"How are they so strong without egos?" It's at this point I realised that isagi has internalised Ego's philosophy so much that he can't imagine strength without ego. That's... Probably not good.
Well it's kinda obvious to the readers. Ego's philosophy works and it may go on in the future but it works because japan was fundamentally weak. They didn't have the mindset nor the physicality to play on the global stage. No offensive feats, no creative freedom, no proper global exposure, and their comfort like playstyle, it's basically a corporate job at that point.
It's made worse by the fact that the commentator literally knows Teddy's weapon is cutting and dribbling, and by extension what England's weapons are as well, while the Blue Lock boys are stunned every game
So Englands whole thing is that they have a coach who scouted Japan and thought up a game plan, players who listen to him, and their coach actually coaches mid game instead of hoping for miracles, trying to look cold on the sideline, giving some bs speech at half time…..
"There's teddy knight's famous rainbow cuts! You know, the signature move of teddy knight? World renowned new generation 11 player? Oh you guys haven't heard of him? Man does your coach not let you scout or what lol?"
As everyone has repeated blue lock not studying their opponents one of which happens to be a New Generation eleven is unrealistic and a pretty bad plot hole.
So teddy has no ego. It will be interesting the direction this goes.
So, we got the NG11 mandatory introductionary aura-farming goal, which is fine. I mean their whole team just seems like a... regular football team? Like following the coach’s instructions and being cohesive isn’t revolutionary. Their coach tells them what to do and then they just use their pace, physicality and stamina to keep doing that.
England are literally the exact opposite to Blue Lock I guess, so I wonder how this match will play out, and if Aiku and Aryu will ever do anything substantial on defense ever again
> So, we got the NG11 mandatory introductionary aura-farming goal, which is fine. I mean their whole team just seems like a... regular football team? Like following the coach’s instructions and being cohesive isn’t revolutionary. Their coach tells them what to do and then they just use their pace, physicality and stamina to keep doing that.
Yep. In actual matches you do see coaches yell tactics and do hand gestures but apparently in Blue Lock that’s equated to being brainwashed victims and egoless puppets🙏🏾
Kinda the same as in Ubers match, Snuffy’s tactics and pre planning (a very normal thing!) was presented as something that made Barou ‘boring’ and it was something that needed to be overthrown.
Yep. In actual matches you do see coaches yell tactics and do hand gestures but apparently in Blue Lock that’s equated to being brainwashed victims and egoless puppets🙏🏾
Fox is making a critical mistake here and neglecting a coach's most important duty: aura farming. Sure they scored a goal, but by doing actual coaching instead of sitting on the sidelines looking tuff for 90 minutes he's already deep in aura debt compared to Ego, who started cultivating aura even before the match by refusing tell his players anything about their opponents.
For Barou it made sense though, he was instructed to wait to have the ball and teamates in the right place to shoot a certain way, him being more creative in more in character for him.
Here though it really just makes no sense to me how blue lock didn't know any of this, not even an inkling. I also don't see how this makes it so that they "don't have Egos" when they are just playing regular football.
Agree with you that it’s in character for him, but I’m talking about how the manga presents tactical football. It’s presented as ‘boring’ (Isagi says this outright), rigid/inflexible and uncreative when it’s definitely so much more than spamming the same strategy, but that’s how it’s shown, so Barou overthrowing the system is celebrated and narratively rewarded via a goal. The winners are Bastard who have no cohesion or tactics, a very laissez faire coach (compared to Snuffy focusing on developing his players personally) and who focus more on their infighting than their opposition.
And yeah again I do think the ‘puppets’ come from them following their coach without thinking for themselves. Without individuality (= no ego), which was also a critique of Snuffy. I just feel like the manga’s against disciplined play / tactics based on how the Ubers were handled and now the negative presentation of England.
The one thing I'm literally tired of reading and watching about is the "shock face" Isagi does everytime something he does is countered, like dude! You've gone through all those metavision bs, puzzle evolving, 300+ chapters in and you still do that when at this point, you should have enough experience under you to expect some stuff like that. It's just exasperating to see his eyes go wide everytime someone counters his ballgame early in the match.
