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The Fascist Soccer Show
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- Опубликовано: 14 ноя 2023
- PATREON: www.patreon.com/explanationpoint
Bluelock is just a cartoon about soccer, but it presents its story in a way that's pretty uncomfortable to people who have been paying attention to the way the political winds have been blowing lately. What makes Bluelock so. . . fascist? Join me and find out!
I appreciate your research but there is logic flaw in your video that is assuming that, if 2 things share similar/equal aspects they are similar/equal. That's like saying that if I'm wearing a blue shirt and the sky is blue, I'm wearing the sky.
Ego is shitty person whose values would not fit irl, but he is not fascist. Although he wants to get the world cup, he is not a nationalist at all:
- In the manga, it's clear he does not value Japan history when he says even the top Japanese players (Honda and Kagawa) are shit because they never won any World Cup
- Ego cares and value way more other countries soccer: he frequently mentions other soccer players as examples being followed and even bring players from other countries (top 5 players) to serve as inspiration for the winners of the 2nd selection. It's unreasonable to consider that a Asian fascist would pay someone like Dada Silva, a black latino person to work as reference in any aspect.
- [manga spoilers] The Neo Egoist League is all about bringing and learning from the culture/experience from 5 other top soccer leagues around the world.
To sum up, Ego wants an world cup not because he values Japan, or believe that Japanese are some sort master race (like they did in WW2), he wants because of his egocentrism, he believes he is a genius and therefore deserves/needs it.
Fascism has several variations around history, but I can't think of a single experience who sees value in learning for not one or two, but several other cultures more than it's own.
Other stuff, like being highly masculine and performance-oriented are not exclusive from fascism. Just think of super heroes, blockbusters and even other shonen anime that you see that is too common in contemporary media. Those sorts of individualism are related to fascism but also to liberalism
5:03 also, Ego's view on the idealized past where everyone was a striker is not tied to any nation or race, which is an essential part of the mythical past of fascist experiences. Italy had the Roman Empire, Japan had the yamato race and Germany had the arian race. Ego is just nostalgic about tactics.
@@Kronem725 I'd add that it wasn't even "idealized past". Ego doesn't claim that this is how football is supposed to be played, he is saying that students should start from scratch to experience the sport in its most simple and/or essential form ("forget everything you think you know" kind of exercise).
@@Kronem725 These too have been accused of carrying fascistic undertones -- "the inherent qualities of one group gives them authority and privilege over others within society". Even when shonen makes itself about "hard work", there is the innate talent of shonen heroes that makes their hard work better than that of other characters. YMMV.
So the flaw in your counter argument is that nationalism itself is not a necessary ingredient in being fascistic.
To pull from Umberto Eco's seminal essay 'Ur-Fascism' (rather than Explanation Points Jason Stanley citation), there are 14 properties that commonly appear amongst fascistic political movements, *however,* not all fourteen properties are present in every movement.
To pull a specific quote from the essay:
"Fascism became an all-purpose term because one can eliminate from a fascist regime one or more features, and it will still be recognizable as fascist. Take away imperialism from fascism and you still have Franco and Salazar. Take away colonialism and you still have the Balkan fascism of the Ustashes. Add to the Italian fascism a radical anti-capitalism (which never much fascinated Mussolini) and you have Ezra Pound. Add a cult of Celtic mythology and the Grail mysticism (completely alien to official fascism) and you have one of the most respected fascist gurus, Julius Evola.
But in spite of this fuzziness, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it."
So Fascism without Nationalism... is still Fascist.
And for the record, just based on what Exclamation point described, Blue Lock checks off 1) the cult of tradition, 2) the rejection of modernism (forget common sense) 3) the cult of action for action's sake, 4) disagreement is treason (don't think for yourself about the contradictions) 5) fear of difference, 6) appeal to a frustrated middle class (fear of the lower class), 9) life is permanent warfare, 10) contempt for the weak, and 11) everybody is educated to become a hero
So it's batting a 0.64 (to mix which sport we're talking about) in 'has fascist qualities'
One small correction: the higher ranked players getting to do stamina training instead of doing the first selection was a lie. The initial rankings were bullshit, and everyone was told they were near the bottom (which further enhances the point about motivation through fear)
Yep. Caught that in editing. My bad!
Isn't that what is talked about at 19:50?
The actual truth doesn't matter for that original point. The food is still structured so that the good get better and the poor get crap. The lie that there is greater extremes beyond that doesn't make it better, it only serves to normalise the comparatively small inequality within their own building.
@@FFKonoko the lie of everyone facing the SAME TREATMENT as the “worst teams” is still equality, kind of.
@@oofink467but there is still a difference between team v and team z, even if ego wants even team v to feel as if the world is against them, when they are actually the top of the food chain
@@Seloliva1015 i mean yeah, but then again, there is inequality everywhere in life, and most of the time it is just a matter of someone else being better than you. People who work hard get more benefits, fair enough. beneficial inequality exists for a reason, if doctors were being paid the same the janitor, the receptionist and all the other jobs in a hospital, there would be no demand for doctor's, since the job is significantly more difficult and the reward you get out of it is exactly the same. This is the reason why ideologies like communism doesn't work
Imagine if blue lock ends with the winner joining the Japanese pro team and absolutely embarrassing himself because he’s completely unable to work with a team.
