English Dub Review: Bluelock “Dream”

Overview:

Prefectural Final for the National High School Soccer Tournament. Isagi Yoichi, a first-year forward, loses his chance for the Nationals because he has passed the ball to his fellow player in front of the goal. That’s when he receives an invitation to Blue Lock. It’s a facility to train one world’s greatest strikers out of 300 high-school-aged forwards so that Japan can win the World Cup. Isagi and the others are assembled in a small room, and they take their first test to decide which 11 of them get to move into the dorm out of 12 of them.

Our Take:

I never thought I would see the day I would give a 10 to the first episode of something but that is just how amazing this episode was. It has a lot of the typical tropes you’ll find in any sports anime but there are a lot of areas it’s different. The main one is, screw the power of friendship and teamwork bro! If you want to be number one you better have the ego to do it. It feels like too many sports anime are afraid to show some of that but not here. Do you think Michael Jordan was as good as he was because he passed the ball? Hell no.

You start to get a hint of this in how Isagi starts to wonder if maybe he should have taken the final shot in his game as opposed to passing. I thought that was an already interesting seed they planted and then they went all in with it. We barely get introduced to a lot of the characters and I already have a few favorites. This show is going to be good I can tell, I already want to start reading the manga. I also think this might be Ricco Fajardo’s best role and again, only the first episode. The animation alone is enough to get most anime fans on board. This is the most jam-packed season of anime I have seen in a while but believe me when I say Bluelock deserves a spot on your watchlist.