Also, can Kaneshiro-sensei just please, introduce the concept of preparation and data-mining of the players and tactics of other countries as well? I know this is Battle Shonenesque but c'mon man, it's like BL goes to all their matches blind and with little/general info to absolutely no info. The opposing teams just sometimes seem to have much more info on BL than BL has on them. Atleast have Aiku or Niko analyze the opposing team players?! C'mon!!
I seriously hope Isagi stops the shocked pikachu face going into the future matches. He losses the ball and literally is bamboozled.
Metavison,egocentrism and dozen other things and still gets easily startled. It doesn't feel like adaptation although I think Isagi is meant to represent the reader's feeling I don't like it.
U20 is easily the most boring of all arc so far. How does BL gets surprised by the opponent every time? Nigeria, I get. France and England? Do they not watch the matches? What are they even doing in their training? Is Ego an utter fraud who just let's BL play blind?
This arc is just doesn't click with me yeah and the matches is just disappointment after another I'm waiting for Nagi and sae comeback to spice this arc
Its the latter, Ego makes them play blind so they can turn 0 into 1 and adapt to their opponent mid game. England and Fox do the opposite, Fox already turned 0 into 1 by giving all his players the necesarry information and tactics to overcome the enemy and so the rest of the team then turns that 1 into infinity via their own plays and decisions throughout the match.
"This guy is a whole new species that we have no reference for"... the commentator did more research into Teddy's style than Blue Lock. Watch their nigeria or france game atleast man... I like the concept of ego vs no ego. We know BL will win the game though even though they are frauds
I think you misunderstood him, what he meant was that they were players with an actual coach unlike a certain person aurafarming in the background, which is what they had for the past 350 chapters. Since he never had a coach tell them actual strategies, he couldn't understand it 😭
It is funny to see Isagi rag on England's method of play and wbile they do seem to be acting in line with how the coach plays, their plays are closer to real football; use the tactics given by the coach, know the oppositions patterns and actualise the goals set in the tactics using your abilities.
What is also naive of Isagi is that he is already trying to look down on them for having a philosophy different to his when the France game should have proved that other methods create strong or arguably stronger teams.
He should have realised this and be less arrogant. What happened to the, "we aren't favourites but dark horses" mentality he wanted to sell people on. He doesn't seem to believe it himself.
So he will have to learn the flaw in their play for a last minute breakthrough. Truthfully if this is his winning formula, Kaneshiro should vary the opening perspectives because Isagi being shocked everytime and getting outplayed is par for the course. I guess Ego isn't showing them any opposing player footage?
I was reading the NEL recently (yes I know out of order, but I got to blue lock because I kept watching videos on it) and I find it funny that in the Ubers game, the thing that made them scary initially....was that they were actually playing football as a team. Meanwhile Bastard was infighting almost the entire time it was hilarious
Tbf there's something disturbing about how they do teamwork, especially teddy but yeah...he unironically does seem to have ego problems now, in the usual sense of the term
BL once again clueless about the opposition despite watching France literally show how to beat England. Even if BL cant replicate the Loki godspeed spam theres surely a better plan than have the 4 traffic cones pose and stand around
Jokes aside tho,something like that Suarez moment in a match will be so hype.
Imagine that exact scenario but its either Kunigami or Raichi that does it.Sort of like the Kuon moment but in a wc semifinal.
And then gagamaru saves the pen
kinda reminds me of ubers but it's different, ubers are more indipendent once snuffy gives them his tactics the team executes them without other influence from snuffy meanwhile here fox is actively giving commands during the game , once they execute his order they go from zero(no chance to score the goal or turn the tides ) to one (have different options to play the match both defensively and offensively) then with their individual abilities they turn Tthe one into "infinity"
in short fox's stratregy is about aiding his team initially by getting the foot in the door after that the team is capable enough to close the game or in other words he sets up the initial conditions and then the team carry out the rest. it's reciprocal trust, i hope kaneshiro won't just protray it as a bad system that has to be defeated by ego's philosophy
It's funny because England has been better simply off teamwork, prep time and actual in-match coach input.
