Collection Blue Lock

Blue Lock's premise is a deliberate provocation. Japan has never won a World Cup, so a coach locks three hundred high school strikers in a facility and tells them that teamwork is the problem - what the country needs is one selfish genius.

It's a sports series that reads like a battle manga, and the fights are decision-making. Isagi's talent isn't speed or strength; it's spatial awareness, the ability to see the whole field as a diagram and place himself where the ball will be. The series visualises that as an actual overlay, which is a smart way to dramatise something invisible.

The characters are all monstrous in their own directions, and the show is honest that a room full of people who each believe they are the best striker alive is a hostile environment.

Whether or not the football philosophy holds up is beside the point - the drama absolutely does.

This collection covers Isagi and the Blue Lock candidates.