#while U20’s offense has the privilege of two people carrying it

[ishouldnotbhere]

the build-up of barou’s king moment 😩 i know it’s just around the corner aaaaaa and how amazing of aiku’s flow to be activated by everyone’s individual plays and (almost) flow moments?? captain ought to show off before blue lock ends them (?) CANT WAIT FOR NEXT WEEK

AAAAAAH IKR omg I love how Barou just does not give a flying fuck what people think! Somehow I wish we could see the midfielders’ and strikers’ (Sae’s and Shidou’s) reactions to Blue Lock’s offenses??!

It’s weird because you would think Barou and Shidou would be similar in terms of their unpredictability and spontaneity, but Barou’s behavior actually seems to somehow contrast Shidou’s. Compared to how blatantly Barou barrels through others, dismisses their presences, and ignores their contributions to the team play, Shidou, weirdly enough, is much more… cooperative. It’s incomprehensible to even conceive of Shidou as a collaborative dude, but there’s evidence to demonstrate it. He butts heads with Rin, who is unwilling to acknowledge Isagi’s quick thinking on the field, because unlike Rin, Shidou truly enjoys good soccer. Unlike the others, who all have their own motives unrelated to soccer (Reo’s attachment to Nagi, Rin’s desire to outmatch his brother, even Kunigami’s goal to be a “hero”, etc.), Shidou’s interest is decidedly pure. Untainted. It’s just fundamentally, unabashedly, soccer. He loves the game fiercely. That’s all the reason he needs to play it.

Shidou just expresses his passion in a crude way (the whole “seed” and “womb” and “breeding” analogy). And yeah, it’s fucking weird, but it just goes to show Shidou basks in soccer at its core—a team-based sport in which the greater the individual talent, the more vibrant the outcome. And Shidou loves that. He acknowledges teammates who bring that dynamism to the game, who invigorate it, and it excites him even more to integrate it. His sexuality is soccer basically, lmao. I see him as the kind of person who’s willing to date anyone of any gender as long they’re good (as per his standards) at the sport. It’s why he’s more than happy to give Isagi the spotlight, back when he was in Blue Lock. It’s why he plays synergistically with Sae, and lets Sae take the lead, because he greatly admires Sae’s strategy and ability. Shidou really is quite animalistic and childlike in nature, but not in a bad way. His basest instincts are grounded in soccer. All someone needs to do is ignite or peak his curiosity, and he’ll be all over them.

I’m not sure if you’ve ever watched Hunter x Hunter, but Shidou sort of reminds me of Gon. Gon gets a lot of bad rep from the fandom, but what people forget is that Gon was literally just a child raised in isolation from the rest of the world. So his overtly extreme, violent reactions to traumatic events stems from the fact that his undeveloped, childhood insecurities, which had yet to mature, were now buttressed by incredible power that no child could understand, manage, or even ought to have. In the same way, Gon’s immediate attachment to new friends who match his level of talent arises from an essential lack of familial support throughout his growing years. While I’m not saying that Shidou actually had that sort of upbringing, his instantaneous bonds with players of similar capability, as well as his erratic mood swings between things which pique his interest and things which don’t, mirror that sort of childlike immaturity. But they’re not irrational. They can be explained (if not justified); they’re amoral, rather than immoral. It’s kind of sad, then, the way everyone treats Shidou as some sort of demon, when in fact his passion for soccer is the clearest out of everyone else’s.

Man, do I want Shidou’s backstory already.

Barou, on the other hand, is a beast of his own caliber. This guy is, weirdly enough, worse than Shidou because there’s no fucking possibility he’s going to play nice with anyone else on his team. I feel he truly embodies the spirit of “ego” Ego was trying to instill in Blue Lock. Barou’s connection to soccer is the precise opposite of Shidou’s; the other end of the spectrum: if Shidou’s is unadulterated (“soccer for soccer’s sake”), Barou’s is wholly selfish (“soccer for my sake”). Unlike Reo, Nagi, Kunigami, Isagi, Bachira, Rin, or literally anybody else, there was no sense of human attachment or feeling of personal insecurity that sparked Barou’s passion for soccer. His backstory proves that the literal reason Barou likes soccer was, well, he was just better than everybody else. I’m the King. I’m the only one who belongs, and all of you will bow. Which, of course, is not how soccer, or any team-based sport for that matter, works, and that’s why he’s going to come in clutch for Blue Lock. He’s a singularity, and he’s single-handedly going to rock the game off its course. The thing about experts going head-to-head is that experts know what the other might play. What is truly fearsome is the beginner, and the person who either doesn’t know or doesn’t care about the rules. I, for one, am so excited to see this match unfold!