#bllk lb

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This is an absolute all timer panel. Your coach is giving you what might be the first genuinely good bit of advice in the manga by trauma dumping his sad backstory. And Baro’s like “damn sorry that happened to you, couldn’t be me though” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Itoshi Rin it seems I’ve grown quite fond of you though there are no sexual urges or desires you come to me as a long lost friend whom I once picked apples with in papa’s orchard

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Every time Barou gets development

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he's shooting up my favorite character list

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Going through more of my screenshots; I love this one because it looks like they just failed some kind of couples compatibility test. Their star signs are NOT aligned.

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take all this with a grain of salt because I'm only about 2/3rds caught up but...

I want at least one Blue Lock character to come to the conclusion that becoming a professional athlete isn't for them and make the deliberate choice to quit without it being seen as a moral failure. I really like Hiori, Chigiri, and Nagi who all have arc's about finding or accepting their passion, creativity, and drive in the sport, and all of them are very distinct from each other. However, because Isagi has been an instigator in everyone's development it's becoming very repetitive, and I'm still in the nel arc.

Because the manga's whole point is Isagi's dog eat dog rise to the top, it's continuously sidelining counter narratives and it's supporting cast. Isagi is the greatest egoist and therefore everyone else's competitive spirit some way relates to him. Isagi spends every arc finding his greatest opponent/teammate in skill gap and obsessively dissecting them until he can play on the same level, and anyone below him becomes a tool to achieve his next evolution. This has lead to some very fun dynamics like with Kaiser who can see this happening and is so mad about it he looks like he's actually about to kill someone (cause he's just like Isagi). But then there's someone like Nagi who's first taste of defeat informed the rest of his arc and his relationship with Reo. Nagi's curiosity isn't just toward isagi but toward himself and the new feelings the competition gives him. After they make up in the Manshine City match, Nagi is narratively punished for being uncreative and getting a big head without having the game sense to make his own plays. What was an arc about self discovery through connecting with new people becomes a cautionary tale about understanding your place in the team hierarchy- all because he couldn't follow Isagi's example and evolve his plays by eating people.

If Isagi's character development is always rewarded and everyone else is secondary then the longer the manga progresses without deconstructing the more he's going to leach out the distinctive motivations and potential character direction of anyone not already like him.

It reads like Kaneshiro is having a one sided argument about The Truth of Sportsmanship where Die-Hard Obsession is the only thing that matters. But the importance of obsession and smart reactivity in creating a strong footballer could be way better emphasized if other aspects of the sport were allowed to breathe.

TLDR I just think if you're going to write a dog eat dog story, sometimes your dog's gotta get bit.

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idk what to do with Kainess, usually I reserve this level of toxicity for yuri. Should they break up? cut each other off forever? get back together? Should Ness kill Kaiser or does he actually deserve him? I can't tell what would be bigger punishment, for either of them. as long as they're together they can never self actualize, but Ness doesn't want to. Are they at all salvageable? Is there a timeline where they can work it out? Any path that might lead them to fixing themselves has the most painful conditions possible. They each might be the only person the other could ever truly love. They should probably never talk to each other again. Every scene of them feels like an anxiety attack.

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is it gay to burst through the monstrous hallucinations of his older brother and proudly declare that you're ready to die before colliding with him in an attempt to block his shot but in doing so give him the courage he needs to take it in the first place?