The following contains spoilers for Episode 12 of Blue Lock, “The Second Selection,” now streaming onCrunchyrollandNetflix.
Episode 12 ofBlue Lock, “The Second Selection,” starts the soccer anime off on its new arc after anincredible conclusionto the first one last week. It is a bit slower paced, but introduces some new challenges, new technology, and an unexpected alliance. While it may not have as much action as the past few weeks' episodes, it sets up what is going to be coming next, including an all-new soccer challenge to weed out the best players going forward.
Blue Locktook a serious jump up in theFall Anime Rankingson MyAnimeList as well with last week’s great episode! It jumped up from the tenth spot to the seventh one, not an insignificant leap, and its rating went back up to 8.26. Not that many of the Fall Anime will continue on to the winter season likeBlue Lockwill, so we will see in the coming weeks how it fares against new opponents on the rating charts.
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All New Tech
Episode 12 ofBlue Lockintroduces some really high-tech soccer training. Part of what has made the anime interesting throughout the season and set it apart from other sports anime has been the use of futuristic technology that often gives the anime a sci-fi or evendystopianfeel to it. We hadn’t seen a lot of it recently, but Episode 12 brought it back full-force. It introduced the Blue Lock Man, a holographic keeper who has been programmed base on the world’s top keepers.
Blue Lock Man is able to interact with the real ball due to microchip sensors in the ball’s surface. Additionally, other holograms were used to simulate other players on the field in the first challenge of the second selection. Isagi had to face all of this new tech on his own, scoring 100 goals against Blue Lock Man in 90 minutes from within the penalty zone to continue. Considering how much of the 2022World Cup came down to penalty shoot-outs, too, the timing of this episode was great for soccer fans who know how critical this scoring zone can be.
It looks like Blue Lock Man is going to continue to be significant going forward with the second selection, too, as it already showed he will be a major part of the next challenge. Interesting, Anri also commented that they had used all the Blue Lock program’s funding on this new technology, but Ego did not seem to care. We will see if that comes back as significant in the future.
Monologue Time
Because of the nature of the challenges in “The Second Selection,” Isagi spent most of the episode on his own. That means he had a lot of time - more than half the episode - for hismonologue timesas he figured out what he was doing against Blue Lock Man and in the penalty area challenge. It was too much time, because it broke up what could have been some fun penalty shots and did not let the episode get much action before it was stopped again.
While it was interesting to see Isagi puzzling out his strategies as usual and overcome his weaknesses, it was just too long. A lot of it was rehashed old information as well as he recalled what he had learned so far, but that we had not forgotten yet, either. Because of these monologues, Episode 12 did suffer from poor pacing that could have been avoided with 1/4 less of Isagi’s monologuing.
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Unexpected Alliance
One of the most shocking twists of “The Second Selection” was the unexpectedalliancethat came out of it. When Isagi passed the first challenge, the second was to make a team of three out of other players that had done the same. His rivals from the final match of the first selection, Reo and Nagi, were already there waiting when he arrived, and his own teammate Bachira appeared soon after.
While it made sense that Isagi and Bachira would immediately team up and wait for another one of their teammates, we did not predict what would happen next. First, Nagi invited Isagi to leave Bachira and join him and Reo, which Isagi refused. But then, Nagi said he would instead leave Reo behind to join Isagi’s team! Wenever imagined that Nagiwould do that - let alone that Isagi would accept, abandoning his other teammates in favor of Nagi.
Now Bachira, Nagi, and Isagi are a team going to the next stage, which will be 3 vs 3 games where the winning team can take a member of the losing team to build their team. It looks like next week, we will be learning more about some new characters, the top three ranked in the Blue Lock program that Isagi’s team will be facing. Like all the side characters so far, they already seem erratic and quirky in their own ways, so we will be looking forward to learning more about them next week.
Episode 12 ofBlue Lockwas a bridge episode more than anything else. It was not as great as last week’s episode, but that one is hard to compare to. It did its job of setting up what is coming next, which looks like another series of games with a new twist. We expect more betrayals, alliances, tactics, and incredible goals going in the second half of the season!
