#kaisagi analysis

[moonlit-nightsx]

kiis relationship analysis

disclaimer: this isn't analysis of them in canon, just some thoughts on my own fic Truth or Drink: Exes edition, ft. Isagi Yoichi & Michael Kaiser that got too long to put in the notes lol

The break up scene brings up three issues to light.

For one, Isagi ties his self worth to what the media thinks of him as a player. Nearly all the Blue Lock players like him, so it makes sense for Isagi as a character to essentially be used to being liked. Yet Post-Blue Lock, realistically, Isagi as a player would receive a lot of shit for essentially being born out of a reality show, and it would make sense that he’d be held to a higher standard than other players. And with that, it nearly results in something adjacent to internalized homophobia, thinking that anything and everything would be a threat to his career, including his relationship. Back in the first chapter, during the Truth or Drink segment, he expresses apathy about keeping track of his socials, not even having Twitter. After the four years, it’s clear he no longer ties his self worth to how good of a player the media thinks he is, leaving him more energy to focus on more important things, such as his, cough cough, relationships.

Kaiser’s apathy is another issue. Since he was introduced, he’s always been a cocky character, always needing to seem cool and collected and never “real”. From Isagi’s point of view, seeing Kaiser still be apathetic and uncaring about everything a year into their relationship would wear on him. The issue of Isagi and the article is something important to him, and Kaiser still doesn’t care. After the four years, however, he’s more okay about being vulnerable in front of Isagi, and he’s empathetic enough to worry about whether people were watching, not for his own image, but for Isagi’s.

And finally, Kaiser’s need to be loved. Tying in with the last point, Kaiser tries hard not to care that not many people, including teammates and the media, actually like him, but I really feel like there's no way that wouldn’t grate on someone. And seeing (from Kaiser’s POV) Isagi so blatantly worry about “a few” people critiquing him while nearly everyone else loves him would make him bitter, and honestly a little jealous. During the Truth or Drink Segment, where Kaiser and Isagi have been toeing the line of “what’s okay” for the entire segment, hearing the answer to whether Isagi still loves him would have sent Kaiser over the edge. Which is why, during the reconciliation scene, Isagi stresses how much he does love him.

and thats all folks hope you enjoyed

[corioheinous]

Currently writing a post-Blue Lock aged-up kaisagi fic on ao3 and have been struggling so hard with creating a solid foundation for both characters’ Characterizations. but man did it become easier when I realized how many possibilities there are to explore when making Isagi juuust a little bit obsessed with Kaiser. Like we all know Kaiser is a lot a bit obsessed with Isagi (read: tearing his hair out and choking himself over it every other week) but I think it’s fun to explore Isagi’s quieter, most likely unwelcome obsession with Kaiser. Because at the end of the day, all toxic yaoi situationships are at least somewhat of a two-way street.

There’s a great paradox in which Kaiser embodies everything about a professional football player that Isagi wants to become (and look I know Noa exists but they’re not. they’re not foils in the same way okay that guy is pushing 40) while simultaneously being the most infuriating and annoying bastard in the world to him. Isagi recognizes Kaiser’s raw talent and the years of practice he’s put into developing his techniques as both very intimidating qualities to have in a rival and inspirational ones. Because they’re not impossibly far out of reach; these techniques (particularly metavision) are ones Isagi already employs on the field everyday, just has yet to master them at the extraordinary level Kaiser has. Isagi wants to beat Kaiser at his own game, using his own moves, and has unconsciously allowed Kaiser to become a sort of model for him in the process. Despite the fact that he hates the guy’s guts, he’s mirroring his best qualities to the point where even fans can see that they would synchronize well together if they just let themselves.

