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ness, projecting his loneliness and abandonment issues that come from his dreams being emotionally invalidated by his family onto kaiser: you'll never be alone! you'll always have me by your side!
kaiser, reproducing his inability to organically connect with people that stems from repeated dehumanization at his father's hands onto ness: bitch what the fuck. are you stupid or something
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idk if thats like, a due to the player being in game instead of just an observer but ive been spectating this kaiserreich game from neutral switzerland over here and god neither the entente nor the third internationale are doing anything. like after the initial successful offensive from the internationale into french africa, the most action ive seen has been the west indies federation and union of britain trading venezuela back and forth. some unsucessful offensives from portugal into norway. french commune and australasian federation trading malaysia back and forth. please do something guys. meanwhile french commune, german socialist republic, and socialist republic of italy are stationing tons of troops over here, around switzerland
I’ve been reading some of your analysis posts for a while, and one thing you keep emphasizing is how Isagi is a key in Blue Lock, while Kaiser is Blue and a Lock. And another is how Isagi is a gun in a team of swords
I agree a lot on what you’ve said about Kaiser (neo egoist, new hero), but I’d like to talk about Isagi.
Is it so bad that he is a key in Blue Lock and a gun in Bastard München?
For a while now, I’ve thought of Isagi being too much of a goody two-shoes. He listens to everything Ego says without question, and he always look as if he has some kind of mindblowing eureka moment when he does. I think it would be nice if he challenges Ego on some stuff and gain his own unique football philosophy, similar to how Kaiser challenges Noa to instead play like how he likes.
Maybe that’s the point of Isagi being a key and a gun.
Although I admit it’s too early for Isagi to deviate from Ego’s ideals, as he himself can’t seem to visualize past it yet, this build-up is just in time.
hi, thanks for the question. if i'm understanding the ask correctly, the sum of your argument seems to be "the point of isagi's nel arc development is that isagi demonstrates he can challenge egojin in the realm of thinking/ideals/etc, by creating something original to him" (if this is wrong i'm sorry and please disregard the rest of this answer)
starting off, i can't refute this in a satisfying way. the reason is because the argument seems motivated by a dissatisfaction with blue lock's pre-ubers match presentation of isagi and egojin. my belief about egojin is that he's the author-insert who acts as the fullest representation of blue lock's ideology, and as such occupies a position of thematic correctness within blue lock; isagi following egojin, then, is him fulfilling his purpose as the protagonist of blue lock, embracing his story's ideology and becoming its embodiment. this is a basic aspect of blue lock that i accept as 'correct', regardless of how i feel about it being so; from this standpoint, any instance of isagi deviating from his purpose will be unacceptable to me.
with that in mind, i think "isagi becoming a key and a gun" was where the nature of the story being told was transformed. before, in manshine (when isagi followed egojin and was 'correct'), isagi fulfilled his ideal form as a god-devil under great pressure, and bonded with yukki the sword— at that point, the story being told was that "isagi, under lock, becomes the heart of a sword." for the story to transform into one where "isagi, freed by a key, becomes a gun" was only possible when isagi betrayed who he was in the previous story.
since i accept the previous "lock and sword" story as what is 'correct' within blue lock, i feel the need to condemn this current story. but i understand that, for anyone dissatisfied with the previous story or with what blue lock advances as the 'correct' option, any change would be refreshing and/or a cause for hope. i can't argue with the frustrations of someone who (from my standpoint) rejects one of blue lock's core elements, as i, too, have only accepted this element not out of agreement but out of convenience.
overall i regret this response, as i realize i've basically just told you "yes it's bad because blue lock said it's bad which means it's bad." this exposes only my acceptance of egojin's correctness, and with it my acceptance of blue lock's message. it's important for me as a reader that blue lock remains contained within itself, so i can't reject the frustrations of anyone who dislikes it. that being said, i'll try to make another argument for why i condemn isagi's "gun and key" development.
to make something clear, isagi himself isn't the key— hiori is. and, isagi didn't organically become a gun on his own— hiori made him into one. instead of egojin feeding isagi ideas for how to become number 1, hiori was the one giving birth to isagi as their number 1 striker. isagi doesn't meaningfully challenge egojin, because all isagi did was replace egojin with hiori.
