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bluelockednyx · 2 years

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Isagirin meta part 3

Part 1, talking about Isagi’s first meeting and match with Rin here.

Part 2, covering the rest of the Second Selection Arc, up till Rin choosing Isagi to move ahead with Aryu and co., here.

Part 3 covers the post-Second Selection Arc chapters, beginning from the 5-man team formation, to the vs World team, and the first Blue Lock Eleven try out match, with Isagi in Team A vs Chigiri in Team B.

C87-93, vs World 5

Isagi’s reeling from just barely losing the game earlier, and then from being chosen. He’s also subdued over the sensation of losing, and then being chosen by someone else, reinforcing the notion of how Isagi wants to be the one doing the choosing. While he connects with Bachira, seeing his maturity and also becoming motivated to grow stronger by himself, he then asks Rin about how he made that final goal. Rin informs him that it’s ‘luck’. Ego further explains about the mechanism of ‘luck’ in the context of the series. Luck forms through a series of coincidences and happenings, and only those who are prepared to grasp it when it comes around, i.e. when Rin sped up to chase after Isagi and Bachira, instead of stopping or slowing down like the others, he gambled on the chance that Isagi would 1) successfully block Bachira and 2) would not gain possession of the ball.

Rin agrees with Ego's explanation, then adds that he had a different option: to not score. He made that goal to accept that he had lost to Isagi then, because he couldn’t foresee Bachira’s awakening/read Bachira’s moves, then failed to take advantage of it while Isagi had successfully countered it. Again, this is another facet of Rin that Isagi admires, acknowledges, and tries to learn from. They later learn of their upcoming match against world-class strikers, and while resting, Isagi notices that Rin is missing. He joins Rin in stretching exercises, and learns more about Rin’s motivation to beat Sae.

“Yeah, I get the feeling that if I chase you, I’ll get stronger… Rin, I see you as my rival.”

We can see that Rin is clearly surprised/affected/touched by this, even though he later says that he thinks nothing of Isagi. The fires of rivalry are stoked, yoga shenanigans ensue, and Rin gets pissed that Isagi falls on top of him.

Rin, you dramatic little bitch

Everyone’s excited to face off against the world-class players. The world-class players range from dismissive to neutral towards them (though let's face it, the only polite guy is Julien), until the Bachira-Rin combo scores a goal.

Look at how hyped he is, one of the prettiest panels of Isagi in the entire series and it's him being stupid in love with his rival and best friend

Isagi is impressed with the Bachira-Rin combo. Bachira, in turn, remarks that Rin’s gotten better with Isagi around. But they’re still outclassed, the World 5 blazing past them 4-1. The only one who’s still fighting to win is Rin. Later, Leonardo faces off with Rin in a 1-on-1. He past Rin easily, and that whole ass line he uses is a straight up sexual innuendo about Rin

which is

again

a first

(here, in its full glory and for your perusal)

(so I guess what I’m saying is, if by this point you haven’t figured out that the author has a secret favourite, then I really have to tell you, the author clearly has a favourite)

The world team trounces the quintuplet, and as they collapse, exhausted, Isagi’s concerned about Rin, who is singularly furious and frustrated over the loss. He also acknowledges that Rin was the only one of the five of them who was truly trying to win the game at all. It’s also because of this moment, that Isagi once again changes his perception of Rin. Rin is no longer simply a rival to Isagi; he’s a goal, a measure for his own skills.

‘The day I win against you, is the day I’ll be able to stand on the world’s stage… From my front row view of you, I will rise above you to become the best in the world!’

C93

We get another slow chapter for C93, but its certainly cute. Rin gets bonding time (against his will) with his teammates, who are all likely older than he is, and lands in the role of tutor (against his will again), lol.

I think what makes this even funnier is that Rin’s the youngest out of all of them. Academic high-achiever Itoshi Rin, everyone!

C94-112 (Blue Lock Eleven tryouts)

What’s surprising to me is that Rin and co. were the first to clear the second selection, but I suppose in the background there were many players who waffled over making teams and setting up matches in both the 3-man and 4-man teams, as shown when Aryu and Tokimitsu were having trouble fixing up matches for the 4v4. Nagi and the rest come in second. As the others file in, Chigiri and Nagi are worried for the last team – and the two people they’re closest to in Blue Lock, Kunigami and Reo. Then comes the clincher – Reo is in, but in place of Kunigami, it’s Shidou who makes it to the top.

After breaking up the fight that Shidou tried to start, Ego informs them about the upcoming match against Japan’s U20, and tells them that Sae will be participating in the match. He then proceeds to inform them about the rush-patch team they’ll be making, centering around the 6 chosen players: Rin, Shidou, Karasu, Otoya, Yukimiya and Nagi. The remaining players now have to choose: who they want to team up with, who they can assert and coexist with in a team, and also, who can be their stepping stone to surpass.

Over a meal, Bachira deduces who Isagi would team up with – Rin, or Nagi. As Isagi stays up watching videos to try and come to a decision, Reo comes up to join him, expressing his worries about Nagi becoming out of reach, and that he doesn’t know if he’ll get the chance to play with Nagi again. Isagi empathises with Reo and says that it’s the same for him, except his target isn’t Nagi: it’s Rin.

