A Film Directed by Shunsuke Ishikawa

One of the more random things I decided to see this year was an anime called Blue Lock The Movie – Episode Nagi that was released a few weeks ago to US theaters. My son and I have had the pleasure of seeing some pretty good sports anime this year, including Haikyuu!! and last year’s First Slam Dunk, and I figured something like this would be right up our alley. Blue Lock is a soccer franchise that originated from a manga written by Muneyuki Kaneshiro and illustrated by Yusuke Nomura. The manga was serialized in Weekly Shōnen Magazine by Kodansha and eventually spawned an animated series that this film is technically a spin-off from. As is tradition, I went into this completely blind, and this time it seems like it paid off, as this movie is ostensibly a retelling of the full first season of the original anime, but from the perspective of a character named Seishiro Nagi.

“After demonstrating his overwhelming soccer talent, high school sophomore Seishiro Nagi receives an invitation to the Blue Lock Project and meets strikers from all over the country. The project’s ultimate goal is to turn one of the selected players into the star striker for the Japanese national team. To find the best participant, each diamond in the rough must compete against others through a series of solo and team competitions to rise to the top. Putting aside his ethical objections to the project, Isagi feels compelled to fight his way to the top, even if it means ruthlessly crushing the dreams of 299 aspiring young strikers.”

The original story follows the character of Yoichi Isagi, who shows up in towards the end of this film, and is the catalyst for the “break-up” of this film’s primary characters Seishiro Nagi and Reo Mikage. By “break up”, I am referring to the fact that Nagi becomes addicted to the feeling he gets playing soccer and realizes he “gets more of a buzz” playing with Yoichi versus Reo. It’s weird and I’d have to see this from the other perspective I suppose. The team that Nagi and Reo are on end up being undefeated whilst Yoichi’s team is the least-winning. I’m sure that in the original, these guys were the tough unbeatable adversaries they had to beat to not get knocked out, so seeing this from the other perspective is sort of weird I guess. It’s almost the story of how a team gets sort of arrogant and allows a team to come together and beat them.

Speaking of Nagi, I’m honestly not too sure I would have made a film from the point of view of a character such as him. Considering how utterly unlikable he is for a large portion of the film, I was quite surprised that he was the anchor character. He’s lazy, absent-minded, anti-social, and low-key misanthropic to a degree that is honestly too much. I’m sure that by the time he pops up in the original story he’s not that bad due to the viewer not seeing this backstory, but honestly if it wasn’t for Reo I would have been very annoyed.

I can gather from online discourse that many huge fans of this franchise did not like the movie because it sort of exists as a compilation movie to a degree, covering the other side of stuff seen in the main series proper, and ignoring a lot of the minutiae. With me not being familiar with this, I was on board with a weird Battle Royale-esque take on a soccer anime as it gives this franchise something different to make it stand out over other soccer animes that I’m sure are plentiful over in Japan. With the rise of such properties as Squid Game and Alice in Borderland hitting peak popularity a while back, something like this was bound to happen.

That said, I think the thing that makes sports anime so good is the interactions and stories that come from a team’s ability to work together, which makes it so compelling. By largely removing that aspect from a sports anime, it sort of encourages the characters to all be selfish and try to showboat during games, which would not work in real life. Even though you have professional players known for crazy goals in real life, they are backed up by equally talented support positions that allow them to shine. Acting like the characters do in this show is the plot of a lot of episodes before the team really clicks. Like you have a lot of good players trying to one-up each other until they all click and become unstoppable. This flips that premise on its head and, to a degree, makes it all just sort of weird.

On the technical side, Blue Lock The Movie – Episode Nagi has good animation, but it doesn’t really blow you away. Honestly, if I were to find out this was constructed using footage from the TV series, I would not be surprised. This is largely due to the fact that nothing really “stands out” as screaming “THIS IS A THEATRICAL FILM!” Considering the razor-thin profit margin that anime rides on, this may be the new normal going forward – a TV series run, then cleaned up and re-edited for a theatrical run. If that causes the notoriously poorly managed industry an extra influx of cash to pay the animators and keep everything afloat, I’m all for it, and truthfully I would likely have never seen the TV series for this, so having this summary, even if an alternate take, brings in the more casual fans that may have entirely missed out.

The times where the animation gets pretty cool are when characters enter a state of heightened emotion and skill referred to as the “flow state”. These segments are kind of treated like your typical Shonen anime Super Saiyan transformation and involve things like glowing eyes and crazy backgrounds that are in the character’s minds, meaning it’s not like they actually have supernatural powers or anything. Truthfully, this is never explained in the film very much due to the need to scrape ninety minutes of footage out of 26 episodes of content, but I can gather what is going on pretty easily.

Overall, I liked Blue Lock The Movie – Episode Nagi for taking chances rather than just existing as a mere compilation film. Showing the plot from a new perspective and trying to break the mold of your “typical” sports anime is commendable, but I feel that the team aspect of such stories is really where they shine. The plot of this somewhat penalizes folks for acting as a team, which is counter to how sports work. My son absolutely loved all the flashy moves and crazy goals people made, and with the plot being a bit simpler than something like Haikyuu!! or First Slam Dunk, it was very easy for him to follow without sliding into melodrama. My interest is piqued, and I plan to definitely watch the sequel to this whenever that happens, and who knows – I might even give the main show a watch sometime. Sure, I see some glaring issues with how the story is presented, but it’s at least entertaining, and sometimes that’s all you need, I suppose. Kudos to Crunchyroll for once again releasing something different over here in a wide release; this truly is a golden age for anime fans.