The art in this manga is beautiful, but the story was just blan. I was really bored within the first 40 pages and skimming through to see if anything could hold my interest. I don't think sports manga's are my things. I won't be continuing with the series and will be avoiding sports manga going forward.

This was not what I expected but it did not disappoint. Blue Lock is a very interesting and cool take on a sports manga. If you want a sports manga that is more high stakes then this one is right up your alley.

While the premise of this manga is a ridiculous blend of Haikyuu and Battle Royale, the art style is absolutely stunning and I actually really like how unhinged all the characters are. I feel a lot of people might judge <i>Blue Lock</i> too harshly based on how disconnected from reality it is, but I honestly think that the extreme setting of it brings something new to a sports title. I mean, after awhile all shonen sports series do start to blend together.

I don't know if this title will be at the top of my "to continue" list, but I will absolutely keep my eyes out for it as it progresses in the English release.

sadly, before i could download this title, netgalley took it off their catalog. that means i can’t review this one. HOWEVER, i will be checking in with my library to see if i can get a copy and review it that way.

This was such a bonkers manga. I thought it was going to be just a straight up soccer competition which I guess it was but it wasn't like any other sports competition manga that I've ever read. I think to compare it to other sports manga would do a disservice to this book completely. The creepy cartoonish way that the coach stretches feels like it belongs in a horror manga instead. I would highly recommend that everyone check this out - I think there's something in here for eveyone.

Blue Lock takes the genre of sports and deconstructs it into something new. We are following the story of a training facility called 'Blue Lock' and 300 high school students competing to become world-class strikers. The theme of ego and selfishness are the main components of the story and the philosophy on becoming the best striker. In comparison to other sports manga, this shows a special approach to the genre and how you develop as an athlete.
The first volume arouses your interest and makes you curious about the future of the story.
(I read all available chapters afterwards)

Blue Lock is a sports manga for soccer fans and sports manga fans alike.
300 talented, young soccer players endure a training camp to become Japan's best striker. The Blue Lock training facility is an intense one. The world building is superb in this volume! The Blue Lock facility is an interesting concept--a rigorous training facility where anything goes.
Even if you're not a fan of soccer, due to the detailed explanations given, the story is easy to follow.
I enjoyed this sports manga and I'm definitely curious to see what volume 2 brings.

AN AMAZING SPORTS MANGA! The story is refreshing, and the characters are interesting, driven and determined! Isagi is perfect as a main character and I can't wait to see how his charcater will develop in this experiment he is going through, sort of feels like he is gonna change the rules of the game at some point so I am excited to see him being a hero on hiw own terms and not with the notion that the experiment is trying to implement in the head of 300 high schoolers.

I did not have time to read this sport manga but I feel like if you enjoy soccer you might like this one.

Disappointed with the state of Japanese football, coach Jinpachi Ego decides to set up the Blue Lock programme. A prestigious programme, Blue Lock puts the top 300 youth strikers through their paces in an intense and hardcore training programme, aiming to separate the wheat from the chaff and ultimately end up crowning one player as the top striker in Japan.

Our protagonist is Yoichi Isagi, who is a well meaning striker on his high school football team. Yoichi costs his school a place in the national tournament due to his hesitation to take a shot at goal and his choice to pass to a teammate who then missed. Yoichi struggles to come to terms with the choice he made, and his whole mindset changes with regards to his feelings towards football. He’s always been very much a team player, but he starts to wonder if he should be more selfish when he’s playing and take the chances for himself.

Yoichi eventually gets recruited into Blue Lock, where playing alongside the best strikers in the world reinvigorates his love for football and makes him want to try as hard as he can to improve. Unfortunately, in comparison to his peers, Yoichi is really not all that. Ego’s vision for Blue Lock is very much to push the players as hard as he can, to breaking point. Everything in Blue Lock is based on rankings – what you eat, where you live, and how long you last in the programme. Yoichi finds himself in the bottom 11 ranked players fighting for his chance to be the best striker in Japan.

As a lifelong football fan, Blue Lock is really fun to read. There’s a lot of mentions to real life strikers which makes it really entertaining to compare the tactics and plot to real life occurrences. It’s also really interesting to see how the whole plot of the manga is to train the strikers in Blue Lock to only look out for themselves, and it’s basically the antithesis of any team game where the philosophy is very much based on playing as a team. The Blue Lock programme promotes the idea of ego and, what we’d call in the UK, glory hunting.

Blue Lock is a really interesting premise, and has a lot of potential. There are obviously a lot of potential rival characters for Yoichi to bounce off of, as well as a lot of self discovery ahead of him. Already in the few chapters of volume 1, Yoichi has come to realise that he’s perhaps not as weak as he believes himself to be.