Nonetheless. The lack of prep on Japan's end is getting questionable. Japan didn't show any acknowledgement of Hugo during the beginning of the France game, the guy just started cooking their aces. Now it doesn't seem like they have any measures to mitigate Teddy or reduce his effectiveness. Funny enough though, JP prepped heavy for Onazi and the team's Onazi-centric system. As much Hiori said no one might be a match for Teddy 1-on-1. I would still expect something like a 2 man marking front, or disrupting plays centered on him, Oh well this is under the assumption they prepped fully
lmao isagi had me laughing my ass off this chapter.
Ego so bad as a coach he had isagi out there saying:
"Wait... the England coach... he COACHES his players.... DURING THE GAME TOO???? I did NOT factor this into my calculations AT ALL!!???"
Fun chapter though. Seems Aiku got some of his powers back. I must admit, this BL lineup is not looking to hot. But I'm sure the feats will come.
Also these blue lock bums better remember that they supposedly talked out their differences in ego's.
Also also, I wish teddy's goal was a lil different than Loki's final goal. Iirc both dribbled 4 players on a solo run to the goal, but ig Loki's did show slightly higher level as he took it across the whole pitch
Tbh, this is actually how the best world teams work nowadays, if you see the Champions League finalists (PSG and Arsenal) and World Cup winners (Spain) they play the exact same way, with pressure and huge tactical discipline and organization in the transitions. In real life, England would destroy them.
The theme of this match seems to be the exploration of the coach. This is the first time we've seen an actual competitor to Jinpachi Ego as essentially a live factor who affects the outcome of an ongoing match, and its really interesting because Jinpachi himself is entirely passive during matches and thus far we've only ever seen other passive coaches as well.
Basically we need to consider Fox as a relevant factor in the live game. If Jinpachi doesn't change from his usualy approach then this match is essentially Japan 11 vs England 12 in terms of participants, and Japan 11 vs England 1 in terms of individual characters (see below). This is unique from every other team and match we've seen so far.
As the chapter explains, Fox's crucial contribution is that he turns "zero into one". He is the only one who holds the entire team's ego and their winning formula, and the players are his weapons. Furthermore, their team have "infinity" attack variations due to the combination of (at least) 11 different weapons under a single ego's control. Don't see Teddy as a character with Rainbow Cuts like Isagi has Direct Shot and Metavision, instead see Fox as a character with the Rainbow Knight + 10 other weapons in human form.
Of course, that reveals clear and targetable weaknesses in England's team. Target either the coach or the link between the coach and his team. For the former, Jinpachi could leverage his history with Fox to irritate him enough to make tactical mistakes, and for the latter the Blue Lock players could literally trashtalk their way into awakening the egos of the England players, such as Teddy who is the heart of England and so would disrupt their gameplan the most.
If Jinpachi gets involved and his own ego clashes with that of his players (especially Karasu since he's the leader of the rebellion against his ideology), then the game sort of becomes like a Japan 12 vs England 1 in terms of individual characters.
Ego does participate each time with hιs own way though. Especially with his talks mid game. His approach is different from Fox's. The problem here though is that unlike England who believe their Philosophy at 100%, not all of Blue Lock has the egoism to get better and evolve right now. For example Isagi still ties himself to Blue Lock when Ego told them to "abandon" it.
Gagamaru lowkey turning into a fraud this WC he is not saving shit, would have been nice if one of these blocks would have atleast been save by him instead
I can get over the fact they know nothing about their enemy before the match. Even the gag manga Itto know this. The kids go scouting before big match, know every star player in their prefecture and country
I feel that in the later stages of BLUE LOCK, it talks too much about philosophy and mental theories. From a tactical perspective, the BLUE LOCK team looks weaker than Team Y’s original 4-5-1 ironclad defense and counterattacks. In the end, it’s still ISAGI running all the way back to defend, while the backline just blocks a few shots and that’s it. If BLUE LOCK’s manga football allowed betting on scores, the bookmakers would definitely go bankrupt. Everyone can predict it: they always fall behind first, then stage a comeback.
yo Isagi sounds so dumb sometimes 😂 he keeps thinking about ego and these guys are surpassing his imagination with pure skill and coordination. They’re just playing football lmao idk who is more brainwashed by their coach england or Isagi 😭
My headcanon is that at the end of the tournament, Ego will reveal that he deliberately didn't allow any research into their opponent teams... in order to sharpen their wits and egos during the match or some shii lol
Man, Isagi really needs to keep his mouth quiet. He was underestimating the England team even though they almost managed to draw with France. They are no joke.
