Blue Lock

Alternate Title

ブルーロック

Synopsis

You have to have the world’s biggest ego to be the world’s top striker. In order to develop a striker who will lead Japan to the World Cup finals, a project is started by the Japan Football League. The name of that project is Blue Lock. Three-hundred high schoolers are gathered together, all of which are strikers. But the 300 will be whittled down until only one remains. Who will become a striker that will revolutionize Japanese soccer? The hottest and craziest soccer anime in history is about to begin!

Background

Blue Lock started as a manga series written by Muneyuki Kaneshiro and illustrated by Yusuke Nomura that began serialization in Kodansha's Weekly Shonen Magazine in August 2018. As of July 2022, 20 collected tankobon volumes have been published under the Shonen Magazine Comics imprint. The series won the 45th Kodansha Manga Award in the shonen category in May 2021 and surpassed 10 million copies in print in July 2022.

A TV anime adaptation was announced in August 2021. It is being produced by 8 bit and features Tetsuaki Watanabe as director and Shunsuke Ishikawa as assistant director, with Taku Kishimoto in charge of series composition and scripts, Muneyuki Kaneshiro in charge of story supervision, Masaru Shindo as main character designer, Kenji Tanabe and Kento Toya as both character designer and chief animation director, and Jun Murayama as music composer. The anime’s opening theme song is “Chaos ga Kiwameru” by UNISON SQUARE GARDEN, and the ending theme song is “Winner” by Shugo Nakamura. The anime will premiere in Japan on Oct. 8, 2022 on TV Asahi and its affiliates as part of the "NUMAnimation" programming block. It will also be streamed overseas through Crunchyroll.

Characters

Yoichi Isagi (Voiced by: Kazuki Ura)
Yoichi is an unknown high school forward. His dream is to one day become the ace striker of Japan’s national team and win the World Cup. He regrets his decision to pass the ball when he had a chance to score a goal during the prefectural tournament. He joins the Blue Lock project to chase his dream and change his life.

Meguru Bachira (Voiced by: Tasuku Kaito)
Meguru has a unique sensibility and goes at his own pace. He likes to play with a freewheeling style and uses his excellent dribbling as a weapon. During the dorm entrance test, he meets Yoichi, who is also a member of Team Z, and the two become good friends.

Rensuke Kunigami (Voiced by: Yuki Ono)
Rensuke is a young man full of good sportsmanship who believes in playing fair and square. He has a straightforward and honest personality, which earns him the trust of his teammates. His strong physicality and left-footed midfield shots are his weapons.

Hyoma Chigiri (Voiced by: Soma Saito)
Hyoma is a handsome guy with an androgynous face. For some reason, he keeps his weapons hidden from even his teammates. Due to his good looks and cool, laid-back attitude, he is called “Miss Selfish” by those around him.

Wataru Kuon (Voiced by: Masatomo Nakazawa)
Wataru is attentive to his surroundings, and his weapon of choice is his high jumping ability. He is also in charge of strategic planning and is trusted as the team’s playmaker. However, he has a peculiar way of naming his strategies.

Jingo Raichi (Voiced by: Yoshitsugu Matsuoka)
Jingo is a young man with an assertive personality whose trademark is his blonde hair. During matches, he plays rough, intimidating both friends and foes alike, but his motto is “sexy football.” He is confident in his shooting technique and physical strength.

Yudai Imamura (Voiced by: Shoya Chiba)
Yudai is as flirtatious and flashy as he appears to be and is a playboy. At first glance, he appears to be unmotivated, but he uses soccer as a substitute for love, assesses each match, and uses his speed and technique to run all over the field.

Gin Gagamaru (Voiced by: Shugo Nakamura)
Gin is a wild child who is proud of his tremendous agility. He uses his agility to move in unexpected ways and is good at jumping into the fray. Even outside of soccer, he acts unpredictably, such as eating with his hands, which confuses those around him.

Asahi Naruhaya (Voiced by: Daishi Kajita)
Asahi is the team’s mood maker. He is the eldest of six siblings and is a hard worker who works part-time and handles the housework in addition to playing soccer. His goal is to become a member of Japan’s national team so that he can support his family.

Okuhito Iemon (Voiced by: Ryunosuke Watanuki)
Okuhito is an all-rounder who can play any position with ease. He is the type who can’t refuse when someone asks a favor and was assigned as goalkeeper during the first selection. He is mentally mature, and his good-natured personality brings his teammates together, who tend to clash with one another.

Gurimu Igarashi (Voiced by: Aoi Ichikawa)
Gurimu has a self-proclaimed indomitable spirit, which is his weapon of choice. Due to not wanting to take over his family’s temple, he makes a promise with his dad that he wouldn’t have to if he makes it onto the national team. He sees Blue Lock as his chance to do just that. He is strongly assertive and is aware that his abilities lag behind those of his teammates.

Ryosuke Kira (Voiced by: Kenichi Suzumura)
Ryosuke is the ace player of Matsukaze Kokuo High School who played with Yoichi at the Saitama Prefectural Tournament finals. He is an influential player known as the treasure of Japan’s soccer world. He has a gentlemanly personality and is friendly even with those he has met for the first time. He has deep respect for the members of Japan’s national team and is dismissive of Jinpachi’s condescending view of modern Japanese soccer.

Jinpachi Ego (Voiced by: Hiroshi Kamiya)
Jinpachi is a strict coach who has full control of the Blue Lock project. He eats nothing but instant ramen and cup yakisoba. In order to create the world’s best striker, he is giving special training to 300 hundred high school students.

