#its late and my emotions after watching the first 2 eps are messy

[thesquidkid]

So my favourite cartoon growing up just got renewed for a 4th season and I wanna properly talk about it. It’s called ‘Foot 2 Rue’ (you might recognize from me talking about it every occasion I can lmao), and this is what I have to say about it, about the reboot, and about the fourth season.

First of all, what is foot 2 rue? It’s a French/Italian show that follows 7 kids (5 at first) that play street football in the fictional town of Port-Marie. Their team name is ‘Les Bleus’, and they are aged 11-14. This show originally aired 2005-2010, with the reboot airing 2014-2015 and the 4th season starting in 2022. I will first talk about the original 3 seasons, then the reboot, and finally the fourth season.

Now, why is it my favourite cartoon, and how did it impact my life so much? (putting this under a cut for people who don't want to see one of my rants about foot 2 rue) Here you can find more information of the show

Well, for starters, let’s talk about the three rules of foot 2 rue: “Amitié, respect, solidarité!” or in English: friendship, respect, solidarity. The fourth unofficial rule (tho it is repeatedly pointed out) is that each team must have at least one girl. These ‘rules’ meant that as a kid, I played football with the guys, putting backpacks on the ground to make the goals. It teaches kids that you should treat others with respect, that you should help each other out, be nice to one another, and that girls can play with boys too if they want.

Another aspect that makes this show so special to me and to many other kids, is one that I only really realised once I was older. Diversity. These kids, who play football all together, come from many different backgrounds. And I don’t just mean diversity when it comes to skin colour. We have kids who are orphans, or whose parents are divorced, or whose parents are busy with work. We see kids who feel left out because they are the eldest of 10, or kids who are only children yet their parents aren’t much present. We have kids who were raised by grandparents, or raised in an institute. Some of the kids live in a homeless shelter, others live in council housing. Some kids are disabled, whether that be physically or mentally. The one thing they all have in common? Football.

I am lucky enough that when I was a child, I didn’t really realise that there was such prejudice against other people, simply because they are different. My parents raised me to look at everybody the same, to treat everyone with the same respect. And as a kid, I never questioned why my friends were different, they just were.

But then I started middle school, where I got bullied for being different. And that sucked. But I also made really good friends there, people who had also watched foot 2 rue growing up, people who didn’t see differences as a weakness but as a strength instead. One of the girl who bullied me started off as my friend, and I may be a small insignificant thing, but I know that her parents didn’t let her watch this cartoon growing up because it would be a bad influence on her.

Now, I may be naive to believe that such a little cartoon could impact people into respecting others, but I believe it does indeed make a change.

One of my cousin’s classmates was in a wheelchair, and I remember clearly the day we watched the episode where one of the kids who plays football is also in a wheelchair. Because she drew the kid that was on the tv and gave it to her friend.

I could go on and on for days, talking about the major and minor characters in depth, and maybe one day I will. The characters all have layers to them, their personalities are so distinctive, yet they cover a pretty large ground when it comes to representation. I’m pretty sure that if everyone here watched it, you would relate strongly to at least one character, major or minor.

So, you can see how foot 2 rue is such a great show and how it impacted me so much, right? Okay, now let's talk about the reboot.

Foot 3 rue extrême. Or as my cousin likes to call it, the "bland" foot 2 rue. Because we went from a show that put forward diversity, telling kids that it was okay to be different, that you could even find strength in being different to a show that was mostly only about winning.

We went from a show which was mostly about kids of colour, kids from all sorts of backgrounds, to a show that was moslty about white rich kids.

When I say the reboot is moslty about winning, I don’t mean that the original wasn’t. Les Bleus were twice world champions, and they didn’t often lose a game, we saw them lose in other aspects. Many episodes centered around the captain, Tag, an orphan, looking for a father figure. We saw these kids be kids. They argued, and made dumb choices, and cried. But together, as a team, they fought back, they won, they laughed.

In my opinion, the reboot feels like the studio wanted to tone it down, to please a greater audience. And to make it more interesting, they added the idea of a challenge before each game. These challenges, once again imo, make it less ‘real’. What I mean by that, is that foot 2 rue was about taking 4 backpacks or coats to create goals. Or using pre-existing objects, like benches or bushes. It was about a game that kids have always, and will always play: street football.

There are no rules in street football, only to show respect. On the other hand, the reboot and the challenges meant you needed preparation, you needed rules and perhaps even an audience.

The main reason why I am not a fan of the reboot is that the characters seem to lack layers. Which is ironic considering the original is in 2D and the reboot in 3D. I don’t like the reboot in many ways, but I won’t shit on people who enjoy it, everyone has different taste.

Now, talking about the fourth season. So far I have only watched the first 2 episodes, but I needed to write this out while I still had it in mind. It supposedly takes place a few months after the end of season 3, though there are some major changes, like the presence of smartphones. We follow a minor character, P’tit Dragon, as he takes the lead of Les Bleus and builds his own team.

We are back in Port-Marie (the reboot takes place somewhere else, can’t really recall where) with the same background characters. The locations are the same: the institute, the marketplace, the old port etc (oh I forgot to add, the reboot only takes place in the building site of a shopping center). The drawings are back in 2D, in a similar style (which is totally bringing me back to childhood).

And most importantly, we are back with a show that puts forward diversity.