"The person I want to be beside right now, is you, Rin! ... Reo, thank you. I've found my resolve, thanks to you. I'm going to prove... that the path I've chosen for myself isn't wrong!

Once again, this is a repetition of another important part of Isagi's relationship with Reo in-story. As I outlined in part 2, after Isagi-Nagi-Barou team wins against Kunigami-Chigiri-Reo, Isagi tells Reo that he should become someone who can choose. Here, Isagi walks the talk and chooses who he wants, instead of letting the person he wants choose him. And now, he wants to prove that the path he’s chosen, aka choosing to pursue his rivalry with Rin – and to an extent, chasing after Rin himself, isn’t wrong.

Team A vs Team B (C97-C104)

Isagi gets chosen for the first match, and ruminates on how his current team up with Hiori and Nanase are the most comfortable he’s had so far in Blue Lock, complete with shoujo-ish effects as they laugh together. The game heats up with Shidou’s insane goal, then Karasu marks Isagi early on in the match, and Isagi’s forced to realize that he lacks the skill to beat Karasu one-on-one.

Bonus: Shidou’s so excited over a crow and a ninja combo, lmao.

Rin and Shidou’s inability to work together, unlike Karasu and Otoya + Chigiri later on, causes problems for their team. They fall behind to a critical 2-4 with Team B in the lead. Isagi manages to get the ball, and passes to Shidou, who scores when Isagi expects a combo, and brings Team A to 3 goals. Isagi momentarily berates himself for thinking that Shidou would have cooperated with him, and they restart the game quickly. Isagi is still marked by Karasu, and is unable to shake him. Then Rin cuts in to free up Isagi from Karasu.

Karasu’s lines here?

‘Oh, I hate this. What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is mine’ mentality.’

I don't know how the JP audience perceives this, but this is a pretty suggestive line to me when translated, and in my experience that 'what's yours is mine and what's mine is mine' normally gets applied to 1) couples or 2) siblings in a family who have to/made to share a bunch of stuff (cultural differences may vary, with this one, but *waves shipping goggles*)

While Rin is occupied with his 1-on-1 against Karasu, Isagi rushes in and steals the ball. Very nice teamwork from the pair here, though Rin at this point in time, probably lowkey hates him for it (lol).

With Nanase and Hiori, Isagi breaks through the midfield, but is one step short of receiving Hiori’s pass. Rin covers for his miss and makes the shot, bringing the game to 4-4.

Karasu makes this point after Rin scores a second goal. It’s a pattern now, for these two. Rin starts a change. Isagi responds in kind, elevating the overall play and raising the level of the match.

Karasu and Otoya break through, but Shidou successfully intercepts a pass to Chigiri. Nanase picks it up, passing immediately to Isagi. Excluding Shidou, the members of Team A break through the field, with Rin,Nanase and Isagi forming a triangle. Rin makes the call to push through faster, and they get the ball to Hiori.

Team A wins narrowly, after Isagi takes into account Hiori’s advice. He ‘moves by reflex’ and bursts in between Rin and Shidou and scores the final goal. While Nanase, Hiori and Shidou congratulate Isagi on his goal, Rin is sore about losing the shot to Isagi.

We can actually see Isagi being somewhat upset at Rin’s reaction here. If Isagi’s silence isn’t a big enough clue, the blackened background sure is. Shidou comes up to defend him from Rin, rightfully calling out Rin’s arrogance and poor sportsmanship, and the pair immediately gets into a fight.

Later on, we also see that Isagi acknowledges Rin’s point here, as he, Nanase and Hiori go over what happened in the AV room. He’s not sure what happened, and how he got that goal, until Hiori explains his advice, comparing it to a tetris game.

Bonus: Poor Isagi getting choked by Shidou, while the others separate these two idiots.

We head into the next match, a Team A vs Team C matchup.

Team A vs Team C

There’s not much here, as the focus is mainly on Reo and Nagi’s friendship, but I am picking out some little fun moments.

We have the second person to nickname Rin based on his eyelashes, Shidou. The chibis of these two are cute! We also learn that Rin is petty enough to hold grudges, even in-match (lmao)

Team C scores first with Nagi x Yukimiya’s combo. Shidou continues on his crusade of giving Rin nicknames, choosing to adopt RinRin, which is even more cutesy and overly affectionate (though in his case, it’s mocking) than Bachira’s previous Rin-chan.

Despite Reo’s new ability/use of his dexterity, Team C still loses soundly to Team A. Nagi comes to talk to Reo, who knows that his skill still isn’t enough. He’s taken Isagi’s words to heart – he wants to become someone that Nagi wants to chase after.

I think that this point is where Rin truly begins to supplant Bachira as the deuteragonist of Blue Lock. We are not given any insight or views of Bachira’s matches or his plays in them, and other than Isagi’s own match, and Reo’s, whose POV we get, the character whom the narrative focuses on is Rin. I understand it’s hard to juggle a weekly manga with such a huge cast of characters, as Blue Lock does, but I think the lack of Bachira is quite telling that his narrative importance has decreased. Isagi’s focus, and by extension, the narrative, for a long while now, has been more focused on Rin.