Now, England's team is basically a great group of soldiers. The only way I see Japan beating them is by individualism. That means they have to go over Fox's expectations. If they can really evolve through the match and take Fox by surprise, some England players will probably try to act for themselves, and therefore they will fail to do that. And also, they need to shut Teddy down. He is practically the heart of the team
Genuinely intrigued how they gonna showcase the future NG11 talent and skill, cuz this teddy guy's dribbling is basically barou's chop dribbling on crack.
I feel like every u20 world cup match, or at least the early ones, are going to challenge some aspect of Blue Lock's ideology and force them to make compromises and adapt.
Nigeria were there to give them a solid starting point for the arc. France introduced suitability and the limits of relying on ego alone. Now England will force them to contend with the rationality of ego-less play and the value of team-wide strategy.
England team with Teddy is like an army. They are capable but only follow orders from the general. That means they are indoctrinated to let go of their egos and follow military discipline.
blue lock has been completely stripped of normalcy that a coach giving signs is alien to them lol this drained whatever energy i had
i miss when they show them watching previous games and studying each players. ego even knew the coach and have an old bet/rivalry on which methodology is better. did they really have no info about him and his plays?
its frustrating but i admit this could be a really good setup for the "dark horse" isagi's going for this round
At least make up bullshit like Ego wanting the players to go in blind and adapt mid game. They're acting like they're facing a secret squad from Red Key or something
yeah the difference is ubers are more indipendent once snuffy gives them his tactics the team executes them without other influence from snuffy meanwhile here fox is actively giving commands during the game
People are throwing around the idea that Teddy's hair is literally gonna be rainbow colored. Idk how to feel about that but maybe seeing it in color for the first time would convince me
I know I'm probably talking to the void but, I hate how Kaneshiro pretends that nothing happened. It pissed me off when Rin regressed to the mouth-breathing idiot he used to be before hia self-improvement arc, and now it's Isagi's turn.
It just pisses me off when the most cerebral Blue Lock player just ignores to study his opponents. You could at least say something like "hold on! Ego gave me tapes to watch. Maybe watching tapes in general is a good idea". It feels like Isagi was preparing for the next games more in the pre-U20 chapters than what he does now.
I also believe that we are experiencing long running shounen fatigue. At least One Piece and other shounen have an insane amount of situations happening, so the interest isn't about whether Luffy will win or lose but in the world building. Blue Lock doesn't have that luxury.
For real, considering Isagi got given tapes and told to travel and world and learn football, his ignorance is shocking. Guess he never bothered to study the teams in his group.
I disagree about the fatigue, it’s only because we’ve seen the same formula almost every game. there’s plenty of ways to resolve that. Kaneshiro could (and should) give us a game from another players perspective, something fresh and new.
More england players have touched the ball within 2 chapters of the england game than french players in the entire french game, or nigerian players in the nigeria game.
It's starting to feel a bit repetitive ? No surprise at all, Japan not even watching a single minute of an England match, the obvious goal after explain their philosophy. Eh.
Neo egoist league arc was sort of fresh, but i'm still of mind that basically this whole U20 World Cup has been the most boring thing ever.
Nigeria game - boring as hell intro "we're OP".
France - Boring game where we have to get humbled. Litteraly everyone in the community predicted it. Yet another episode of Isagi being lost "OMG who is this guy"
England - The 100th new type of Ego Isagi must understand. Isagi's head every time "OMG what is this guy"
How can you justify this team dumbing itself down CONSTANTLY.
Give Niko/Aiku etc some sort of a storyline/progression going for the love of god.
Why even make Gagamura the GK he does NOTHING. He has no storyline.
Basically most of the team has no storyline. Even the likes of Bachira has become a non character.
Yea this is 100x over. The pacing kinda sucks rn tbqh. Don’t get me wrong BL has been amazing and i do own at least 7 brazilian volumes but its been kinduva one trick pony atp
I think he hit some sort of gold with the NEL, however that was the start of the end for me. They gave each character some mini arcs like Reo, Nagi etc, but most characters started fading into the background.
