Blue Lock – 16

「者融合[トライ・セッション]」 (Tri Session)
“Tri-Fusion”

With Isagi and Nagi’s choice to take Barou into their team, Blue Lock’s latest episode focuses on how Barou’s dynamic affects his other team members. But as Barou shakes the team up with his own selfish hubris, Chigiri and Kunigami have to contend with Reo’s emotional feud with Nagi.

HE’S A MANIAC, MAAAAAANIAC ON THE FLOOR

While Barou’s ball-hogging tendencies make him an annoying player, he’s actually an amusing character for how simple his quirks are. As a neat freak, Barou quickly gets a reputation for being the team’s maid as he meticulously folds and cleans their room regularly. It makes for a funny Additional Time where Nagi and Isagi fantasize about what kind of maid cafe Barou would create. It also provides some laughs when even Chigiri is perplexed by Barou’s stickler behavior about cleanliness.

At the same time, Isagi’s adaptability skills are put to the test when he knows full well that Barou’s greatest talent is dribbling; a detail Barou would never wish to admit. As someone who’s gotten fortunate enough to fire off instant goals as reasonably as Rin, Barou’s reliance on this particular skill has caused him to lose two consistent rounds of this selection period of Blue Lock.

Right when you think Isagi might’ve gotten through to Barou with his understanding that he has a skill Isagi himself can’t utilize, Barou just wants the ball passed to him. At this point, Barou would need to be shamed into cooperation through his own bad performance if there is any hope for Isagi to rein him in and properly utilize his skills.

I’M GONNA MAKE YOU MINE

While Isagi’s team has a hard time cooperating on one unified mindset based on their personal interests in who they’d choose from Chigiri’s team if they beat them, Chigiri’s team has one severely weak link in their team: Reo Mikage. Although Reo already has friction with Chigiri given his tendency to feminize the redhead, Reo’s obsession with Nagi makes him an unpredictable and emotional liability for the team’s morale.

Reo really wants Nagi to say he needs him, but the most he can settle on when he finally sees Nagi is to let him know he has beef for not being chosen. Much of his motivation is centered around this act of betrayal in Reo’s eyes as he deliberately marks Isagi on the field as revenge for being Nagi’s reason to leave him.

It makes it all the more awkward for Isagi’s old friends as Chigiri and Kunigami are excited and relatively jealous about being snubbed once Nagi stole their slot from them. They’re already lecturing Reo to keep his emotions out of his actions, but even Chigiri’s speed and Kunigami’s ball retention skills might not gel as well with Reo’s skills if he’s too driven by resentment to keep his head in the game.

On the flip side, it is an interesting episode because Nagi and Reo’s current dynamic is contrasted with how Isagi and Bachira see each other. Nagi still wants to honor Reo’s promise and reunite, but while Isagi takes Bachira’s “come and take me” as a challenge that they both know they can accomplish, Reo sees Nagi’s mutiny as a slap in the face. Rather than feeling challenged to step up if he wants to reunite, Reo sees it as a personal attack that he must personally exchange right back at him.

This is hammered down further in this episode with the updates we get on Bachira’s status. Isagi hasn’t shied away from making his reunion with Bachira his main current goal, but it’s heart-warming to see that the same can be said about Bachira’s personal faith in reuniting with Isagi. Bachira’s faith in Isagi’s skills makes him enthusiastic about getting further into the current selection under the idea that Isagi would easily improve himself enough to see him again.

There’s definitely no love loss between the two, especially considering his own struggles with leveling with Rin. Rin’s jerk tendencies make it very transparent for Bachira that he personally gets no excitement or joy in his personal goal to surpass his brother at soccer. It’s framed as a way for Bachira and Rin to train together, but scenes like this make me think about all of the times we’ve seen the other characters’ weak links during training.

Naruhaya’s confidence issues and Reo’s personal vendetta seem to hint at Rin’s brother being a major catalyst for his efforts to overcompensate for not being his brother. Most of the mind games in this show have been thrown at Isagi because of his confidence issues, but it’d be interesting to see how they’d come into play when Isagi’s team has to confront Reo or even Rin

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