#ichinan implied

[darlingmage]

I am down so horrendously bad for this jaded nurse

[kungukingi]

Meditations on bris/isbr [3/?] "Barou as Isagi's Catalyst of Change"

Link to previous part.

Team X versus Team Z is a match that gains a whole new depth of meaning when it's contextualised with Isagi’s backstory from the light novel, with one particularly important perspective coming through his internal narration about the Saitama Prefectural Tournament Finals (the match against Kira), and about what he thought it would mean to him.

To put Isagi’s backstory short; he was initially a timid kid, likely partially due to his implied hypersthesia (a condition that involves an abnormal increase in sensitivity to stimuli of the sense, such as sounds, textures, light, etc.) — until he got into football, developed a passion for it, and started to excel in it. From his light novel (Translated by @hoshi801_):

In elementary school, he scored a goal beating five opponents in a row. In junior high school, he became known as the unbeatable striker in his hometown in Saitama.

He discovered Noa, gained confidence in his dream to become the best striker in the world and to win the World Cup. That is, until he entered Ichinan High School, which is where it all changed. When Isagi first learns of the “One for all, all for one” motto of Ichinan, he questions it, but when his teammates see nothing wrong with it, he decides not to press the issue so as not to stand out negatively:

“Well, in soccer, it feels good because you can beat your opponents and score goals by yourself, right? That’s the joy of being a striker. It's not about joining forces, but about the power of each individual striker… I guess.” He glances to see how Tada reacts. “Huh? You can't play soccer by yourself.” He said “What are you talking about?” then laughed. “Soccer is a sport played by eleven people! My goal is a team play that represents the bond of those eleven people! One for all, all for one!” Suddenly, they wrap an arm around each other’s shoulders. “Let's all join forces and go to the Nationals!" “Yeah!” When Tada said this, their other teammates got excited. (Huh? Am I the only one who thinks that this is ridiculous?) Isagi couldn't say anything more.

He is far from happy with this status quo however, silently disagreeing with the ‘nobody should stand out’ way his coach is making them play football, and eventually asks to play as a striker.

“Uhm… I want to go for the next game, as a striker, I'd like to shoot more if possible.…” This was all Isagi could muster. “Hahaha! You want to show off?” The coach laughed out loud, and his teammates laughed out loud as well.

Isagi turns red from embarrassment, and the coach goes off about how that’s just not happening because it’s not the Ichinan High School way. Shamed, Isagi then tries to gaslight himself into thinking this is fine and he is the one who is wrong:

(This is fine. Indeed, this is how a team works. Soccer is a sport played by eleven people. I'm sure it's not right for me to disturb the harmony… by myself.)

(Literally Isagi when he’s told he can’t play as an egoist striker:)

From then on his ego is described as ‘sealed’ and he focuses on just keeping the harmony, hiding his more assertive tendencies because he doesn’t want to stand out to his detriment in this harmony-valuing environment. This continues up until the moment when they’re getting ready for the Prefectural Tournament Finals in his second year. It’s the moment where his “true feelings welled up in his heart” and “Isagi heard the voice of his ego for the first time in a long time”.

Their opponent in the Finals was Matsukaze Kokuo High School, which had one of the best strikers in the prefecture, Kira Ryosuke. (I will beat that Kira Ryosuke, go to the Nationals……get scouted, go to the J-League……Someday, I will represent Japan……! Someday, I'll be at the World Cup I dreamed of……) He looked at his clenched fist and realized. (World Cup? So I’m still…… hoping for something like that.) He had never told anyone about it, and even he had almost forgotten about it, but it had always been there in the bottom of his heart. He wants to represent Japan and win the World Cup. It was a dream that he had been thinking about ever since the day he saw Noel Noa for the first time when he was eight years old. Then a predictive thought came to his mind. (......if my dream were to come true, this match would surely be the turning point.)

That bolded part is very revealing, and heartbreaking considering how he ended up automatically adhering to the “Ichinan Way” when the chips were down. That match did not end up being the turning point for Isagi, as we know. He ends up passing to Tada in the moment where he could’ve chosen to be assertive in a 1v1 situation with a goalie, and Tada ends up botching the goal and losing them the game.

But another match would become that turning point in a different way, and one specific person would become the catalyst to give Isagi’s ego the spark it needed to start on the path of turning into the all-consuming flame it eventually becomes. Someone Isagi immediately notices from the very first moment he enters the pitch.

The Team X versus Team Z match begins in chaos, as Ego has created a very specific situation that discourages any kind of meek “one for all and all for one” philosophy. The dumpling football that ensues is downright Darwinian in nature; individualistic and cruel. Though it’s not football exactly, it’s still closer to Isagi’s ideal football ethos than Ichinan High School’s way, which becomes clear when you look at the paragraph of Isagi’s thoughts upon him discovering the football club’s motto for the first time:

One for all, all for one. It means each one should act for the sake of others, and the others should act for the sake of each one. Sounds good, but isn't the game far more from that ideal? The soccer that made his heart fired up was even more cruel. The striker who single-handedly broke through that cruel world was beautiful.

Barou is the one who immediately takes control of the match, ends up “turning 0 into 1”, and dominates the pitch by getting his team to support him while team Z continues to struggle without a clear centre. And he does it in a way that leaves Isagi awestruck.

Isagi knows they can’t win anymore, but he still tries to do that same thing Barou did for Team X for their own Team Z; turn 0 into 1 and become the axis of their team.