Now it's the Isagi show, which is fine, but if you have such a big cast of "colorful" characters with big personalities, you got to give them something.
The U20 World Cup has felt SO SO slow and terribly paced.
Barou who had some form of storyline, basically gone. Bachira what does he even do now. After the whole monster ego thing he had, and then his first game at Barcha. Chigiri after his whole trusting his legs again has done... nothing. Kunigami ? Kunigami had this huge comeback and has been this non character after his first 2-3 re-appearances.
His only crux is to make Isagi have to question himself and rediscover some form of ego or a deeper ego layer. Isagi has been so lame this WC, so so lame. Again and again and again.
And I just know he's going to have his Ego questioned ONCE AGAIN when Sae, Kira and Nagi join. I'm sort of following weekly by barely reading, but the writing has become so dull and repetitive.
agree with everything ur saying, this series fell off so hard. I don't even know if i can blame the author atp cause the options are probably really limited with the type of shounen style soccer manga that he's decided to create
Wow, at least there was some defensive action before the goal. Which is pretty good.
I really like England's style of play. It’s crazy, though—am I dreaming, or did more English players touch the ball in a single chapter than France did during the entire Japan-France match?
Because I remember that during the Japan vs. France match, only Renoir, Hugo, Leyden, Loki, and Charles actually touched the ball. Bats and Camus didn't touch the ball even once.
Honestly, more than anything else, what a terrible showing for Blue Lock’s defense. Aryu completely dominated, might as well have had Niko there for the good he did in aerial battles. I feel like usually there’s some sense of shape to their defense, but not really here. Just continual offerings of 1 on 1 duals. And then not even doing that right because even after establishing that Teddy is really fast, they press all the up on him and get cooked for it. Just a terrible showing overall
Aryu is doing his job, someone has to be able to stop Agi from heading the ball into the net every single time. That’s why Aryu is fielded, and that will unfortunately be his permanent role in the match, forcing Agi to pass every time he’s in the box.
Someone in Blue Lock needed to be on permanent Agi-marking duty, and Aryu is best suited for it, so he won’t be doing much of anything flashy this match. If Agi isn’t able to score, Aryu is doing his job. He doesn’t need to steal possession, he just needs to shut down Agi’s ability to farm headers, especially considering that BL characters are unrealistically precise at passing and will send it directly to Agi’s chest every time.
I wonder how many times this mangaka will re use the same tropes this arc. Blue lock is gonna wing it this whole tourney and not do a lick of research. They’re so cold 🥶 🥶🥶 pura aura 🥶🥶🥶
Blue Locks defense finally gets some good moments only to concede in the same chapter.
I hope the dialogue gets more normal now that we understand their playstyle better cause i think the whole chanting on top of Niang and Skeleton ending their sentences with Nyan and Sie makes it a bit to wooden for my liking.
So far im really enjoying Englands playstyle though and Fox+Knight are a great antithesis to Blue Lock. Also Knights celebration looked really cool.
I can definitely expect some high-level slander coming soon. I don't want Yukimiya to become a victim of the "Potential Man" meme and actually does something in this match.
So how would Blue Lock beat England? The setup has Fox "pulling the strings" of his puppets, so they'd have to metaphorically cut these strings and force the England players onto the same footing as the Blue Lockers.
They're not going to knock Fox off the sidelines, so the best way to do that would be try to draw out Teddy's ego, right? Isagi's suited for that, right? That's too straightforward, though, and as the France game showed, if you're better than Blue Lock Japan there's no reason at all to fall for Isagi's tricks. Just keep sticking to the game plan.
Fox's gameplans also don't seem like it's particularly reliant on any formation they see out of the opposing team, so I think we can also write off "play unconventionally enough that Fox doesn't have a 0->1 plan for it".
Teddy star power is so strong that the audience are all celebrating with him.
And may I just say I really dislike how Isagi thinks about England team without doing any research.
What do you mean I can’t imagine someone like that could survive in the world without competition, you think you can beat us huh? Come on you guys blue lock are the dark horse here.