Most hilarious and righteous ending
The blue lock facility would be a useless failure then 😂
What were they doing in there to fail that badly
It would make the whole show a waste of time. This would never happen
@@RandomVex teaching everyone to prioritize their own glory over winning, not to worry about positioning or passing, and to play a team game like an individual sport. Basically, everything they’re currently doing
@@Noo584 the show is more so about trancending all of those things I think. If you still need to worry about positioning, team game and winning, then you are probably not strong enough to overcome those things
Only those above the top can make a team sport into individual sport
I just find it hysterical that literally a month before the manga got published, France won the 2018 World Cup and their starting striker Olivier Giroud didn't score a single goal in the tournament. At a quick glance you could criticize his performance, but everyone who analyzed the games knew how important he was to the team's offensive and defensive gameplan. Real life just completely destroyed the whole opening premise of Blue Lock in the cruelest way possible.
I think the series Blue Lock would agree with you if you read past season 1, or even if you analyze season 1 a little deeper and catch the foreshadowing.
@@GogetaEiyuuYamchafr, even season 1 it kinda foreshadowed it, no one in the show really ball hogs and pass to their teammates frequently
@@bubbachildsupport4535The core theology remains tho. "Good strikers only pass so they can set up their own goals." It's nudging the proverbial goalposts but the point is the same. "Team exists for me to win."
@@JacksonJinn
Ooh, interesting juxtaposition between we team up "for me to win," vs "for us to win,"
Like Blue Lock vs other sports anime
@@JacksonJinnsuper late for this but anyone whose read literally the next arc of blue lock could tell you that you’re just wrong. I don’t wanna get into spoiler territory, but you misinterpreted the show if you thought EGO equated to never working with or through anyone else to win.
This whole show is so funny from a Brazilian perspective.
There are serious ass essays about how soccer games to Brazil are pretty much akin to Ancient Rome's "Panem et circenses", as in that we spend so much time thinking about games that it's supposedly the whole ass reason why we're still "underdeveloped" as a country. During World Cup, you gotta accept all schools and workplaces and government buildings are closing down so everyone can go watch every single match Brazil's in. I kid you not, we treat it like a holiday.
And I honestly don't think you can find a single person over the age of 9 in this continent that sincerely thinks an entire team of strikers has a chance of working out. Every infant finds out the hard way that the entire match is a shit show if everyone tries to be the team's specialest little star, no matter how good you are.
It's an easy way to tell someone just learned how to play whenever you watch a kids match: it's not even about morality, it's just that if you have played enough, it becomes obvious pretty soon that it's a shit strategy.
I kinda started watching the anime because the thought of a concept so obvious being taken seriously and desconstructed in this medium would be a fun experience with like. An unholy amount of edibles. Because what else could you even do with such a basic concept. And the edginess of it all IS hilarious for the first 10 episodes or so, but then the weed kinda wears off and you realize that... oh. The author is for real. The narrative IS deadset on making a case about how soccer's equivalent of potty training is actually WRONG and DUMB because..... [vague hand motions].
The fascism-like ideology sincerely flew over my head because I was too busy trying to wrap my head around how absurd it is to produce an entire show about... Idk, metaphorically shitting your pants in game
I'd say that you don't even need to have played a game to know this. Just even half-heartedly watching a match on TV should make it obvious that having a whole team that only knows how to strike, and each individual player wants to be THE striker, is a team destined to lose virtually all matches. Or just google "top 10 goals in history" and see how many are the result of team effort.
which essays are these that you talked about in the start of your comment? as a brazilian who has always had a profound discomfort with how football is treated and the role it plays in our society I'm very curious because I've never been able to quite put it into words, most of the time I just say I'm a football hater but it's not that simple lmao
The first match and the 0 to 1 ideology are exactly about how an entire team of strikers doesn't work. They're forcefully shown that if every team tries to be a striker it just leads to chaos, I feel like Isagi directly even says this. The entire first selection becomes about all of the players figuring out which striker has the most effective strategy to score.
I think this video has excellent points in particular about how Ego is using nationalism and fascist practices to raise soccer prodigies and there's some real dialogue about Isagi only being able to succeed in this kind of environment that should be criticized. The characters who are kind and friendly usually get shoved out while the ones who are hyperindividualistic move on and they are rewarded by other players adhering to their vision.
Blue Lock positions itself as a meritocracy which is pretty much right down the road from fascism (SMT games and their chaos endings are usually like this and they all pitch the same myth of progress through fascism). Blue Lock just argues that once you find the most effective way of scoring goals everyone else should fall in line in a way that best helps that person score goals.
Worded differently, by the end of Blue Lock we will absolutely have 11 players who all play different positions but are capable of scoring if they have a chance. We can see this start to happen in 3rd and 4th selection where characters like Gagamaru have moved from striker to a defensive position.
