While Isagi Yoichi To be Blue buckleThe ‘hero’ (albeit an idiot), his rival, Barou, truly represents the spirit of this hit sports anime. One of Blue Lock’s strengths is the way it makes every character feel like the main character in their own story, even though Isagi is the real protagonist. This allows many characters to become more engaging than Isagi and in particular allows one character to encapsulate the entire theme of the film brilliantly.
Blue Lock is a death game-style soccer training program that aims to train an extremely powerful striker that will lead Japan to the World Cup. Only one was allowed to become this striker, the rest were all banned from competing in the World Cup team afterwards, essentially shattering their dreams. This makes the show very intense, but despite this, players must form teams with each other to survive. The full depth of this compelling dynamic is most clearly realized not in the series’ protagonist Isagi, but in one of his best rivals, Barou.
Barou encapsulates Blue Lock’s twisted philosophy better than Isagi
Barou is an extremely confident striker who looks down on everyone around him as a tool to create his own goals. However, this changed when he faced a team that took advantage of his predictable play to dominate the game. In response to this, Isagi first manipulates Barou to go against his egotistical style, crushing him. However, this allowed Barou to develop a whole new style where he aggressively went against his own teammate Isagi to both score more goals for himself and take the other team down.
This “villain” style of play perfectly embodies the duplicate dynamics of Blue Lock. While the players have to work together, they also actively compete with each other to become Japan’s top striker. In Barou’s new style, he works with his teammates by actively competing with them, fully representing both sides of this duality. Also, he would never have developed this powerful new strategy without competing with Isagi in the first place, showing that Blue Lock’s program really accomplishes its goal of creating better strikers. So not only is he a perfect representation of Blue Lock’s philosophy, but he’s also a direct result of that process.
Barou’s duality perfectly represents Blue Lock
Isagi Yoichi himself is a much sharper Shonen hero than usual, which is consistent with how Blue Lock subverts the sports anime genre. While Isagi takes advantage of his teammates in his own devouring style, he usually doesn’t actively compete with them like Barou. Barou’s style is completely revolutionary, defying all the classic jokes about friendship and teamwork, and at the same time setting Blue Lock apart as something truly unique. This is why bar is a much better representation of Blue buckle than isagithough not the main character of the anime.