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bluelockednyx · 2 years

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Isagirin meta part 6

Part 1, on Isagi’s first meeting and match with Rin here.

Part 2, on the rest of the Second Selection Arc, here.

Part 3, on the 5v5 matchup against the world-class players and Blue Lock Eleven tryouts up until Rin’s kickoff, here.

Part 4, covering the first half of the Blue Lock Eleven vs Japan U20 match here.

Part 5, covering the second half of the Blue Lock Eleven vs Japan U20 match, up until their return to Blue Lock for the Neo-Egoist League, here.

This is the sixth and final part of this long af meta/manifesto, aka the discussion of story themes and relationship trajectories and parallels of Blue Lock. Here, I take a deeper dive into how Rin and Isagi’s character arcs coincide with and foil each other's, the why I ship Isagi Yoichi with Itoshi Rin from Blue Lock, plus some speculations for the manga’s development as of September 2022, which means spoilers for the Neo-Egoist League Arc. This is very long, and entirely text.

1) Blue Lock, egoism, and its encouragement of personal growth in relationships.

The crux of egoism is that it’s a form of self-centeredness – that you, yourself, are the focal point of the world, and your motivation and goal of your own actions are ultimately self-serving. Even the altruistic actions you make, e.g. helping others at the cost of your own self, like voluntarily taking the blame for a fault someone else did, is ultimately egoistic because it’s a fulfilling of your own will, which I think, can be expressed very well with this quote I came across:

“Each man for himself in that desert of egoism which is called life.” ― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

In the greater world of the team sports animanga in general, egoism as a theme very efficiently makes Blue Lock stand out. Football, like basketball, baseball, and volleyball, is ultimately a team sport which requires the skills and cohesiveness of multiple members to win in games. Most traditional sports animanga would focus on team-building, a bunch of quirky personalities coming together and winning the national championships equivalent for high school.

Blue Lock doesn’t bother with that. Blue Lock says: high school football, is only high school football. That’s too small a stage for our story. We want the world. We want a character that becomes the best striker in the world.

The story begins with our underdog main character, Isagi, failing to participate in the national football championships because his team lost fairly early on in the qualifiers. The narrative then cements that fact and ups the stakes by having Isagi kick out Kira Ryousuke, a famous, excellent player who beat Isagi’s team in the prefectural finals and who's being called up for the Japan U-18 team, in the second chapter of the series and the first elimination game, setting the tone there. By doing so it brings a modern and new twist to the genre. Blue Lock does not care for high school championships and Blue Lock will not be limited to only high school Japanese students, as most sports animanga do, and by Blue Lock Phase Two, it’s fully delivered on its premise and promise: the characters are interacting and actively competing with players from other countries for contracts and positions in renowned football clubs.

With this focus on egoism, and becoming the best in the world though, it thus gives an interesting twist towards the traditional relationships that would develop between the characters. A rivalry, even friendly ones, is all but mandatory between them, and Blue Lock takes the usual rivalry tropes and turns it into a theme and statement about how the pursuit of your own ego, your wants and desires, can be a good thing for you and your relationships. In fact, Blue Lock's narrative punishes relationships that have lapsed into personal stagnancy or decline in skills, and routinely punishes the characters who choose to prioritize staying together in relationships over pursuing individual ambitions. I’ve touched on this briefly when I wrote about the Second Selection Arc, and will now develop it further.

Up till chapter 148, the end of the Blue Lock vs U20 match, we see the narrative punishment for personal stagnancy most prominently in 3 different relationships:

Nagi and Reo

Bachira and Isagi

Rin and Sae

I’ve said before that there’s a pattern here. All three of these pairs split up, only to come back stronger, together. The reason they split up, is that at one point, one chooses to pursue a higher level of play, and follow their ambition, or ego. The other is left behind, and made to evolve themselves, their skill and ego (sense of self), or risk losing the relationship entirely.

Second Selection Arc

Reo approached Nagi to play football first (Blue Lock Episode Nagi further develops their backstory, and is very cute, so go read that too). This whole time they’ve played together, though short, they’ve hardly faced a challenge because of how skilled they both are individually and as a pair. When up against Team Z, upon seeing Reo desperate for a way to win, Nagi who has only been pretty much a passive bystander waiting for Reo’s passes for him to score thus far, evolves his plays, taking initiative for once. It’s too little, too late, and they lose, though both of them move on to the Second Selection with the rest of their teammates. Nagi’s ego then tells him to go with Isagi, whom he lost to, and they move on to the 3v3 match. Here, Reo and Nagi’s personal stagnancy has caused them both to split up, as the story now demands that they level up both their skills and ego.