I dont say any of this to disagree with the overall point that the manga does glorify fascist ideology, I just want to point out that the manga agrees with you in that it's very obvious 11 strikers don't work. It just has to show the characters that as Blue Lock pretends Isagi has never played soccer in his life.
Blue Lock is more about the athletes who play soccer than it is about the game itself.
Still, the author does recognise that players other than strikers are valuable and important (although only much later into the manga, when the original lessons have been beaten into you, is when Kaneshiro feels comfortable adding some nuance), and even that your 'ego' can be about things other than becoming the world's greatest striker. Like Reo, who wants to be the best playmaker and push Nagi to the position of world's greatest striker.
Still, the point of the manga is about making the best striker, and that's because Japan doesn't (supposedly) have any good strikers, not because strikers are just better than other players and a team made up of strikers would be better off.
Hell, the manga itself proves how horrible a team of strikes would be with Team Z. The point of telling them they're all strikers is to see who would step forward as the best striker, like what happened with Barou's team.
Let me catch you up with the current manga. The current team has a few strikers, a few playmakers, a few defenders, wingers, and a great goalkeeper. In no means is the team “only strikers.”
absolutely awed and bewildered by your artistic decision to forgo editing transitions in favor of simply stacking images infinitely
I'm not saying I'm a genius, but I am an innovator.
It's legit unique, memorable, and keeps the pace moving really well
@@ExplanationPointAnime I've absolutely loved your editing style ever since I first saw one of your videos
@@ExplanationPointAnimeI’m here for it. Seems like a unique style.
@@ExplanationPointAnime having u reply to me was on my bucket list… thank u mr point🌹
"So play the game as it was intended."
Ah, yes. The Dark Souls of soccer coaches.
Funniest thing about this is the whole show's "selling point" is that everybody in the team is a striker but even that becomes a lie
The funny thing is that eventually, even the strikers integrate into a team, not as strikers, but as parts of a whole. Meaning the premise of Blue Lock itself becomes more wrong. It is pretty neat to see everybody become hyperspecialized.
The selling point is that they are going to make the number 1 striker. He literally said it in A speech in episode 1.
"all strikers are equal, but some strikers are more equal than others"
I mean, I do think thats intentional, but we’ll have to see where it goes haha
@@kenanf92This is just Hell's Kitchen.
"Show me that you're ready to be a head chef by being the strongest line cook, you donkey."
This manga is basically "The 1980s Netherlands Soccer Team Experience":
1) The striker is all that matters (Van Basten) and all the team should pass to him and him alone. The striker is king, he's more important than even the trainer himself.
2) The more strikers you have, the better.
3) Everyone defends, everyone strikes.
Results? A strong team that will never amount to anything when it really matters, and will melt to the first team that can exploit the "everyone strikes" mentality with a strong midfield and defense, breaking the team's will to play and causing hilarious infights in the showers during the intermission.
this is misinterpreting what the point of blue lock is even about. blue lock wants to create the “best striker” not an entire team of strikers
Well yes and no. Yes that doesn’t work, but it’s not what ends up happening.
I love videos where my initial reaction is: "wow that is a big fucking reach" and then end the video thinking: "yeah that's pretty nailed on actually"
And I love making 'em, my dude. Those are my favorites.
It weird to think that if it not for this video, I could have been influenced more towards fascism, goddamn
Spoiler: no you couldn't lol
This video is probably wrong (we not reading allat) but most importantly, people are not that malleable
@@tehy123The saying "you didn't notice it, but your brain did" exists for a reason, mate. We are subconsciously influenced by everything we spend enough time interacting with, in one way or another. And if you let something sink into you without giving it a critical thought, it very much can plant an idea into you. That's scientifically proven by social studies.
@@tehy123It's just like with cult brainwashing. The more you think you're too cool to be affected and refuse to give it a second thought, the more susceptible you actually are, so. Be careful, friend.
I’d like to point out another thing with Blue Lock:
It’s touched on more in the manga, but there very much are people that coast purely on talent. Without saying too much, Ego doesn’t like Nagi since he thinks he doesn’t try hard enough, and doesn’t like any of the goals he makes since he doesn’t consider them anything more than miracles lmao.
Many actually suspect a Nagi arc is coming up because of his fake volley shot and his newest failure with Rin.
Add to That the Yukimiya rant Ego has about the difference between Confidence and Delusion I think the change from the first to second bluelock system has changed some of the points made here.
@@darkshadow5581I remember a comment saying "Nagi on fraudwatch??" after he failed to stop Rin in the latest chapter lmao
@@Powersd451Nagi was on fraudwatch the moment he showed up in the series. After watching enough Shonen, you can spot characters like him a mile away: hypertalented people that use godly skills purely on instinct rather than through having trained it. He was my favourite character from the start, but Ego calling it out immediately(especially in the spinoff manga for him) made me know I'm either in for a beautiful tragedy or a monstrous reawakening of a talented person actually putting in work
Eh it the way people without talent work, imagine a talaneted person that doesn't work hard, when in the real world those that reach the top are all talaneted people who work hard
@@newil_yovac
As someone with ADHD who's talented in physical sports, it's true, but it hurts 😭
I've participated in several sports where I've done well in the beginning based purely on talent and instinct, but I don't manage to put in the work and hardly improve.