so while the current isagi opposes egojin's teachings, he only developed to do so by latching onto a more convenient version of egojin who was capable of giving him immediate glory. the cause of isagi's opposition towards egojin was not a desire for rebellion, but forgetfulness. if anything, his "gun and key" development reveals how dependent he is on other people to give him direction and form his own ideas… as such, i'm incapable of seeing any silver lining to isagi's development
(as a final note, i understand the intent behind the isagi-egojin to kaiser-noa comparison, but while i do absolutely think creating his own ideal to challenge noa is core to kaiser's development i also think that this doesn't cut into noa's position as a 'correct' figure within blue lock, and that kaiser challenging noa leads to him 'following' noa in a true sense— for instance, kaiser's early test run of his ideal in ubers match leads to his ch.220 goal, which is eerily similar to noa's barcha goal. kaiser breaking from noa ultimately leads to him becoming more noa-like) (also i don't think of egojin as someone with an "ideal" in the same way as the master strikers but i haven't thought about it enough)
in any case i've done my best to communicate my beliefs about blue lock, but i understand if this answer fails to satisfy your objections. there were other approaches towards answering this that relied on an examination of the "key" and "gun" symbolism, but it would have looped around to being about the same central issue of whether the 'correctness' blue lock presents should be accepted by the reader. to take one final swing, though, i want to add that isagi is the chosen protagonist of blue lock, bound by blue lock's confines… from the beginning, true escape for him was a fated impossibility. i want isagi's current ideal of "freedom" to be thought of in this context of a deeper incontrovertible oppression, where isagi yoichi is only the protagonist because he exists in the prison called blue lock (manga). no amount of partnering with a key or shooting his enemies dead will change that isagi is trapped, but the only reason he doesn't realize this fact is because he's incapable of seeing what lies beyond his own, tragically limited perspective
it's not about isagi winning, it's about his desire to win—> it's about the journey, not the destination—> isagi is number 1, a destination, but to be a compelling protagonist he needs a journey—> meguru 廻 to go around + yoichi 世一 the world's first = around the world, conclusion: bachira is a journey—> bachira is isagi's other half, isagi needs bachira to be himself—> bachira leaving isagi for the majority of nel arc fundamentally ruined isagi, because his prolonged absence robbed isagi of his ability to enjoy the journey—> Bachira Come Back (BCB)
(isagi is an ending and bachira is the search for an ending. without bachira, isagi is lost because he's nothing but a string of endings who doesn't care about how he reaches these endings)
((specifying "prolonged absence" because clearly bachira's absence wasn't a problem for isagi's ability to enjoy soccer in manshine. it was ubers match that changed everything, and specifically it was isagi choosing hiori— if bachira is the partner who surpasses isagi's imagination, hiori is the partner that isagi needs to fulfill his own imagination. if bachira was crucial to isagi enjoying the wild search towards the conclusion, isagi choosing hiori signals that he no longer cares about this search, he only cares about his own conclusion. ergo, BCB))
noa is like "everything that kaiser's father wasn't" down to the fact that he isn't kaiser's father replacement and kaiser doesn't think of noa that way either. it's important to me that this is the case for them because i think noa-kaiser and kaiser's arc of breaking with his past can be contrasted with (for instance) isagi-hiori and hiori's arc of becoming his parents with a fresh coat of paint that fools him into thinking he's okay now, kaiser for a long time was like that (becoming his father but pretending it was good) and his future with noa is only possible after his positive growth, after breaking with his destructive reproduction of his family...
i want to treasure that most of all, this feeling that kaiser and noa can create a relationship unique to them that encompasses the complexity of who they are, breaking from this shallow reproduction of societal roles, not beholden to the model of how societies label relationships between men, or from the cultural need to impose traditional familial labels onto bonds between two people... kaiser's father and kaiser were father and son in the worst possible way, but noa and kaiser have the potential to be and create something entirely different
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blue lock, being largely about "environment", also presents its prison as the ideal environment (a monastery removed from the real world, where enlightenment can be pursued without distraction). but the prison was also made possible by the real world (read: money), and nel arc is where the real world (read: capitalism) most obviously corrupted blue lock's isolated environment— and isagi, whose superpower is adaptation to his environment, was corrupted in turn without noticing this fact
like for rin and isagi a goal is 快感 pleasure (at least i think it's this for isagi too) while for kaiser a goal is 愛 love, the thing they lacked most growing up is what created their true desires as strikers
(in part how isagi-rin is contrasted with kaiser, and why to me isagi and rin's stories are aligned but both feel disconnected from kaiser's story) (like the way rin and kaiser interact feels as though it should be more relevant than the way it's been presented so far, but on another level they shouldn't be interacting at all)
like i think that isagi is someone who only sees other people as stepping stones, it's a similar thing to post-manshine isagi thinking about his previous experiences facing rin, "now i'm doing it to others, great!" isagi is angry here that he was being used, because he wants to be the one who uses others. in blue lock (manga), there are predators and prey, devourers and the devoured, manipulators and the manipulated, the chosen and the unchosen… people who use others as stepping stones, and people who become stepping stones for others. isagi has always strived be the former, but the reason his fight had meaning was because he chose to live in the cruel world of blue lock where, if he failed, he would become the latter
i think in this chapter isagi gets angry at noa's words because, remembering "please use hiori yo to make me the protagonist", i think isagi in ubers match developed into a player who assumed that he had a guaranteed position as a chosen person— that he was inherently allowed to use other people (like hiori, for instance) as pieces for him to get what he wants and win that way, and in one sense he was correct. but in another sense the world he lives in is still blue lock, and isagi with his too-narrow perspective temporarily forgot this fact