In the first 3v3 match, the reason why Isagi-Nagi-Bachira team loses, besides being behind in sheer skill, is because first and foremost, none of them treated the game as seriously as Rin did (in sports animanga, losing == death, and Blue Lock takes it to an extreme). The initial goal, which depended on solid teamwork between their newly formed three-man team, and the second, Nagi’s goal was the only one where they challenged themselves in the match. Nagi’s ego has developed more here, as do Bachira’s and Isagi’s, but they are unable to push themselves enough to match against, much less win, against Rin, Aryu and Tokimitsu’s abilities. Isagi gets a double blow here, as he loses both the game and Bachira as a teammate. In other words, because both Isagi and Nagi have thus far relied on scoring via Bachira and Reo’s passes, they have stagnated in developing their skills and overall ability, and thus gets handed a loss by the narrative. Bachira, on the other hand, because he evolves via making a new kind of pass that demands Nagi’s skill and mentality growth to respond successfully to it, gets chosen to go on with Rin, Aryu and Tokimitsu.

This point becomes obvious as they head to the 2v2 stage. There, Isagi and Nagi win against Barou and Naruhaya because Barou and Naruhaya’s teamwork stagnated with Barou doing all the scoring, while Naruhaya supported. Neither truly develops their ego, skill and abilities, unlike Isagi and Nagi, who, now without their usual partners, have to both learn to play together in the game and evolve themselves, both in terms of mindset and ability. Naruhaya, whose individual skill is weaker than Barou, and his ego less developed (willingly playing support to Barou), is therefore eliminated from the Second Selection, and, as we know later on, from Blue Lock entirely.

In the second 3v3, the Isagi-Nagi-Barou team initially crumbles against Kunigami-Chigiri-Reo’s teamwork. This comes back to Barou’s personal stagnancy. By refusing to admit his own shortcomings, and his loss, once Isagi stops trying to work together with him he’s essentially left behind as dead weight against the others in the game. Kunigami-Chigiri-Reo’s teamwork fails to evolve against the Isagi-Nagi combo, leading to their loss. Chigiri, who was the only one who meaningfully pushed and challenged himself harder in the game, was therefore chosen to go on with Isagi-Nagi-Barou. Reo, whose fixation had been on winning against Isagi instead of evolving himself, and remains hung up on Nagi’s choice to move on without him, culminates in his fight with Nagi at the end, and this time, he loses both the game and hurts his relationship with Nagi.

Finally, in the 4v4, everyone is pushing themselves to the utmost, except for Bachira. The narrative punishes him for this as well, because in the last few minutes he finds that Rin and Isagi, the two people whom he wants to play with the most, have ignored him entirely and are fully focused on each other. He gets two warnings in fact, one from Chigiri and the second from Nagi. The desperate realisation that if he loses, Isagi’s team will pick Rin, and that he will not get to play with either of them spurs his evolution and ego. He stops focusing on merely passing anymore, and tries to shoot. Isagi, who notices this change, succeeds in stopping Bachira, but once again loses to Rin who makes the final shot. Then because Isagi has finally come far enough into developing his abilities, and developing his ego, the narrative rewards him by allowing him to move ahead to the next stage before Nagi, Chigiri and Barou with Rin’s team. Bachira, too, is rewarded by the narrative for challenging himself: he still gets to play with Isagi and Rin, just as he wanted.

Blue Lock Eleven Tryouts

This trend continues on in the vs U20 tryouts. In team A, Isagi never gives up on developing his skill, combining his plays with Rin and even scoring the last goal before Rin and Shidou could, hence he is rewarded with 1) his goal in the match and 2) being selected for the U20 match as ‘the ideal partner for Itoshi Rin’. Reo, in team C, also develops his ego by aiming to score on his own, but his skills are still not up to par with Nagi’s level of play. He gets the goal, and gets the chance to better rebuild his friendship with Nagi, but still winds up on the bench. Later on in the U20 match though, he gets rewarded through being subbed in for the game.