Barou ends up taking notice of this change, and comes to stop him himself, in doing so creating an imperfect echo of the situation in the Prefectural Tournament Finals. But now Isagi doesn’t only have that traumatic memory pressing at him, there is also the imaginary World Cup Finals scenario that Ego painted for them at the start of Blue Lock, during which Isagi had imagined himself acting like a “true striker” would.

Point being, from Isagi’s perspective this is a moment that ought to be pivotal, a kind of a litmus test of whether he’s cut out to be a striker or not. But he’s not stupid, so he knows he can’t match Barou in a 1v1. So he freezes, wonders about what would a striker do, unconsciously activates a nascent version of metavision for one brief moment… and passes to Kunigami, mirroring his actions in the Prefectural Tournament Finals when he passed to Tada. In his mind, he does the exact thing he’d already thought he wouldn’t do again, because he is a striker, and he’s regretted not taking the shot ever since.

He is shocked, Barou is shocked. Raichi is furious and starts berating Isagi, who can’t clearly answer the question about why he did it, and then Barou says this:

Barou, who left such an impression in Isagi in this game, who has in such a short timespan embodied many key “striker” traits that Isagi has admired in Noa and ‘strikers’ in general for half of his life by this point, being someone who can:

…single-handedly break through “that” cruel world

…beat his opponents and score goals by himself

…turn 0 into 1

…be at the centre of it all

— This Barou tells Isagi that he isn’t cut out to be a striker, causing him to collapse on the pitch, wonder what the hell is he doing, and think that Barou — someone who does seem to have what it takes — might be right. But this being Isagi, he of course doesn’t give up. Instead he takes this despair Barou has fed him, uses the opportunity to truly look at himself, learn, and evolve instead.

Link to next post.

[nenekobasu]

the problem here (one of the many problems here) is that ubers is narratively the end of isagi’s journey right. isagi had several journeys that were happening concurrently first his ubers-wide journey represented by the goals that mirror each other (the suggested lack of evolution this implies is concerning— isagi ended the game by just barely reproducing what he started with), his journey to reach noa in the super-theory that played out almost exactly as he had first described in their first conversation, his journey to number 1 striker in the world (intermediate) arguably ends here when he fulfilled his perfect vision-ideal of what a number 1 striker looks like

ubers by recycling moments from chapter 1 (the pass, the scream) also implies it’s leading up to a new start, chapter 1 isagi began his journey proper by running into blue lock and ubers calls back to moments when isagi’s ichinan journey ended, ubers the death/rebirth game about endings and for isagi ubers is the ending of his journey now that he’s achieved his personal striker’s ideal

nel arc is 4 games and going into barcha and manshine and ubers isagi had clear goals clear objectives he wanted to accomplish and now he has none and that’s the problem right that isagi reached peak too fast. ordinarily a shonen mc would reach peak after a steady series of ups and downs after building up strengths that are meant to last, but since isagi’s at the top now, what does he have left to prove? what fights does he have left? isagi probably doesn’t register rin as a threat he thinks he’s got his winning formula down. this is the end of isagi’s many journeys and the worst part is it’s not even an end that suggests a new beginning, isagi is nagi-reo now and the only thing this promises is death

[darlingmage]

i havent posted in a really long time but the yakuza brainrot is so real

[nenekobasu]

i wanna be in pain so thinking about the Ball in the kaiser-isagi poster for a sec the bane of all committed kaiser fans. it's cool to me that while i can (and do) interpret the objects around kaiser as "gifts from others which stifle his ego" i never once thought of the Ball this way, if anything i've always considered it his origin point that is "what kaiser would be left with if he lost his gifted riches" which is broadly in line with how people (in jpn fandom) seem to interpret it as representing his starting circumstance i.e. symbolic of his backstory (which would imply the hardships he suffered makes up the "ego" (Ball) he uses to "fight back" after he loses his clothes gifts to isagi, which thematically is what happened during v.italy wow the poster was foreshadowing and blue lock is evil)

the most common interpretation is that the Ball means kaiser grew up in the slums like lorenzo and noa. the argument against this is that blue lock rarely gives overlapping backstories to its charas (lorenzo and noa are the exception to the no-overlap principle), while a point in its favor would be that both lorenzo and noa have meaningful narrative and thematic connections to kaiser lorenzo who attained the dream he tattooed on his neck and noa who is above kaiser in ability + paired with him in contrast to egojin-isagi (+ kaiser's "true answer", according to me). given this i don't think it would be surprising if kaiser turns out to have been born in poverty. (the scene where kaiser insults lorenzo's teeth is sometimes used to oppose the interpretation but if i start speculating it will derail this post and my life also)

the Ball representing kaiser's past while not being about poverty meanwhile is more interesting to me because it's scarier. the kaiser-isagi poster is all about the contrast it's all about kaiser and isagi as opposites and isagi's props also point to his circumstances (his ichinan uniform), so if isagi's ball represents his backstory, and isagi's backstory is that he was raised in a loving household with parents who supported his soccer journey and must have bought him all the balls he wanted, then kaiser being contrasted with this is a bit worrying. the poverty option may actually be easier to stomach if only because it's more straightforward; i don’t think many people would find it fun to think through the implications of “a child who was raised in an environment without financial problems only ever had access to one ball." well now i'm in pain. thanks kaiser blue lock i knew i could count on you