It was pretty interesting to see Nagi improvise his own plays, only for him to abandon it again. I'm really excited to see where his character is going.
The funniest thing about Bluelock to me is that it's premise of finding the best striker is just sorta flawed? Like I have never even *ONCE* fucking thought "Man, if only Japan had a good striker. This is what's stopping them from taking it all. They'd be world class then."
@@fly.1 I do watch football. A lack of a good striker just isn't what has held Japan back lmao. They're just weaker in general (At least the men's team. The women's team rules.)
@@HifuutorianThe men's team has been improving significantly over the years to be fair. Their matches in the 2022 World Cup were great
@@mike.n.n.7723 That's true. They have been improving more and more.
I semi-disagree, after the most recent world cup I can confidently say one of the things holding Japan back is having a dominant goal scorer, specifically a physically imposing striker. The wingers are talented, the midfielders have good experience, and the backline plays well together and has a lot of talent. I think the struggles are mainly matching up size wise with some of the other top countries, and having a tall, powerful striker is part of that. Obviously it’s not like Japan can just produce a big, strong guy who’s really good at soccer out of the blue, nor will that win them the world cup on its own. But I do think it’s at least accurate to say a really good striker would be a big step forward.
@@cameronn1891 You know what? That's fair.
It just definitely wasn't something that was true in 2018, when Blue Lock was first published.
kinda crazy how a video essay on a soccer anime taught me about fascism than literally anything in school, but great job
This video gave the worst definition and summary for fascism I have ever seen in my entire goddam life
the importance of reading books!
Agreed and its kinda crazy how populist democracy is very similar to fascist rethoric
@@rickysampson8759 We need a republic... _And by that we mean a practically unelected Senate._
Pft same here xd
Real life football had that first scene occur where Ronaldo caught a pass and was taken up to an academy and the young man that passed the ball faded to obscurity however Ronaldo did buy him a house and didn't forget that key moment in his life
And remember that guy from Messi's youth camp that literally made him look like an average run of the mill player? Injuries plagued him and now he's just been coasting by in some mid tier league, if not already retired. Football is brutal
@@newil_yovac who?
@@deepakpoddar-vi5rs I think he's talking about Bojan Krkic
He to this day talks about the girls that were working in Macdonald's that would feed him and his friend when they were hungry.
Víctor Vázquez@@deepakpoddar-vi5rs he was better than Messi and competed each other very often to see who scored more goals but Vazquez would always win.
I really like how you explain the importance of ideology in media in your conclusion. “Watch things wisely” is a great way of putting it.
Indeed. There's a lot of people out there who will say, "You can never watch morally/ethically problematic media, because you engaging with it is morally wrong." But not only is that not true, but with an aware mind, you can deconstruct themes and patterns in that media - just like was done here - to show broader concepts. It's neat, but it does require a "brain-on" mentality when watching media.
You can eat whatever you want to. Just know what's in your food.
I'm on the fence about it. On one hand, media does often contain messages, especially if it's written by people who care about thinking and stuff. Stories with a good vs evil narrative well naturally have to have some idea of what those words actually mean. And if nothing else, what better source of thought experiments then the vast array of stories that have built up over the centuries.
On the other hand, it sounds dangerously close to "everything is political", an idea/motto that is very clearly and n@k#dly a way to force people to constantly think about whatever ideology they want them to be 100% dedicated to, and always think about, and dedicate near-literally every single action towards. kind of like [people mentioned in video].
@@heychrisfox I think a lot of people think that you can't like a piece of fiction for its entertainment value and acknowledge that its take on certain themes are wrong at the same time.
@@fruitygarlic3601Well how can anyone be allowed and propagated to, to ingest bodies?
I would be so interested to see how other anime stack up to this kind of analysis. Zom100 seems like a perfect contrast, and fits right in with the observation that a lot of people make about isekai... which is that a lot of people hate their lives as struggling adults living in a homogenized capitalist system, so escaping from that kind of life gets built right into the story's premise. Zom100 just takes it a step further... instead of pulling the individual out of the society they know, and dropping them into a world where none of that exists, Zom100 keeps the characters right where they are, and just destroys everything around them. the fact that an apocalyptic scenario can literally be framed as preferable to living in the world as it currently is, is actually a pretty damning critique.
or take Chainsaw Man for example. we start with Denji and Pochita... a devil, who is empowered by fear, and an impoverished child, who managed to forge a contract with a devil, and now fights devils in order to earn enough money to pay his late father's debts. already, this is so loaded. people in poverty have a lot more to be afraid of than most other people, so devils are probably a bigger threat to them... they have less resources with which to protect themselves, and are easier to manipulate into situations where they will face devils, due to the pay incentives offered for fighting them. Denji is willing to put himself into dangerous situations for money, and eventually, he desensitizes himself to a whole host of fears that become mundane in his lifestyle. this is especially threatening to devils, because humans who don't fear them become a major existential threat, especially for the weaker ones. a kid like Denji isn't very strong, but he can still kill a devil that isn't very scary.