Blue Lock vs Japan U20 match

In the U20 match, Rin and Sae’s relationship and backstory gets their time and the most development. In this arc, Rin parallels Reo, as he is the one who is left behind by Sae. He also foils Bachira, who does not seem to be as committed to the game itself as he was to the desire to play football together with Sae.

For his first chance at scoring, in attempting to imitate Sae’s own shot, he fails to make the goal, and its Nagi who gets the first point for Blue Lock. When the game restarts, Rin, who’s still more hung up over the fractured relationship he has with Sae, insists on a 1v1 matchup against Sae, then loses. The team’s defense has his back and this time, when Isagi successfully provides ‘noise’/a distraction for Aiku who’s defending Rin, Rin manages to score the second goal. When Blue Lock reinforces their defence for the last 5 minutes of the first half, Rin again gets backup from the team after he stops Sae’s pass to Sendou. In the half-time break, Rin has his flashback. Then when Shidou comes in for the second half, Blue Lock loses their grasp of the gameflow. At this point, Rin is clearly enraged over Sae and Shidou’s successful combination. It’s at this point that he stagnates in the game, somewhat. He loses to Aiku, and it’s Isagi, instead, who spearheads their renewed offense, and in doing so Isagi gains Sae’s attention and interest. This time, Rin becomes the one supporting Isagi, but he once again grapples with Aiku, and it’s Barou who comes in and steals the third goal.

Sae and Shidou’s combination, his consecutive losses against Sae, then trouble with Aiku’s defending, and now Isagi’s growing presence on the field amplifies his stress. Sae’s choice to up the gameplay after Barou’s goal, and Rin’s failed tackle makes him even more desperate. Although he succeeds in ‘synchronizing’ and reading Sae’s thought process, it’s still not quite enough for him to beat Sae. It’s through Isagi linking up with Rin that they stop Shidou from scoring, and Rin realizes that he’s playing with Isagi, and the rest of Blue Lock, he’s not fighting alone.

But, Rin doesn’t like it. It’s this realization that prompts his evolution, and his ‘flow’, coupled with the intention to destroy his past self, his personal stagnancy with regards to his obsession with getting Sae's acknowledgment, to pieces. When he stops playing as a team with the rest, he blitzes past the U20 defenders and even Aiku, but Shidou blocks him, he refuses Isagi's support, and he misses his shot again. He faces off against Sae one last time in the final minute. Only this time, now that he’s no longer letting himself be bound by Sae’s words, not letting his ego be bound to Sae, he wins. And it’s a team win for Blue Lock too, through Isagi’s shot.

Now this is where things get interesting for discussing Isagi and Rin’s relationship in the context of the narrative themes.

2) Rin’s loss to Isagi in the U20 match, and a look at Rin’s character flaws

Even though Rin finally surpasses Sae in the last 1v1 bout they have near the end of the match, he loses the chance to score a goal, loses the chance to secure the win for Blue Lock, and also never gets Sae’s acknowledgement that he so desperately wants. Instead, it’s Isagi who gets everything he wants.

This is because, much like with Nagireo and Bachisagi above, throughout the whole match, Rin was very much fixated on Sae, and on defeating his brother alone. That, unfortunately, stagnates the development of Rin’s ego and thus, his skills, up until he makes the choice to suppress his desire to score solely for himself, and focus on defeating Sae, which he believes that he's the only one skilled enough to do so in Blue Lock.

I’ve mentioned this briefly before in part 4, but Rin has picked up several bad habits from constantly playing together with Sae, and then a few other bad habits after Sae leaves for Spain and he’s left behind to play in Japan. Besides the generally rude attitude he has towards others in general, Rin winds up with an underdeveloped sense of self and ego, as he chooses to emulate Sae in the youth teams he plays for, rather than pursue his own unique playstyle. He has also adopted a mindset of ‘fighting alone’, and doesn’t develop much of a relationship with others in general.

In his flashback, he remains behind alone to practise while his teammates go home. In Blue Lock, when Isagi, Nagi and Bachira first meet Rin, Aryu and Tokimitsu, he dismisses and irritates Aryu enough to the point that Aryu almost started an argument with him. He’s also constantly seen practising and training alone, and it’s Bachira and Isagi who later take the initiative to practise/interact with him. After the U20 match, too, we don’t see him with the rest of Blue Lock either during their Shibuya trip, and unlike, say, Gagamaru or Niko, who have in-story reasons for not being there and are talked about (Gagamaru went off to the mountains, Niko refused to come, Chigiri couldn’t get Kunigami’s contact), no one mentions anything about Rin’s absence. They even come across Barou, but not Rin. When the story cuts to Rin during their mini-holiday, its to Rin, sitting and ruminating alone at the seaside where he used to go with Sae.