But Isagi would never let himself. He’s stubborn. He despises Kaiser. He probably sees a rosebush growing on the side of the road and lets it ruin his day. He’ll probably bear ill will toward anyone with blue hair and pronouns for years down the line. Which is why it’s so fun to be writing a more mature version of Isagi, one who has probably put a lot of that childish resentment behind him. Because when you remove his resentment toward Kaiser, you’re still left with some irritation, yes, but the bulk of it is admiration. It’s Isagi letting Kaiser rile him up more than he pisses him off. It’s Isagi wanting to butt heads with Kaiser both on and off the field. It’s Isagi buying a shirt/hoodie/pair of boxers with a rose pattern on it for no reason he could possibly fathom on his own. It’s a quiet, repressed brand of obsession that might take them both off guard when it comes to light, but it’d be a beyond brilliant moment when it does.

[boinin]

Blue Lock: AO3 statistics and fanfiction meta

Blue Lock (Manga) has more than 13,000 works on AO3! 🎉 The corresponding figure for Blue Lock (Anime) is about 7,900 or so.

Just under 230 works are tagged exclusively as Blue Lock (Anime), while there are just under 5,500 works tagged exclusively as Blue Lock (Manga). As expected, around 7,700 works are tagged under both fandoms.

I'm procrastinating today, so here's a high level analysis of the Blue Lock works on the platform. Given the low number of Blue Lock (Anime) exclusive works, I excluded these and reviewed only works that included the Blue Lock (Manga) tag. I didn't exclude crossovers, due to the aforementioned dual-tagging.

Firstly, here's the lowdown on pairings:

On the left: Works tagged under Blue Lock (Manga), without any additional filtering. NagiReo, KaiSagi and RinSagi nab the top three pairing placements, with NagiReo comfortably leading.

On the right: Same fandom tag, but inputting the search term "otp: true" into the "Search within results" field. This returns works with no more than one pairings tagged (i.e. excluding any works that have two or more pairings tagged). This includes any fics with no pairings tagged, platonic (&) or romantic/sexual (/). This filter yields approx. 8,600 works.

This doesn't affect the top three most-tagged pairings, but it reshuffles the other parings more significantly. For example: we can see that 55% of BachIsagi-tagged works feature other pairings, and it drops a ranking. KuniGiri-tagged works fare similarly, and the split is even more pronounced for RyuSae and NagiSagi.

KaiNess jump from 9th most tagged pairing overall to 5th most tagged amongst fics that only tag one pairing—lapping Kunigiri, and potentially an indicator of a recent boom in works for this pairing. The controversial RinSae goes up one place in the rankings under this filter.

The two searches show that nine pairings remain on top, regardless of whether works tag them in tandem with other pairings or tag them as solo. However, Isagi Yoichi/Everyone falls out of the rankings when the otp: true is applied. This is logical, given this pairing is frequently tagged alongside other Isagi slash tags. Filtering this way reveals that RyuRin is the tenth most tagged pairing in single-pairing works.

More discussion on pairings, ratings and tags, plus a comparison to others sports animanga under the cut!

It's also possible to use "otp: false" to show only fics with multiple (2+) relationship tags, which yields about 4,500 works. The results of this search are below:

Here, BachiSagi just about pips KaiSagi to round out the top three—but if trends persist, the number of KaiSagi works will soon grow at a higher rate, leaving the top three ships in the manga fandom undisputed.

Meanwhile, KaiNess and RinSae drop from the top ten, displaced by Nagi&Reo and Rin&Sae (platonic pairing tags). Not too surprising for the latter—due to taboo, works featuring RinSae tend to be standalone.

With KaiNess, it's simply that the two platonic tags are used more often in multi-pairing works, which makes sense given the relative recency of Kaiser and Ness's introduction, and the fact that they're still manga-only characters. A related search revealed KaiNess would most likely be the eleventh most-tagged pairing in multi-pairing works (296), followed by Bachira&Isagi (platonic pairing).

What about ratings, and the most popular non-pairing tags?

On the left: results for all Blue Lock (Manga) fandom works.

In the middle: results for Blue Lock (Manga) fandom works filtered by "otp: true".

On the right: results for Blue Lock (Manga) fandom works filtered by"otp: false".

To reiterate, the search feature just reports the most frequently occurring tags. Even the most common tag, Fluff, features on only around 15% of works.