so the world is set up to pit the lower class of each group against each other... weak devils are vulnerable, just like poor humans, and those two groups are the ones who have to fight and try to tear each other apart. the rich can just offer money to the poor in order to get them to fight devils... and on the same token, the most powerful devils don't even have to try to be scary. everyone is scared of war, death, etc. so they don't have to try and menace anyone to make themselves look scarier. they're just powerful, no maintenance required. it's the underwhelming devils that have to try to gain power somehow, in order to defend themselves. and it's the poor humans who generate the most fear by being put in the most peril. there are probably even devils that are exclusive to people in poverty, which would all but disappear if society was willing to help the impoverished out of their dire circumstances... but instead we watch organizations like Public Service and the yakuza, trying to out-menace each other with grandstanding that is specifically meant to intimidate.
it makes me wonder if there are devils for specific people or organizations... devils that represent the fear of a dictator, which gain power from those who live afraid under said dictator's regime... that sort of thing. in any case, becoming desensitized to fear seems pretty OP until you realize the human cost of burning out an entire emotion in someone's psyche. Denji has a very hard time connecting to other people, because he's learned never to get attached to anything... not enough that losing it will really hurt him. we see what happens to Himeno when she really cares about Aki. Denji has never had the luxury of wanting things that badly. if the people around him all dropped dead, he'd have to just be okay with it. Denji's problem is that his mind can't exit survival mode... things have been too bad for too long. he can't risk expecting things to get better, and ending up disappointed.
Chainsaw Man is about the struggle between finding power through resilience, and finding genuine joy through vulnerability. there's a whole capitalistic system that would prefer to profit off of people being resilient, and half the time, they're the reason why the resilience is necessary in the first place. but choosing vulnerability is genuinely nerve wracking in a world where there's a lot to be afraid of... and for a long while, Denji is literally too poor to afford that.
so yeah, I think there's a lot of really cool stuff that modern anime is trying to say about these themes... I'm grateful for videos like these.
Well said.
Don't know if you're anime only or have read the manga and don't want to spoil it for the others, so i'll keep it vague just in case:
-everyone fears war and death
In the CSM universe, the last major conflict was WW1. No WW2, no cold war, no (presumably) vietnam, ecc. This is alluded to in the anime when you realize that it's 1997 and the Soviet Union still exists. As a result, war has become a thing of movies and videogames, which few people really fear. The War devil, who appears in part 2 of the manga, is afraid of being forgotten and is trying to find a way to become feared again.
-devils that represent fear of a dictator
That would be the Conquest/Control devil, one of the War devil's sisters. The ban on guns and governmental restrictions following the Gun devil's original attack made the Control devil stronger, as people started to be more conscious of the government's power.
@@Danthemanwithnoplan thank you!
@@outbreakperfected9374 I am an anime only, so I appreciate the ambiguity in what you mentioned... thank you.
but yeah, the thing about war having kind of "ended" with WW1 is super interesting... in general, it raises a lot of questions about how devils would change politics, if the strengthening or weakening of devils had to be taken into consideration. it feels like the relationship between government and population would have to be handled a lot more carefully... or we'd just start seeing which devils manifest as a natural consequence, like what you said about the control devil forming from people's collective fear of government overreach.
I do want to dig into the manga at some point... I fully expect that the author of Chainsaw Man is going to keep using the stuff he's built into this narrative in interesting ways. the premise is so full of potential, and even from just the anime, or from hearing about his reputation and other works, you can tell he's very willing to go off the rails with his ideas. regardless of when I get to the manga, I can't wait for the second season of the anime.
@@kamuyking551 your idea of devils affecting world politics is incredibly spot on; you'll see near the end of part 1 (so most likely at the end of season 2 of the anime, if they adapt the Bomb Girl arc as a movie). With nuclear weapons not existing, the arms race involves some powerful devils, so expect some fun revelations...
The manga is pretty bonkers, and the anime pretty much only covered the "prologue". It still has to start getting crazy, and when it starts it only gets more and more bonkers.
Also the story is full of christian symbolism, so watch out for that too if you like to speculate. You may have already noticed that the two devil siblings i mentioned in my previous comment, Conquest(or Control, apparently it's the same word in japanese) and War, share the names of the first two of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. This is no coincidence, but i'll avoid saying more to not spoil anything else.
As a huge blue lock fan this as such an informative video. At first I was I was like “damn dude chill it’s just a soccer anime” but over time you made some really valid points. Kudos to you for putting in work in expressing such a unique perspective that on something that seemed so obvious but no one talks about. I’ll definitely will still be reading/watching blue lock but will be taking its messages with a grain of salt haha
I would actually love it, if Bluelock was intentionally depicting facist manipulation the way it is, just to pull the rug out from under the viewer in the final episode(s), revealing what kind of twisted mindset we've been cheering for.
Kind of like "The Wave" by Todd Strasser/Morton Rhue.