Much like Shidou, whose failure to synergize with Blue Lock and the U20 gets him trouble (Ego chooses Rin over Shidou when deciding on the Blue Lock Eleven, U20 threatens to boycott the match if he’s in it so he doesn’t get to start for the match), this isn’t presented as a good thing for Rin in story. His only goal for the match, he succeeded because Blue Lock backed him up and helped recover possession of the ball after he loses to Sae 1v1. Isagi’s backup is also what helps him to get the shot pass Aiku and the goalie. Contrast this to him in his flow state; when he refuses Isagi’s support and forces the shot while being blocked by Aiku and Shidou, he misses.

I think you know what I’m trying to say here, at this point. Rin is currently at the point where most of the others (especially referring to Nagi, Reo, Bachira and Isagi here) were in the Second Selection Arc. He needs to develop his ego, his skill, and his relationships with others independent of Sae. Adopting Sae’s play style is no longer enough. Rin needs to get a handle of his own flow and more importantly his own play style, ‘destroying hideously’, and he needs to be able to play together with others as equals – no longer guiding others around like a puppeteer or marionette as he did in the Second Selection Arc, especially now that we can see the others are evolving further and beginning to catch up to him in terms of skill, and their new opponents on the next stage are only going to be more skilled and experienced than any of the Blue Lock boys.

3) What does Rin have to do with Isagi’s character arc and the narrative?

Isagi is a classic hero, with a necessary un-classic development per Blue Lock’s premise. His greatest strength, and his greatest flaw, is his adaptability born from his consistent compassion and natural inclination towards teamwork. But to succeed as the hero in the story of Blue Lock, to become the best striker in the world, these are the very things he needs to overcome. It’s in confronting others, and in prioritizing himself and his ego over others’ ego, that he gets rewarded by the narrative.

As a character, Isagi starts off with underdeveloped skills, and a tendency to pass when he should score, and overall, tends to prioritize team play over his individual desires. We see this in the first arc of the series, and we also see this occur in the Second Selection Arc over and over. In the 3v3 against Rin-Aryu-Tokimitsu he prioritizes team play initially, and gets the first goal, but ultimately loses the match. In the second 3v3, his attempts to play nice with Barou leads to their team trailing behind until he chooses to devour Barou and use him instead of focusing on cohesive teamwork. In the U20 match too, we see him coordinating with and supporting the others more than going for his own goals, even though he tries to do so. He succeeds only at the very end of the match, and that is when he 1) chooses not to support Rin in the 1v1 against Sae 2) trusts Rin to defeat Sae and 3) ‘creates his own luck and chance to score’, by positioning himself where the stray ball would most likely land once Rin defeats Sae, and 4) make the actual shot, in a mirror of what Rin did in the 4v4.

In contrast to Isagi, Rin begins in-series as a highly-skilled, self-centered striker, who pulls his team together by being the best, and having his team revolve around his moves and his strategies, treating them like puppets on a string -- both a reference to his name and a deeper indication of his attitude. That has mostly worked for him so far in Blue Lock, where he’s the undisputed number 1 – but when up against more skilled players, such as the World 5 and Sae, it no longer works. When he was made to team up with Shidou by Ego for the Blue Lock Eleven tryouts, who is equal/second to him in skill, it’s not enough either, and their lack of teamwork creates more problems than chances for Team A, though they do manage to win all their matches together.

Rin’s basic character arc, as of now, is the development of his ego and by extension, his relationships outside of his fixation on Sae. The narrative has worked that way too thus far. From his initial apathy towards the others, he’s gradually beginning to play nice – or nicer, for a stretch – with others. Beginning with practising with Bachira, then communicating better with his teammates Aryu and Tokimitsu, and to Isagi as well once Isagi joins their team. Very much a Defrosting Ice King trope, and a bit of a tsundere to boot. As captain of the U20, he begins Blue Lock’s offense, but it’s his fixation on defeating Sae one-on-one and getting Sae’s acknowledgment, rather than prioritizing the Blue Lock style of teamwork with the others, that leads to how Isagi has begun to supplant him in importance in the game to his teammates, and his eventual narrative loss.

