter has Anri in a call with Ego about scouting out Nagi and Mikage for the Blue Lock project before it catches up to the start of Blue Lock proper.
• Reality TV: Invoked and In-Universe example.The second phase of the Blue Lock Project now involves the matches being showcased as a reality show named the "Neo EGOIST League" to the world at large, where players who can make the best impression to the world, with the Blue Lock players getting auctioned through said showcase and those had the highest rank counted via the yearly salary offer from various clubs will be selected to become part of the new Japanese U-20's roster for the next world cup. Those who couldn't make a huge impression to the soccer clubs all over the world would be cut out from being selected in the new U-20 roster and the Blue Lock participants are no longer under threat of having to be kicked out of the project and their football careers jeopardized in this phase.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Bachira's the Red Oni to Isagi's Blue, with his carefree and chaotic personality contrasting with the latter's more gentle and straight-man-type one.
• The Rival: Rin Itoshi is this for all the members of Blue Lock due to being The Ace and top player of the whole facility. His brother, Sae Itoshi, is this for Rin.
• Shown Their Work: Despite being a teen genius who made it into the European league and is part of the New Generation 11 rising star, Sae was placed in the second division of the Real Madrid Youth team instead of the first division. This matches the laws in Spain that players under the age of eighteen are not allowed to seek a professional contract with soccer clubs until they are of age, hence Sae's placement in the second division when theoretically, his skills would have made him be placed on the first division, as he was still 17 at the start of the story until his reappearance in the third selection of the Blue Lock project.
• Smart People Wear Glasses: Subverted. Zantetsu is not the sharpest tool in the shed. Kenyu Yukimiya, on the other hand, is the very definition of this trope.
• The Smurfette Principle: Zigzagged Trope. While female family members do appear, the only major female character throughout the manga is Anri.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: In spite of the Blue Lock project's proposal being accepted and officiated, voices of concerns eventually grew louder among the parents and families of the Blue Lock project participants by the third selection, fearing the psychological toll the participants are facing among other concerns, that it requires an In-Universe Executive Meddling. Though, given that said "Executives" are all greedy jerks who did it as an opportunity to get rid of and stomp down the Blue Lock project, Ego easily accepted the meddling to change the way the third selection is run to prove them wrong and show that the Blue Lock Project still had some merits and that the players who made it this far in the project show a far decent progress than what they all believed.
• Training from Hell: The Blue Lock program is essentially a non-lethal version of Deadly Game stories like Squid Game, only with the players putting their chance of ever being part of a national football team on the line rather than their lives, and like those other stories becoming willing to do anything to win/survive quickly develops into second nature.
• Translation Convention: Averted in the end of the Second Selection. The World 5 speak English with each other, as a group of five players from different countries would in real life. Funnily enough, only Rin seems to actually speak english, so we're treated to broken English in the form of Bachira, Aryu and Tokimitsu trying to study after the match.
• Those Two Guys: Raichi and Igaguri are not seen actually playing a match after the Second Selection, but they're always around to react to whatever happens in the plot. As they're characters easily recognizable to the reader and have been there since the start, they serve this role well. It's particularly noticeable during the Neo Egoist League, when they even go to the Germany stratum along with Isagi, the protagonist.
• Tournament Arc:
  • The second, third, and fourth stages of the Second Selection is just that: a tournament style series of stages where players in teams verse other teams in which the losing team loses a player. The first team to obtain five players moves on to the Third Selection.
  • The second phase of the Blue Lock project involves tournament like matches being streamed and recorded for the world to see and it's more a chance for the Blue Lock participants who passed the first phase to showcase their own skills and worth to the world and get chosen to be part of Japan's new U-20 roster.
• Underdogs Never Lose: Subverted. In particular, Isagi’s team loses twice against Rin’s team. Plus, the twist after first selection means Isagi is not as much as an underdog as we believed.
• Unwinnable Training Simulation: World Five are paid to crush Blue Lock players to show them how far they still have to go. And that's exactly what they do.
• We Have Become Complacent: In the U-20 Vs. Blue Lock Eleven match, Aiku and the rest of the U-20, despite their experience and strong team foundation, were forced to meet the harsh reality that all of them are weak players and lack any individual raw power against the Blue Lock Eleven due to being too influenced by the "collectivist" play style of Japan's Football for so long.
• We Meet Again: During the Neo Egoist League, the Ubers team pulls this towards the Bastard team. Understandable since they have Niko and Barou, both players who want payback on Isagi after their defeats to him.
• Willfully Weak: In the end of the U-20 match, Shidou mentions and hinted that Sae could have easily won and curb stomp the whole match but Sae is purposefully downplaying and holding back from his usual plays to test out the Blue Lock program participants and see how much his brother, Rin, had grown as a football player. By the end of the match, he bore witness to Isagi's growth and see him as someone who could potentially be able to become Japan's best striker to take on the world.
• World of Technicolor Hair: The story starts off in the usual range for a shonen, with orange- and blue-haired characters but not a lot of crazy colors in the early Team Z arcs... doesn't stay that way for long, though.
  • In particular, the author seems to have a knack for two-tone color combinations: Bachira's bee-inspired black and yellow, Gagamaru's black and white, Shidou's blond with pink highlights, Oliver Aiku's neon green and purple, Kaiser's blond and blue... the list goes on.
  • Unlike other examples of non-digestive effects, said hair colors are acknowledged to be real (or at least downplayed to neutral tones of color) in the story, with characters being referred by their hair colors such as "blondie" for Bachira, "redhead" for Chigiri, "Kunigami Orange" (used as a nickname) or "bleached hair" for Kaiser.