@@gilroyscopa Unfortunately I don't think it's that kind of story 😅every character that's still in the manga has benefited from Ego's ethos and will probably continue to
Anime fans in general seem very resistant to media critique. Personally I think it’s weird to spend so much time convincing others that the medium of anime is just as valid as other media, then the moment anyone takes it seriously in critique be like “bro it’s just a cartoon”
@@feelingveryattackedrn5750I hate that you're kinda right. I love anime and like all media I enjoy, I criticize it. But God, the way some anime fans defend their shows to their last breath... like, it's ok if something you love has problems and it's ok to talk about what you don't like in it. It's not an attack against you as a person or the creator, but tell that to some anime fans.
It's an interesting video but most of it is just an asspull
The scariest thing to me is that, judging by the comments on this very video, a significant majority of the audience doesn't understand that this is the point - that the ideology of Blue Lock is supposed to be messed up and not to be applied to real life. The other characters are constantly calling Ego out on his life-destroying bullshit and a huge chunk of viewers are still gonna think we're meant to root for his child abuse machine.
The show works pretty hard to make his takes sympathetic. Maybe the manga is better, I dunno, but the anime pretty explicitly positions him as some kind of all-knowing god.
@@alecwoodard9464 Yeah, to the people who benefit. Of course the participants in Blue Lock think he's a God, they're actually improving and seeing their lives become better while within this system. Of course the directors who are only after money and renown revere him, his plan is so ridiculous yet his competence makes it viable.
Within the confines of Blue Lock, Ego isn't some kind of God, he *is* God. It's his creation, based around his ideals, structured to benefit those who are egotistical to a fault, or able to adapt to the high level of play. His detractors within the show see him as some genius gone mad who somehow still has the ear of enough people to fund this thing.
this is most certainly not the 'point' lol. at no point is Ego ever properly portrayed as a bad person, his takes always end up correct if anything. if there was a point if anything, it would be that fascism and is easy to implement
@@MegamanStarforce2010 There are plenty of times that we see characters who's lives have been completely ruined because they got kicked out of blue lock, the only reason Ego isn't viewed negatively, aka from their point of view, is because we're following a character who is growing because of what Ego has told him. If we followed some of the cast, we'd see that Ego is a total piece of sh*t. It's all a matter of perspective on this one. Although you're totally right, Ego isn't viewed negatively much.
Look, I am 100 % persuade Ego is doing death game as a side hustle to pay for the Blue Lock.
As someone who saw soccer fans from Frankfurt i can confirm, that some soccer fans really do have fascistic tendencies...
Well, that's a bit unfair, you saw an Eintracht Match. Nobody in and around Frankfurt is sane, even the minorities there have fascist tendencies (like, holy fuck dude, like 2 out of 3 Turkish boys are horny for Erdogan, hate the LGBTQ, deny science, are verbally abusive to and requently degrade women, so many issues within that community)
Soccer hooligans are crazier then football chuds in America.
Ultra moment
And that's *BEFORE* you bring up British football hooligans.
@@Hawkatana TBF, the british hooligans have nothing on the mainland groups
What people don’t realize is Fascism wasn’t invented by Hitler. It’s an ideology that promotes power through use of anger and/or fear. It’s not some mythical state of being that can only happen when the death camps pop up.
Education is how you prevent Fascism from rising, and America is woefully negligent of its schools. Some places MUCH worse than others. Now, I’m not saying we live in a Fascist governance yet, but we are vulnerable to it, and it’s something that has to change.
Vote for better leaders, not just for President, but House and Senate too people.
This. Fascism isn't _just_ the worst case scenario, and nobody is immune to propaganda.
You don't know what "fascism" is. The only correct statement here is that Hitler co-opted it from Italian thinkers such as Giovanni Gentile and practitioners such as Mussolini. Nowhere does Gentile write "thou must use violent force to form the basis of your ideology". It's also disingenuous to imply that this is exclusive to fascism, when modern "democracies" do not hesitate to employ fear-mongering tactics and seemingly arbitrary uses of police violence to silence dissenters.
Shitler wasn’t even the first fascist dictator in interwar Europe. For that matter, Mussolini could be argued to not have invented fascism either but jumped onboard and grew his own movement as part of a greater trend towards fascism in post Great War Italy.
*watches fascist soccer anime*
*every character wants to DOMINATE each other*
*ALL TOPS*
There's one power bottom!! Rin's older brother Sae who appears later in the manga is a *midfielder* and is all like, "who's going to be the striker worthy to receive one of my passes?" all catty and stuff and then gets put on a team with a striker at least a foot taller than him who says stuff like "soccer is a biological imperative to me" and "give me your number if I make this goal!" Sae isn't that receptive to the dude, but like, still, the ✨vibes✨
Being dominant is not the same as being a top.