Through Rin, Isagi not only grows aware of his lack of skill, he also changes his perceptive of what it means to play football. When he first faces off against Rin in the 3v3, it’s still a little hard for him to grasp how Rin perceives soccer as a death match, but by the time the U20 match happens, he’s fully embraced that ideology when he snaps at Ego when U20 takes the lead over Blue Lock. He also learns to think his tactics and strategies through more thoroughly, and further develop his skill in spatial awareness. Now in the Neo Egoist League, Rin still remains as his goal and to an extent, the standard Isagi’s set for himself and wants to surpass in the future, to be able to stand on the world stage.

So they have a very unique relationship in Blue Lock. More than anyone else, they both need to learn and take on each other’s mindset and attitudes better, for the sake of developing themselves into more rounded individuals and better players as a whole. And there’s still plenty of room for both of them to grow.

We are also seeing, interestingly enough, Isagi and Rin developing into an oddly codependent sort of relationship with regards to their on-field performance, despite neither of them intending to do so on purpose. We see them evolve in terms of skill and abilities whenever they play against each other, and we also see them teaming up very well together. Isagi, who’s weaker in a one-on-one in most cases, gets supported by Rin (vs Karasu, vs Sae), and when he starts forming tunnel vision in game it’s Rin that gets him out of it. For Rin, his blind spots in game get covered by Isagi, and Isagi matches up well enough with Rin to distract their opponents and give Rin more movement and freedom – which is also an important motif for Rin with regards to his relationship with Sae. There’s also a fun pattern of people watching one of them to figure out the other’s intentions in matches. And all of this thus culminates into...

4) Reasons why I ship IsagiRin or Rinsagi/why I think they make a good ship AKA the manifesto part

a) They get along off the field and would probably get along better if they try

Isagi and Rin have okay conversations with each other most of the time. Though Rin definitely could be more polite with Isagi, Isagi as a whole isn’t too bothered about Rin’s attitude. In comparison, Isagi gets irritated when he’s ignored by Nagi, Barou and Chigiri when they were sharing rooms, and is distinctly more short-tempered with Barou during games, and as of the recent Neo-Egoist League arc, more aggressive and hostile towards Kaiser and Yukimiya too, off the field.

For other instances: after losing to Rin’s team in the 4v4, Isagi questions Rin about why he loses, and Rin is shirty with him but ultimately answers him as best as he can. When Rin is doing yoga and meditation as physical aftercare, he doesn’t stop Isagi from joining him. While Isagi and co. were studying their English and waiting for the end of the Second Selection Arc, Aryu and Tokimitsu annoyed Rin with tons of questions while Bachira playfully started up a fight by tossing a book at Rin. Isagi sits out of their shenanigans to focus on studying instead. Isagi even feels close enough to Rin that he tries to tackle Rin with a hug after Rin scored a goal in the U20, though Rin dodges him.

b) They have similar thought processes, to the point of being able to understand what each other wants to do on the field

This is something consistently noted upon by the other characters, to the point where ‘watch Isagi to be able to keep up with Rin’ is a whole tactic by itself in matches, a la Nagi in the 4v4, then Nanase in the Blue Lock Eleven tryouts. Barou, as of the U20 match, utilizes ‘watch Rin to figure out Isagi’s evolved plays’, even remarking that ‘Rin is just another Isagi’ to him.

c) They are both invested in their rivalry with each other, and inspire each other to do better

Isagi gets invested first, yes, and after meeting Rin, Rin thus becomes his goal and standard. In the 4v4, Rin begins breaking out of his previously aloof shell and putting effort in to the game, and by the end of it, his on-field rivalry with Isagi has grown so much that Rin does a full 180 from the 3v3 where he couldn't care less who joined him, to selfishly, dictatorially declares that he’s chosen Isagi to join their team. As of the end of the U20 match, we have Rin declaring that Isagi��s his rival too.

d) They work best with each other

Ego, who’s a bit of a pseudo-in-universe omniscient narrator, emphasizes this point. The ideal partner for Itoshi Rin, is Isagi. Spelled out in canon, y’all. There are more than a few instances, too, of other characters remarking how well they work together. Bachira and Aiku, for instance, comes to mind.

e) Their relationship, since Rin’s appearance in the story, has been Isagi’s most important relationship, for no reason other than that Isagi’s ego chooses Rin. No one else has that distinction. And they choose each other.

