“Project Blue Lock is real.” Since Japan’s victory over Germany in the World Cup, this mysterious phrase has been repeated by hundreds of netizens. A reference to blue padlocka popular manga whose first seven volumes are available in France through Pika editions, and which was recommended by the author of The attack of the Titans, Hajime Isayama himself.
This title has aroused real excitement in the last hours, since it seems to have predicted the success of the Japanese team. In this shonen written by Muneyuki Kaneshiro and drawn by Yusuke Nomura, which has just surpassed 10 million volumes in circulation, high school student Yoichi Isagi joins the Blue Lock program, whose goal is to train the best attacker in the world for the World Cup. of the world. the world 2022.
Locked in with 300 players on this show, Yoichi Isagi must prevail during a ruthless tournament that is supposed to give the country its revenge after its elimination at the 2018 World Cup. But when he joined the show, the hopeful youngster finds himself in the middle of the first selection, member of the Z team, the worst…
In line with The Hunger Games Y squid game, blue padlock It works on the principle of “battle royale”, with ruthless characters with strong characters. But unlike its predecessors, blue padlock has no political dimension, says Mathieu Pinon, author of Wow, what stories! (Larousse):
“squid game denounces the inequalities of a Korean society where success is based on money. The Hunger Games it evokes the crisis between the rich and the poor who are smarter than you think. Within blue padlock, there is nothing of that. the screenwriter of blue padlock He’s a very, very right-wing guy.”
frenetic individualism
deeply manly sleeve, blue padlock he develops “an individualistic concept far from the values of sharing football”, laments Mathieu Pinon, who sees in it a praise of “liberalism taken to the extreme”:
“The goal is to have only one left. The message is that you can only succeed by stepping on the faces of others.” blue padlock corresponds to our era where financial success and individualism prevail.
Captain Tsubasa (olive and tom) and his values of solidarity are now a long way off: “It reflects part of what football has become”, Mathieu Pinon comments again. “Look at the Ballon d’Or: for some years, it’s always been won by attackers. It’s never a defender or a goalkeeper!”
is exactly what the Belgian goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois had denounced last month after Karim Benzema’s Ballon d’Or victory: ‘I consider it impossible to win the Ballon d’Or’ [pour un gardien]. You win the League and you win the Champions League, your team wins thanks to your saves… and you only finish seventh”.
In the same way, blue padlock revolves entirely around the figure of the attacker. “The rest does not interest his authors, because he is less dynamic, a type that prevents goals,” analyzes Mathieu Pinon, who advises rather to discover Soccer Sayonara (ki-on) or ao ashi (Mangetsu), two coming-of-age stories about soccer geniuses.
Can “Blue Lock” dethrone “Olive and Tom”?
The links between blue padlock and the real world of soccer are numerous. To the point of creating confusion: many fans thus believed that the Japan team wore outfits inspired by the manga. The shirt was actually designed by Yusuke Nomura, the designer of blue padlock. Adadis also proposed to Kodansha, the publisher of the manga, to do an illustration related to giant slaughteranother popular soccer manga.
This rapprochement between the 9th art and soccer stems from a broader approach, that of the Japanese publishing world to get more involved in the world of soccer. Last year, Kodansha partnered with Liverpool. The release of the anime blue padlock on Crunchyroll, on October 8, a month and a half before the World Cup, it was also “a very good marketing move,” Mathieu Pinon underlines.
The strategy is simple: “The best-known soccer manga so far is Captain Tsubasa. It is published by Shueisha, one of Kodansha’s competitors. In the same way that the designer of Captain Tsubasa was contacted to draw Mbappé, the Kodansha fight on the same ground to make themselves known more”. And it works: blue padlock has been ubiquitous on Twitter since the start of the World Cup, and its designer celebrated the victory by posting a drawing on the social network.
blue padlock will be able to supplant in the collective imagination Captain Tsubasa, the reference work when it comes to humorously commenting on football competitions? “Yes and no”, answers Mathieu Pinon. “Yes because blue padlock it has the advantage of crazy graphics and exceptional dynamism that corresponds to the desires of the young generation. And no, because it’s not so much a soccer manga as a work where soccer is a pretext for an individualistic statement addressed to the Japanese.”
Source: BFM TV