@@plaza3825they’re actually so gay 😭😭 especially shidou
SPOILERS FOR THE MANGA
--------------------
This reading of Ego gets even more nefarious once you hit the Neo-Egoist League. Meeting Noel Noa and realizing he’s a completely normal guy that doesn’t fit Ego’s ideology at all is total whiplash and then finding out Ego and Noa used to be rivals and now Ego is obsessed with creating the best striker in the world just makes it all come together. Like many fascist leaders Ego cares mot for the people he’s rallying or even the cause he’s rallying them for(the evolution of Japanese soccer), he’s obsessed about making his mark and cares only for his accomplishments spreading the Blue Lock ideology world wide to try and take credit from when the next Best Striker in the world is born.
ya but in the manga eventually teamwok comes into the picture with the u 20 arcs and the clubs like ubers working in systems and isagi assisting to yukimiya and hiyori deciding to become a midfielder not a striker. Obvioulsy strikers are still glorified like rin , kaiser , isgai and barou but that happens in the real world too like cr7 and messi having the most marketability than any other position.
Ego isn't a Fascist leader lmao. Most players question and berate him all the time, and don't care about him. They do team work, find "ego" in other positions, and go against a lot of what he says and succeed
@@dakshdhingra2221Ubers lost to the mess that is bastard munchen
Yeah no.
Spoilers
When they were about to lose the U20 match, Ego pretty much gave up and told them to move on because only he will be erased, their careers will keep going, which contradicts the entire comment you said.
Noel Noa isn’t all that normal. In fact he’s a lot like Ego. Completely logical, pragmatic, and only cares about the end result and numbers. Plus he’s right about him Noel is an egotist himself. In fact he’s been proven right again and again. Characters have been shown to become better over and over when they get that drive and hunger to be the greatest. That’s what ego means in the series. And every time each character believes in themself, wants themself to become the main character, or become independent they become stronger. Nagi when he finally decided to put in effort, bachira when he finally stops looking for a friend, rin when he stops seeing himself as sae’s younger brother and became his own person. Plus he knows that’s it a hellish environment but he knows to get the best out of his players that’s what they need. Plus he’s not completely heartless he’s shown he does care. Having them learn languages to be pros, not caring about money to continue them honing their skills, and betting his own career in football to have blue lock continue on. Ego does care.
This video honestly has me speechless with how good it is. We truly need more of these types of discussions in the anime space(honestly nerdy spaces in general). Fantastic job !
Thank you!
Absolutely need more of this in nerdy spaces. I feel like people who spread fascist ideas often lurk in those spaces, and pick off those of us who are most vulnerable.
And you’d think such avid consumers of media would have better media literacy skills!
@@flutterpaws Unfortunately, media literacy is not the same as media consumption. I do think it'd be neat if colleges provided free classes on this or something though! Like, just a short, free, recurring media literacy and critical thinking class that teaches you how to approach what you watch and read.
@@gido9467I think that's insane. Given that even Mother's Basement had a joke about how every video essay is about "Capitalism." If there's a dangerous totalitarian ideology responsible for genocide infecting nerdy spaces, it's not fascism. It's the other one.
What I think is also kinda ironic is that the japans national woman’s team have a actually won a World Cup
That's because Pink Lock is a real program that the author was inspired from
I am SO glad that this video exists. I'm not as into soccer as I once was, but I played from early middle school to the last days of high school. My family- and I mean immediate family and extended family- LOVES soccer. I was a proud defender, specifically playing left full-back (AKA, I was the last line of defense before the goalie and I was the one on the left), and I've always had a little chip on my shoulder about the glory offensive players get, especially strikers. don't get me wrong, the famous strikers/upfielders absolutely deserve their recognition for their carefully cultivated skills, but it's easy to give credit to the person who puts the ball in the net because that's when the stadium erupts with cheers rather than all of the people who pull off quick caluclations about who to pass to and where to maneuver the ball to get it out of the other team's possession and into the feet of the person with the most opportunity to do something with it. Or even just the thrill you feel when you get to really *kick* the ball and feel the way it pushes against your foot before soaring across the field and how it feels like, for a brief moment, you're part of the ball ripping through the air. Or even the fun of when you do a proper headball, cause it looks like it hurts and it kinda does but it becomes a moment where you're just One with the ball that it really doesn't. And also the obligatory goalie-worship that seems to follow every team member, because a good goalie has taught themselves to not fear the collision and save the day. (any current or former goalies reading this, I love you and would take a red card to defend your honor)
So when my friend told me about this really popular soccer sports anime, I felt elated. Soccer getting the Haikyuu treatment?? Sign me up!! I was jumping up and down to watch episodes where defenders and goalies learn to cross that line of, "Ooh, I'm too scared I'll get hit or collide with someone," to "Oh no you dON'T, GIMME THAT BALL!!!" and midfielders learning to really increase their awareness of everybody's positions on the field and the teamwork necessary. Passing the ball is critical to any success in the game, and my high school team briefly had a sort of Kageyama-Hinata duo where as long as one of them had the ball, we knew they'd start swapping it with the other in truly impressive ways, and it was GREAT!!