From their very first matchup, Isagi decides that he wants Rin. At the end of the 3v3 matchup against Rin-Aryu-Tokimitsu, we basically have a full on monologue about Isagi falling in love with Rin’s shoot which, to date, is still the heaviest romance-laced monologue in the whole series for over a hundred chapters, surpassing Reo’s interactions with and monologues about Nagi ever since their split, and Bachira’s personal monologue about Isagi during and at the end of the 4v4 matchup.

Rin’s side is a little more iffy. Although he regards Isagi as someone he needs to beat as early on as the end of the 4v4 match, it’s really only in the U20 match, after realising that the game has begun to revolve around Isagi, that I feel Rin properly begins to regard as someone who can compete with him on equal footing. As ‘twisted’ as the artwork where Rin declares Isagi as his rival looks, it is a declaration and a choice, and ties into what I believe should be Rin’s intended major character arc for the series.

f) I just like the narrative motif they have, of ‘seeing’ each other

There’s something to be said about one of Isagi’s earliest-developed abilities being spatial awareness, a form of mind’s eye viewing of the positioning of players in a match (re: Kuroko no Basket’s Akashi’s Emperor Eye, Ao Ashi's Aoi Ashito with his Eagle Eye), and how Rin recognizes it as a weak point of Isagi’s early on, where before then Isagi had thought of it as one of his few strengths. Isagi’s skill growth and development over the course of the Second Selection, and even well into the U20 stage, had also primarily relied upon his spatial awareness, to the point where his current stats in the Neo Egoist League are heavily skewed towards it. There’s also, you know, the overarching theme of the pursuit of the ‘ego’. Ego, again, is about self-centeredness. And what is a successful egoist if not someone who makes everything revolve around them? Hence, look at them?

Now, let’s take a look at the motifs and descriptors Isagi has with some of his more prominent relationships.

Bachira and Isagi have the ‘monster’ and ‘egoist’, as well as partners.

Nagi and Isagi have the ‘striker’ and ‘genius’.

Barou and Isagi have the ‘king’ and ‘peasant’ (though arguably, Barou treats everyone this way), evolving somewhat into 'villain' and 'hero'.

Kaiser and Isagi have ‘emperor’ and ‘clown’.

Kunigami and Isagi now have 'fallen hero' (per Chigiri's own words) and 'hero'.

Rin and Isagi? Their relationship doesn’t really have any of these kinds of motifs assigned to them, even though they are the central rival pair in Blue Lock. In their short conversation before Ego announces the Neo-egoist League, they call each other 'fake hero' and 'fake villain', but there's not much substance to it. Yet. But let’s take a look at Isagi’s ending monologue for C48 again.

“Even so... why… In spite of the fact that we’re going to lose… my eyes… my heart… I’m completely smitten, by the beauty of the parable that his kick drew --”

The ‘eyes’ come first. They both yelled ‘look at me’ at each other in the U20 match. It’s deliberately written in, both for drama’s sake and also because it is an important part to their relationship with each other. Rin and Isagi having ‘Look at me’, as a symbolic tie-in with each other is just… nice, even without the implicit romanticism of this.

So, the mind’s eye view motif for Isagi is obvious, once you consider that his best ability right now is spatial awareness, but why is ‘look at me’ so important for Rin?

It comes back down to his character arc. He wants Sae’s acknowledgment. He wants Sae, to, essentially, see him as a person, as his brother, to ‘look at him’, but it still hasn’t happened. In Rin’s mind, Sae doesn’t see Rin, the person. Sae sees Rin only in relation to his own football, as a practice partner to improve his football. And when Rin is no longer skilled enough to compete with Sae, Sae throws him away. Rin’s emotional dependency on Sae’s acknowledgement, as I’ve already stressed, is not good for his mental well-being, his ego, and goes against the story’s themes.