There's not too much divergence caused by filtering. One observation is that filtering by "otp: true" returns a higher ratio of explicit works—this is supported by the tags that appear in that respective top ten.

Overall, the most popular tags in Blue Lock works are Fluff, Angst, "No Blue Lock" and "Canon Divergent" AUs, and Established Relationship... not to mention, good ol' reliable buttsecs.

Although not a rigorous (read: percentage tested) exercise, I compared these results to the most frequently occurring tags in other sports animanga fandoms in AO3 with the following observations:

Free! works have higher incidences of Romance, Smut, PWP and Friendship tags than Blue Lock does 🏊‍♂️

Haikyuu!! didn't have any sex-adjacent tags in its top 10, but otherwise reported similar trends to Blue Lock. One exception is a notably high incidence of the "Friends to Lovers" tag 🏐

Yuri!!! on Ice has a frequently occurring fandom specific tag ("Character's Name Spelled as Viktor"), and in additions featured "A/B/O dynamics" among its top 10 most common tags. Otherwise, it most resembles Free! in tagging trends ⛸️

SK8 the Infinity meanwhile mirrors Haikyuu!! in terms of frequently occurring tags, although with more common incidences of "Anal Sex" and "Post Canon" 🛹

In short, nearly all sports animanga including Blue Lock report high incidences of the following tags:

Fluff (and/or) Angst

Established Relationship

Alternative Universe (various)

Hurt/Comfort.

This doesn't tell us a whole lot, given these are popular tags for nearly every fandom. However, they are trailed in popularity by the tags Getting Together, Romance, Smut, PWP, and Friends to Lovers. These are more indicative of the shipping culture in sports animanga, including the fact that character relationships in these fandoms are generally pre-established.

As for ratings, It's hard to make a judgement on whether Blue Lock (Manga) works lean more towards a universal or teen readership, or towards being more mature/explicit in nature. This is due to a high incidence of "Not rated" works. Works may be categorised as "Not rated" for any number of reasons: authors avoiding spoilers, authors relying on tags for identification, or authors not knowing how to categorise their own work, or even opting not to categorise an ongoing fic because they are yet to decide the direction of the work.

That said, filtering by "Not rated" alone didn't yield a higher incidence of explicit tags, like filtering by "otp: true" did. So there's limited evidence that "Not rated" fics trend towards mature or explicit content in excess of general trends. All the same, where in doubt, it's best to refer to a work's additional tags to assess its content, as the rating may not always make this clear.

A long read, catering to a niche audience (read: my nerdy ass) but if you've made it this far, I hope you found it of interest!

[pomeness]

About me

Professional clown with a major in Yap-ology. I will psychoanalyse your favourite blorbo. Blue lock centric.

Main ships

I firmly believe in multi-shipping and I love poly relationships, so here's what you may find on here:

• Ryusae • Kaisae • RyuSaeKai • Kaisagi • Rinsagi • Bachisagi • BachiRinSagi • NoaEgo • HioNess • Kainess •

Some of these coexist at the same time in my mind, and thats when you have the ✨️polygon✨️ [see header for details]

Tags

#miche draws -> art tag

#miche headcanons -> self explanatory

#miche memes -> for when I chose to post my ugly picsart edits

#miche yaps -> miscellanous, often paired with #character analysis, which is the tag I use whenever my yapping sessions turn out longer than expected

Trigger warnings

I like to explore darker themes sometimes, with a touch of Dead Dove: Do Not Eat.

Main trigger warnings may be for non-con and grooming, which are included in my headcanons for Shidou's (and Sae's) backstory. I will try to tag everything accordingly.

Please mind that I do NOT condone any of this in real life nor is my intent to ever romanticise or fetishise it.

DNF

Due to the content that I may post, which often includes NSFW, I am very uncomfortable with minors following me. I understand its hard to not interact with each other, expecially since the bllk tumblr fandom is rather small, but please refrain from following me.

I will soft-block any minor who has followed me. If you found yourself removed from here, now you know why.

I also dislike drama and ship discourse, so stay away from me if you rant about that a Lot.