In the formation of the team to go up against Japan’s U20, Ego spells it out. The team is centered around Rin. Of all the players in Blue Lock who can bring out the best in Rin’s plays, the ‘ideal partner to Itoshi Rin’, is Isagi.

This is canon, y’all. And spoken, no less, by the very character who thus far, is the closest to an in-series omniscient narrator.

This panel of Rin and Shidou having no chemistry at all is so fucking funny. Shooting down the ship in canon, just in case shippers get any ideas, lmao.

Ego then tells them about Sae’s participation in the U20 match, and that he chose Shidou to play with out of all the members of Blue Lock present. Rin’s reaction to finding out that Sae chose Shidou to play with is fun – complete fury. Ego moves on to break down Rin and Shidou’s playstyles: Rin involves his surroundings and synergizes with them, Shidou’s is very much self-sufficient, even going so far as to say it comes down to who made the right choice between him and Sae will decide the outcome of the match, and thus Blue Lock’s continued survival. Rin, on the other hand, reasserts that the match is a stepping stone for him to become the best in the world, which the others echo.

While Sae and Shidou meet the U20 team, Blue Lock begins their training camp. During their break, Isagi mulls over the importance of ‘breaking through’ the U20’s defense, per Bachira’s words, then surmising that he doesn’t have the power to do that. He then comes across Rin still training. while they’re supposed to be on break.

[It’s fun how the narrative arranges that Isagi’s questions for breaking through the U20 defense, and to master his newfound ability via the flow trance, brought him to Rin.]

Isagi pops inside the training room and tells Rin to take a break. He’s surprised at Rin’s ferocious single-mindedness, and coaxes Rin into a short break by handing him a water bottle.

[Also fun how Isagi just happened to be carrying two water bottles for whatever reason, conveniently being able to offer one to Rin.]

Rin rebuffs him at first, but Isagi doesn’t take his shit, adjusting his words and attitude into one that Rin is more palatable to. Then as he walks away, he thinks this:

‘I’ve… never seen Rin look like that before. I want to win along with him…’

Isagi doesn’t simply want to win. He wants to win along with Rin.

C112

The U20 and Blue Lock teams walk out onto the field. Rin glares at Sae, who ignores him, while Aiku wishes Isagi good luck. Isagi grows nervous, and Rin perceptively realizes it, smacking him on the back to get him out of his head.

"Let's go, Isagi."

"Yeah!"

And that's all for part 3!

There’s a lot less analysis for this part, as it’s mostly about Isagi’s increasing focus on Rin, as well as his and Rin’s growing rivalry/friendship. In this arc, Rin's character is further rounded out, and we get a hint of the depth of his obsession with defeating Sae.

Compared to part 2, where Isagi was more hung up on Rin’s sheer skill, in this part we see Isagi’s respect for Rin evolve further, into a much deeper respect for Rin’s mindset and relentless drive to win, even in a situation where he was severely outclassed by the World 5 team. The Blue Lock Eleven tryouts and his conversation with Reo is a nice moment of foiling, parallels and reinforcement of the series narrative theme.

Isagi directly compares himself to Reo – he’s afraid of not being able to play with Rin again, but he’s also afraid that the gap between him and Rin will keep growing to the point where Rin is beyond his reach, which, from a shipping perspective, is pretty damning in my opinion, because the NagiReo ship is, next to the Bachisagi ship, probably the best established one in terms of narrative themes and characterisation both, with Reo being almost all Nagi at this point in time. Besides that, with the top 6 players announced + Bachira, we clearly see that Isagi is still lagging behind his peers when it comes to plain old football skill.

Besides that, Isagi too, becomes more involved and concerned about Rin’s issues with Sae, although he’s still scratching the surface with Rin about that, and it’s clear that he’s more than a little disconcerted by Rin’s obsession with beating Sae. It’s also fascinating to see him actively include Rin in his wishes with regards to the U20 game – specifically to win along with Rin, which is an extension of his initial wish in the Second Selection Arc, that he wants Rin.

On Rin’s part, he’s thawing out towards Isagi, surely but slowly. Beginning with his semi-allowance of Isagi to do yoga with him in the training room, and later his response to Isagi’s declaration of rivalry, then the way he works together with Isagi up until it becomes clear that Isagi can’t defeat Karasu one-on-one, and at that point. Even then, he doesn’t discard Isagi completely, choosing instead to free up Isagi from Karasu and face off against Karasu himself. Although he does wind up pissed at Isagi for stealing the thunder and the final goal and speaking rather cruelly about him, neither he nor Isagi escalates the issue further. We also learn that Rin has some problems: he is utterly unable to work with Shidou, someone whose skill is almost on par with him in Blue Lock, and he cannot healthily acknowledge that Isagi had defeated him in that last shot.

Update: Part 4 will cover the first half of the U20 match, and there are a lot of nice moments coming up.

#blue lock #bllk #Isagi Yoichi #Itoshi Rin #Isagirin #Rinsagi #isagirin meta part 3 #rinsagi meta part 3 #otp: heart stolen by his beautiful parable

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