Instead, it’s Isagi who looks at him. It’s Isagi who sees Rin as his own person. But Rin's not able to accept that yet. With how the U20 match ended -- with Sae acknowledging Isagi instead of Rin, and Rin himself not getting the final goal, his emotional immaturity has him viewing Isagi as a villain instead. Even in the U20 match, Rin refuses to look at Isagi and accept Isagi's support after he awakens his flow. Rin still has to develop and grow more as a character, to realise and commit to the fact that he doesn’t need Sae’s acknowledgment, for himself or his football. Hence, it’s important for them both that this ‘look at me’ shtick is mutual. So yes, I am very much looking forward to the day that Rin looks back at Isagi the way Isagi looked at Rin in the U20 match.

g) Random other stuff I just find neat

Other than the mind’s eye view shtick, in the U20 match, in the English fan translation, Isagi mulls about finding the 'thread' in the match to score.

And guess whose name has that meaning in it?

糸 – thread, stitch, yarn

師 – teacher

That’s right. The Itoshi brothers.

In the OG Japanese though, Isagi thinks that he's finding the 'design', 「綾」, to score. 「綾」 is read as 'aya', but it has an alternate reading. And if you guessed that the alternate reading is 'rin', congrats! You got it right! And Rin, does, in fact, lead to Isagi's win and goal.

After Blue Lock renews their offense with Karasu backing them up in the Blue Lock vs Japan U20 match, it’s Sae who comes up to block Isagi and destablizies him from making the shoot. Isagi can practically see all the puzzle pieces he’s had fall apart beneath him, himself breaking apart into pieces and artistically awesome symbolic despair, but it’s Rin who comes up to support him after he makes this monologue of , and it’s where the ‘look at me’ occurred. Then of course, it's Rin who leads the team to victory, and it's after Rin manages to get the ball away from Sae that Isagi gets his winning shot for Blue Lock.

A little more on the Itoshi surname: they both live up to their name as well, to a point. Both Rin and Sae have brought to Isagi’s attention critical weaknesses he has in his personal game play, Rin with the ‘eye’ in the Second Selection Arc, and Sae with Isagi’s hastiness and lack of a stable ‘core’ in the U20, though whether or not Sae’s advice is still a throwaway line, or a Chevkov’s Gun waiting to be fired will be built upon in the future is up in the air. Edit: as of the current Bastard Munchen vs Manshine City Neo-Egoist League match, it's come up again, so yay, foreshadowing.

Again, Blue Lock is a sports series, so you’re not really going to get classic action-adventure tropes where the characters and ships save each other from the brink of death, but its interesting that Blue Lock still manages to kind of throw this in with Isagi and Rin. Rin is the more skilled of the two. He ‘saves’ Isagi from Karasu in the Blue Lock Eleven tryout match, and also ‘saves’ Isagi in the U20 match when Isagi was losing to Sae. On the flip side, one consistent aspect of Rin, with regards to his relationship with Sae, and when he's not playing with Sae, is that he finds it ‘restricting’ – fan translations even go out of their way to point this out. And the person who gives him freedom, both from a humanizing viewpoint and in-game, is none other than Isagi. Isagi recognizes Rin as his own person, from that yoga session where he declares Rin his rival, and he both successfully supports Rin’s gameplay, giving him more options as to what to do in game, and covers for Rin’s weak points as well.

To borrow conceptually from BnHA, saving someone is a contract between the rescuer and the rescuee. There needs to be trust from the rescuee that the rescuer will save them. Isagi allows Rin to help him in games, and readily takes it when offered. However, in Rin’s case, neither Isagi nor Rin are at that point yet – Isagi simply lacks the skill to do so well enough, and Rin too, is currently unwilling to accept Isagi’s help. Their relationship has not developed to that point yet.

I know it’s potentially a bit of a stretch, but, eh, *puts on shipping goggles* this is biased and tends towards a shipping meta, and if you’ve read this far, you know what you signed up for.

Also another little fun fact, the reading of the Itoshi brothers’ surname, is a homophone for another fun word, 愛し, which means ‘beloved’. And Rin's name (the kanji) is also a very common and popular name for girls in Japan (I'm talking consistent top 10 spot popular in the past decade), though it's unisex. Definitely not the author hinting anything. Nope.