It does feel like not a lot happens in this first volume of Blue Lock, but there’s a lot of set-up for onward plot and action. More and more characters are being introduced outside of the Blue Lock programme, and it’s interesting to see the perspective of outsiders on this very unyielding and unprecedented training programme as well as meeting the players who will undoubtedly make up the rest of the Japanese team with the Blue Lock graduates.

Whilst the first volume feels a little slow, Blue Lock shows a lot of promise, and one not to miss for fans of football.

This is really interesting. It has the vibe of a dystopian horror manga but it's a sports story! The main thesis is that to produce a world class soccer striker, the Japanese have to train teenagers with soccer talent to be cutthroat, egotistical, and far less cooperative. And the volume and extremity that they go about the training is pretty shocking, perhaps by my perspective now as a parent. I also am not sure about the somewhat mystical, egotistical perspective they have about strikers, especially in the age where top teams are playing with false nines and no traditional strikers. Even though it's not really foregrounded there's some interesting places to think about what you give up (time, life, humanity) to become truly great. And the art is great - the Svengali coach is so cartoonish horrific (his body stretches as he rants) and the soccer action is actually drawn quite well. Fun start to this series.

3.5 stars, this was a bit slowed paced as it was explaining all the details that needed to be known. But I enjoyed the story overall, there was many points that had me intrigued to know what was going to happen next. The art style was really interesting and not something I’ve really seen before it, I really liked how different it was. I can’t wait to find out what happens next in this series as I enjoyed this first volume.

This was a really cool concept and really great set up for a first volume. I'm not a huge soccer fan but I still found myself curious about how it would work out.

A fun sports manga where the driving force is a company and country willing to do anything to bring in a championship.

I started this without knowing anything about it (and about soccer in general), mostly because I love Kuroko no basket, and in the first chapter I thought I knew how the whole manga would go. OH BOY, WAS I WRONG. The twist about training players to be selfish instead of teaching them teamwork like most sport mangas do is such a refreshing take on the genre. I loved the characters and enjoyed how some of them are straight up unlikable, it kept things interesting. A fun, addictive read. Will be following the next comunes, for sure.

I love sports manga, no doubt about that and Blue Lock does it differently. Our main character is Isagi Youichi, who wants to be the best (go figure). The Japan Football Union is in a crisis and decides to hire Ego Jinpachi in order to get Japan to the World Cup and the weirdo creates a system called Blue Lock. 300 potential youth strikers are asked to come and they have to compete in everything to be the best, survival of the fittest or so to speak. I do like the setting and how these guys need to compete and how the system is basically sick. So different. The characters look cool and different too, but it's just that I keep thinking about football and how silly the whole thing is in a sense. I think you need to be over 18 to play in Europe, so the dream feels off, since the guys are teenagers. I'm not really into football actually, but at least I know something about the teams and such, so dreaming of Europe feels odd.

The art looks good and the movements even better. I love the facial expressions and all in all the art is top-notch. The rhythm is smooth and the playing looks so awesome. I think I'll keep reading this, since even though I'm not into the sport per se, I do enjoy the setting more than I should. This is not a friendship series or at least it doesn't feel like one and that's refreshing. The tears of losing are the same and still feel stupid, but who cares?

I waver between a 2 and a 3 for this title. On the one hand, it absolutely embraces its insane concept, that soccer is not, in fact, a team sport and instead turns on the ego of its teams' strikers. On the other hand, that's a really messed up way to look at soccer. (Or any other team sport, for that matter.) It's as if Muneyuki Kaneshiro pitched a dystopian story and his editors said they wanted a sports manga instead, so he just twisted the plot he had to fit the requirements.

That's both a good and a bad thing. Certainly it makes <i>Blue Lock</i> stand out among other sports series, and it may give it appeal for those who wouldn't normally touch a soccer manga. But it's also so blatantly absurd that it doesn't entirely work, and it comes off as kids with dreams of sports stardom being taken horrible advantage of by unscrupulous adults. It's insane, and not necessarily in a good way.

Still, it's probably the closest we'll get to a version of <i>The Hunger Games</i> with a recognizable game in the starring role. If that's what you've been dreaming of, now's your chance to read it.

There is a full length review forthcoming on my site, MangaLibrarian.com and on my YouTube Channel! I go in depth on my analysis there.

Blue Lock was a fresh take on the shonen sports genre, adding a darker psychological spin on a genre that typically focuses on teamwork and friendship.

It would have been nice to see more of a reversal, especially from Yoichi Isagi, since he is our main point of view character. I liked that his hesitation in the first chapter, and I would like to see that further developed in subsequent volumes.

This first volume may have benefited from more focus on the individual characters' personaities. I worry that subsequent volumes may lose focus if too many characters are added into the ensemble cast, especially if their introductions are given similar treatments to those in this first volume.

Overall, I'm looking forward to the rest of this series, and it continues to push the envelope.

This book was so much fun! It was a great mix of sports manga and a little bit of Hunger Game vibes and I Loved it. Very much looking forward to continuing on with the next volume.