BLUELOCK

Episode 17

Man, get fucked, Baro! No amount of words can fully describe the overwhelming amount of catharsis I felt during this episode. With Baro's introduction to the team, I knew something needed to change. Until this point, Baro has been a player with such an overwhelming amount of ego that it's nearly impossible for him to get along with other egoists. I was waiting for the twist where Isagi would adapt to him or Baro would finally loosen up. Instead, what we got was honestly even better and even subversive in a lot of ways.

Even though the show has been slightly inconsistent with how much ego Isagi has, I really liked how everything was handled here. Isagi is genuinely doing everything he can to work with the puzzle pieces that he has. He's trying desperately to figure out what picture will get made when he puts those pieces together. Instead, what he should've been doing was the opposite. Isagi needed a picture of what to do in his head and manipulate every piece available to get that exact outcome. At the end of the day, Isagi ended up working with Baro but did it by using Baro as a sacrificial pawn so Isagi and Nagi could get goals. Seeing Baro on the ground with Isagi completely flips the script on how he sees himself. His kneeling in front of Isagi makes me wonder what will happen next with his character. In most sports anime, this would be when a character realizes that they need to work together for everyone to accomplish the same goal. I'm going to say that BLUELOCK isn't going to do something like that because it almost feels like that would be too easy at this point and may betray Baro's character. I would love for him to go in the opposite direction and use Isagi the way that Isagi was using him to establish a new team play dynamic. But we'll have to wait and see what happens next week as this game comes down to the wire.

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BLUELOCK is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.