5) Expectations and guesses on future story plots

Blue Lock is a long way from being over, though it moves pretty fast as a story by skimming over most of the regular ‘training arcs’ and team building periods that other sports animanga tend to have after the first arc, but we’ve had foreshadowing that things will only get harder for Isagi after the U20 match, namely from Tada-chan, that perhaps Isagi has already used up all his luck with that goal in the U20 match. But we also need to remember Rin and Ego’s philosophy on luck, which could also be taken as an omniscient philosophy of the story: luck is something you get to move towards you, to shift in your favour based on all the underlying elements and how you notice and respond to them, grasping a possible ‘chance’ and taking advantage of it in that moment it lands in your hand. A chance becomes a pinch when not properly utilized, just as a pinch becomes a chance when overcome.

As of now (October 8 2022), we are at the Neo Egoist League, with new antagonists and new rivals, and Isagi’s problems has only grown more difficult. He not only has to contend with new, hostile teammates like Kaiser, he also has to tread carefully with old teammates like Kunigami and Yukimiya, all the while ensuring that he makes it into the Japan’s U20 team for the world cup by securing a high offer from existing professional football clubs. If Tada-chan’s prediction comes through, then that means Isagi can no longer simply rely on his luck for his future. He’s going to have to create it. And all of this ties back to Isagi developing both his ego and skills, per his character arc, to fulfil his dream.

He’s still lagging behind the others in terms of personal ability, especially his former teammates/rivals, and it’s exciting to follow Isagi’s journey to become the best striker in the world. He is already getting good advice from Noel Noa about carefully visualizing, planning and managing his time and actions to fulfil his goal. With Kaiser in the same team, there’s another landmark of a player for him to surpass for the most important skill necessary for a striker: his shoot. Kunigami is also his foil and challenge there: Isagi rose to become Blue Lock’s hero, where Kunigami fell from his original ‘heroic’ aspirations and is now an antagonistic character towards Isagi, an inferior ‘copy’ of Isagi’s own hero, Noel Noa. Then there’s Yukimiya, a former teammate now turned rival that’s biting at his heels, without needing to mention all his previous teammates whom he’s on varying levels of friendliness with to beat as well.

I also have high hopes over the fact that Rin and Shidou are both in the French team together within the Neo-Egoist League. From a narrative standpoint, neither of them have fully succeeded in the Blue Lock vs U20 match. Blue Lock’s no. 1 and no. 2 also have a lot to learn from each other – Rin needs to tap further into the self-centered, twisted flow he discovered in the vs U20 match, Shidou's field of expertise, while Shidou still needs to learn to work with others besides Sae both on and off field. Not to say that Rin is that much better than Shidou in that regards, but Rin can at least be on talking terms with the rest when he tries to, whereas Shidou seems to antagonize just about everyone he encounters.

Who better to show Rin self-centered flow than the egoist no one in Blue Lock could handle, Shidou? Who better to impress on Shidou the importance of at least synergizing with your teammates, other than Rin, the only person who kept up with and knows Sae better than anyone else, the first person whom Shidou felt a keen connection to when playing football? That is, if they don’t wind up killing each other first. Karasu probably has a minor stroke from being in the same team with these two, and I'm also curious if more narrative spotlight will be given to him. He did face off against Isagi and Rin in the Blue Lock Eleven tryouts, and then go up against Sae in the U20 match, plus, he's just one of my favourite characters.

I’m looking forward to the Germany vs France match up in the Neo-Egoist League. I’m guessing that it’s going to be the very last match up for the arc, since Isagi’s already said it himself: the day he manages to beat Rin, is the day he gets to stand on the world stage as a player on his own merit.

And Isagi still has more people to defeat on his way of becoming the world’s best striker: Michael Kaiser. Julien Loki. The rest of the ‘top 11’ players for the U20 world cup. Possibly, maybe, Noel Noa himself, if Blue Lock’s author truly intends to take Isagi that far, which I hope they do, especially since Noel was introduced all the way back in the very first chapter of the series too.

TL;DR, shipping Isagirin/Rinsagi is great, they are foils and rivals and spur each other’s growth fantastically in a series where separating from your friendships/partnerships, and becoming better individually, constantly challenging yourself and them, then coming back together, stronger and more mature, both as individuals and as a pair, and choosing each other throughout it all, is a theme. And I’ll end this long, long meta, with this quote.

“The weak are dominated by their ego, the wise dominate their ego, and the intelligent are in a constant struggle against their ego.” ― Hamza Yusuf

#blue lock #bllk #isagi yoichi #itoshi rin #isagirin meta part 6 #rinsagi meta part 6 #rinsagi #isagirin #otp: heart stolen by his beautiful parable

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