While Isagi Yoichi is Blue Lock’s ‘hero’ (despite being a jerk), his rival Barou is actually the one who perfectly represents the spirit of this hit sports anime. One of Blue Lock’s strengths is how it makes every character feel like the protagonist of their own story, despite the fact that Isagi is the true main character. This enables many of the characters to be more compelling than Isagi and lets one in particular be able to encapsulate the entire themes of the show in a brilliant way.
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Blue Lock is a death game-esque soccer training program meant to cultivate an incredibly powerful striker that will propel Japan to a World Cup victory. Only one person will be allowed to become this striker, with the others all being forbidden from playing on the World Cup team afterward, essentially crushing their dreams. This makes the program very cutthroat, but despite this, the players must form teams with each other in order to survive. The full depth of this fascinating dynamic is most clearly realized not in the series protagonist Isagi, but in one of his best rivals Barou.
Barou Encapsulates Blue Lock’s Twisted Philosophy Better Than Isagi
Barou is an incredibly confident striker who looks down on everyone around him, viewing them as tools to engineer his own goals. This changes however when he encounters a team that takes advantage of his predictable play style to dominate the game. In response to this, Isagi manipulates Barou into going against his egotistical style for the first time, crushing him. However, this enables Barou to develop a brand-new style where he actively antagonizes his own teammate Isagi to both score more goals for himself and throw off the other team.
Related: Blue Lock Not Killing Its Characters Actually Makes it More Brutal
This “villainous” play style perfectly encapsulates the duplicitous dynamic of Blue Lock. While players must work together, they are also actively competing against each other to become Japan’s top striker. In Barou’s new style, he works with his teammates by actively competing against them, fully representing both sides of this duality. In addition, he never would have developed this powerful new strategy without competing with Isagi in the first place, showing that Blue Lock’s program does actually accomplish its goal of creating better strikers. So he is not only a perfect representation of Blue Lock’s philosophy, but he is also a direct result of its process.
Barou’s Duality Perfectly Represents Blue Lock
Isagi Yoichi himself is a much edgier Shonen hero than normal, which fits with the ways Blue Lock subverts the sports anime genre. While Isagi does take advantage of his teammates in his own devouring style, he usually doesn’t actively compete with them as Barou does. Barou’s style is completely revolutionary, defying every classic trope about friendship and teamwork and setting Blue Lock apart as something truly unique. This is why Barou is a much better representative of Blue Lock than Isagi, despite not being the anime’s main protagonist.
One Character Perfectly Represents Blue Lock, and It’s Not Isagi
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