Anri Teieri (Voiced by: Eri Yukimura)
Anri is a new employee of the Japan Football League who dreams of winning the World Cup for the national team. In order to realize that dream, she has appointed Jinpachi as the coach of the Blue Lock project. She supports Blue Lock by helping Jinpachi with compiling information on each player.

Shoei Baro (Voiced by: Junichi Suwabe)
Shoei is an absolute champion who leads Team X. He refers to himself as “King” and treats all players as supporting players, whether they are teammates or opponents. He is highly egotistical and insists that he is the best, but his words also live up to his skills, and he has a strong physicality and unparalleled shooting ability.

Zantetsu Tsurugi (Voiced by: Kazuyuki Okitsu)
Zantetsu uses his explosive speed and left-footed shots as his weapons, and his trademark is his glasses. He has an intellectual air, but in truth he doesn’t like things that are difficult and tries to hide that by using difficult words even though he misuses them constantly. Because of that, Seishiro and Reo call him “Zantetsu the Moron.” On the other hand, he also has a calm side and admonishes Reo when he gets heated during a match.

Seishiro Nagi (Voiced by: Nobunaga Shimazaki)
Seishiro is a genius forward with an extraordinary sense of the sport even though he’s only been playing for half a year. Though he initially had no interest in any sports, his classmate Reo sees his potential and pushes him to give soccer a try. His weapons are his innate skills and trapping ability, and he performs plays that ordinary players aren’t able to mimic.

Reo Mikage (Voiced by: Yuma Uchida)
Reo is a member of Team V who has the skills to handle any kind of play. He is the heir of a large corporation who is bored with his life of having everything handed to him, but after watching a World Cup final by chance, he begins playing soccer with Seishiro with the aim of winning the World Cup himself.

Ikki Niko (Voiced by: Natsuki Hanae)
Ikki is an impressively brainy player with long bangs that cover his eyes. At first glance, he doesn’t stand out as a player, but he excels at observing the entire field and is often the one to start an offensive. He speaks politely to those around him, but he can be cocky at times.

Junichi Wanima (Voiced by: Ryota Suzuki)
Junichi is the older of the Wanima twins, who play a central role in Team W, and his trademark is his distinctive eyebrows that seem to curl. He always has an exaggerated kabuki-like expression on his face, is a man of few words, and speaks through his brother Keisuke when he has something he wants to say.

Keisuke Wanima (Voiced by: Ryota Suzuki)
Keisuke is the younger of the Wanima twins, who play a central role in Team W. He and his brother Junichi communicate and understand each other almost perfectly without words, which makes them skilled at combination plays together. What’s more, he and Junichi are from the same high school as Hyoma and are his seniors on the team.

Sae Itoshi (Voiced by: Takahiro Sakurai)
Sae is a lower member of the prestigious Spanish club team Les Halles and has picked up attention from around the world as a player selected for the new generation World’s Best Eleven. He had given up on modern Japanese soccer as being low level, but upon returning to Japan, he learns of the Blue Lock project and becomes interested in it.

Rin Itoshi (Voiced by: Kouki Uchiyama)
Rin is a top player in Blue Lock and boasts high scoring ability. Though he puts out a cool vibe, he is super egotistical and stands out for his aggressive plays and conduct. On the other hand, he also has excellent insight and is able to assess other players’ abilities and perform combination plays to dominate them. Sae is his older brother, and there seems to be a deep rift between them.

Jubei Aryu (Voiced by: Katsuyuki Konishi)
Jubei is second in rank only to Rin and uses his unique jumping ability and reach as his weapons. He is a narcissist with a high aesthetic sense, but he has high respect for those he recognizes as “Osha,” his own unique value system. He values “Osha” above all else and has a complex about his old-fashioned name not being “Osha” enough.

Aoshi Tokimitsu (Voiced by: Shinnosuke Tachibana)
Aoshi has an extremely negative mindset and tends to make negative statements. On the flip side though, he boasts astounding physicality and an inexhaustible stamina, making him a top-class player. He is a diehard soccer otaku and is so knowledgeable he even knows the nicknames of soccer players from around the world and their play styles.

Music

Opening Theme Song: “Chaos ga Kiwameru” by UNISON SQUARE GARDEN
Ending Theme Song: “Winner” by Shugo Nakamura

• Anime Site (Japanese)
• Twitter (Japanese)

• Original Creator: Muneyuki Kaneshiro, Yusuke Nomura
• Director: Tetsuaki Watanabe
• Assistant Director: Shunsuke Ishikawa
• Series Composition/Script: Taku Kishimoto
• Story Supervision: Muneyuki Kaneshiro
• Concept Advisor: Yutaka Uemura
• Main Character Design: Masaru Shindo
• Character Design/Chief Animation Director: Kenji Tanabe, Kento Toya
• Chief Action Director: Hisashi Toshima
• Action Director: Hiromi Sakamoto
• Prop Design: Hisashi Tojima, Kaori Okitsu
• Outfit Design: Yuri Nakajima
• Animation Special Effects: Akane
• Color Design: Sakura Komatsu
• Special Effects: Kanako Yamada
• Art Setting: Shinji Sugiyama
• Art Director: Sawako Takagi
• Background Art: Studio Wyeth
• Photography: Chiptune
• 3DCG Director: Norimitsu Hirosawa
• 3DCG: Aura Studio
• Visual Concept: Toshiyuki Yamashita (Hyperbole)
• Special Effects Processing: Rina Mitsuzumi, Toshiyuki Yamashita
• 2DCG Monitor Graphics: Keiichi Asano (emitai)
• Editing: Mai Hasegawa (Editz)
• Sound Director: Fumiyuki Go
• Sound Production: Bit Grooove Promotion
• Music: Jun Murayama
• Animation Producer: Tsuyoshi Hirano
• Animation Production: 8 bit