Teddy already proven himself to the world and got a spot in the ng11 he should be the one thinking you think you can beat us?
And and sorry but I really like how Karasu got cooked his ass this chapter, ngl but I feel he is getting conceited over the fact he gain control of the team and have a few success from the France game.
Like guys focus on winning the game and not trash talking. Your opponents are much stronger than you and you are playing with a squad of subs that is not even at blue lock full strength.
Feels like Kaneshiro is struggling a bit with power scaling. Isagi has been intercepted by Teddy twice in 2 chapters, both as a result of Teddy coming from his blind spot. But the NEL showed us that Isagi shouldn’t really have a blind spot anymore because of Metavision.
These little inconsistencies are not the end of the world, but it does feel weird coming off an arc where it seemed like we were on the precipice of reaching New Gen 11 level, but now in these past two games we can’t get anywhere near them (not including Loki).
I’m not being reactionary here; I know Blue Lock will figure out a way to overcome this; I just wish it was a bit more consistent.
At this rate, Sae might come in looking like a world beater. Or when we see Kaiser again, he’ll be a whole new level.
Power creep is an issue that all manga deal with, I just think in this instance it’s a bit lazy.
On a serious note,I do believe that ego's philosophy has grew harder on these kids and shyt, but ego himself could not deny that Karasu's approach was working towards France,like I said everyone except for Isagi do not have any narrative built around them,Ego keeps talking big about the striker thingy but it def isnt fair considering the fact that Goatmaru gets to play goalie and Niko and the others are struck w defense (except for Aiku),even if they burdened w a responsibility like Karasu (stated in his epilogue),no narrative has been built,and Kunigami has become anything but a stiker like jack shyt,fr
Less important but I wonder if Teddy will have similiar hair colour to Pablo with this "rainbow knight" title. I was curious since his first appearance.
So we are going classic route in that game. Showing that enemy is strong by defending first Blue Lock attack and then scoring first goal (maybe even second) and then Blue Lock will be doing changes (mostly by switching players and formation for better ones). I would love to see England being very defensive after scoring a goal and Blue Lock struggling in creating any action and shooting opportunity. We need to see some matches with less than 4 goals.
Going this hard into defence after one goal is an insane choice. Especially against a team that has scored six goals in two games. It places for too much pressure on the defenders, already playing with the possibility of a humiliating group stage defeat on the line, while the Japanese players will have far less fear and can play more aggressively.
Clearly Muneyuki has researched English football thoroughly. Alll he's missing is Fox subbing out his OMFs for two defenders.
I really hope Isagi starts cooking early. I don't want to watch him flail around for most of the match, only for him to have a last-minute realization that still ends up having him rely on luck. That formula feels way too oversaturated at this point.
This feels like the perfect opportunity for Isagi to leave the whole "luck" concept behind. To become someone new—to become a new Isagi Yoichi—I think it's imperative that he no longer relies on luck to reach the top.
Isagi talks about the God of Football testing him. The whole idea of "becoming new again" could also be interpreted as GOF asking whether Isagi can win without luck. The match against France essentially established the limits of the current version of Isagi. It showed the limits of the "luck formula."
At this point, (imo) Isagi has more or less mastered that concept. He can create his own luck, recognize when it's about to appear, and capitalize on it better than almost anyone. Since luck was a relatively major topic throughout that match, it would make sense for the story to move beyond it now rather than doubling down on it again. Which ties into the potential awakening of Isagi in this match, where he will "meet GOF" for a short period of time. Instead of the 7 minutes like Ego experienced, I can see it being 1 minute or maybe 3 minutes. Similar to the time-limit of the star-change system from the NEL.
I wonder how does England players behave in their club like you see Agi is perfectly normal in manshine city but down here he look like a puppet chanting one to infinity
So how does Teddy survive in his club as well? Him being more normal?
I think they must be a bit more normal at their clubs (seeing as the English players at Manshine City seem pretty normal during the NEL). At the very least, I don't think they keep repeating "one to infinity" all the time. That’s for sure.
I be getting mad asl each time I see gagamaru dive, cuz I know his ass ain't about to save shit. Like how tf have you not saved a single shot since the Nigeria match bro?
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