And then I watch it and in the first episode this nerdy man in business attire gets up on stage and shits on every single position except for strikers and says that the goal to having a winning team is to have an egotistic striker. That you have to be selfish and that it's better to screw others over as long as the striker gets to be an egoist. And I literally had to pause the show to just be like ????????? I've had forwards who were selfish as shit and NOBOdY liked them because they would never pass the ball, try to do everything themselves, and act as if they constantly have something to prove. Like, on a soccer team, soccer very much matters, but to quote Superbad: "Calm down, Greg. It's soccer. It's soccer." Honestly, we're judging you for not working with the team and not taking the L. If you can't make the shot, give it to someone else and keep the ball in circulation, cause if you don't make it, you're just giving it to the other team for no reason.
And apparently later in the show strikers who don't do well get relegated to other positions. This makes me laugh because you can't be selfish with the ball as a defender. Hell, as a defender, my job is to get the ball tf away from me!! The more time that ball spends on my side of the field, the more opportunity the opposing team has to steal it and score an embarrassing goal. A few times we'd try to play reverse soccer where all the defenders became forwards and vice versa and it was SO bad.
I dropped the show after like, episode three, once it became obvious that they were just doing the weird thing of actively screwing over their players instead of helping them (missing food or getting crappy food for not doing well when EVERYONE should be getting good food, etc). Also, why aren't they playing with shoes?? You play with shoes. You'll hurt yourself kicking a raw ball and trying to slide-tackle with your grippers out for free.
...Anyway, this was very cathartic to watch. Explanation point my beloved.
So if you do want "Soccer to get the Haikyuu treatment", I highly recommend AoAshi instead. It aired just before Blue Lock and is an incredible soccer anime in my opinion that feels more like Haikyuu. It even manages to avoid the striker worship you talked about here. It can be a bit slow to start, but I think it's going to be what you wanted from Blue Lock
I played soccer for like three months when I was 8 and didn't really like it but yeah, we all LOVED our goalie. Having a good goalie is like... the ultimate morale booster. She drop kicked the ball into the opposing goal twice. I love u yvonne (I don't remember if that was her name actually lmao)
Wow, you sucked playing, your job has defence is not get the ball far from you, is to avoid shoots and recover the ball, and be good positioned to get a pass to redo a play if the midfield can't advance. All that in an 11 players field, if you played in an smaller field and you weren't allowed to attack your team hated you.
All this video and this comment tell me is that sometimes ignorance is bliss. I don't know a single thing about soccer and that allowed me to immensely enjoy the show.
Not a soccer fan, but I'm on the edge of my seat reading your comment. Thanks for sharing.
When I watched Blue Lock for the first time, I could never shake this weird feeling that something was off about it. Then it hit me how weirdly nationalist it was. Everything about it just fed into this nationalist propaganda, this idea that they had to "bring glory and honor to their country"... by playing soccer. And it felt like nobody else noticed this. Seeing this video really vindicated those feelings, so thank you for bringing attention to this
Maybe it's different, but there's a lot nationalism IN soccer. Especially in countries that really give a shit about the sport-it's their countries versus yours. You wouldn't want to keep being shit, right? America lacks a national pride found in every other country (not saying it's without reason or undeserved), and that's unique to America. National Pride is not unique to Japan-the problem isn't with them, more like the problem is with our (or his and my) perspective as Americans.
Failing that, honestly this show is so ridiculous that I don't even care. I love it.
@@JustAJauneArcTo suggest that Americans are somehow not weirdly nationalistic is a strange take, ngl.
These people think its normal for kids to salute a flag on a daily basis, they very much are.
That being said, yeah, when it comes to international sports, they dont really seem as invested as the rest of the world. From what I can tell most sports stuff the US actually cares about is stuff pretty much only they participate in.
It took my euro ass a long time to figure out what a "super bowl" was.
@@JustAJauneArc Just gonna hop on this train real quick, the US is way worse with this shit than wherever you're coming from unless you live in Poland or the occupied West Bank. To Speep's point, most of our sports-related tribalism is tied up in local regional stuff, in no small part because the country is so stupidly massive and the United States is so culturally xenophobic, but children in the US are conditioned to nationalism explicitly from day 1 of primary school until graduation. It's FUCKING horrifying.
@TheSpeep Gonna be honest with you, from what I've grasped with other first world countries? It's about halfsies.
The Brits salute the flag, and the Queen, the Japanese, are VERY about national pride (hence their isolationism and aversion to open borders) even if they aren't loud about it? The other members of the EU don't really, but I guess having borders with countries that are equally as powerful as you still has-luckily only friendly-rivalries.
Having other nations to compete with generally sees people becoming more nationalistic. Because you wanna win. You want your country to be the one kicking ass. You think your country's #1, and you want the whole damn world to know it.
The way I see it, this show is all about Extreme Sports Machismo lmao
If you think that weird you are probably American (lots of countries view their national teams has bringing pride to their country)
Was caught off guard to hear ableism referenced but it was very welcome. There’s a lot of real insidious rhetoric in uk politics right now as the government looks for another group to scapegoat and a lot of people forget that “people on benefits” include a substantial number of people *unable* to work at all. Plus given the sports theme it’s relevant to the show; anyone with any physical condition would be destroyed by the living conditions in the program. Allergic to something in the food? Based on what you said Ego’s response would be to tell them to “tough it out” or eat shit. Anyone with a mental condition is going to get worse and likely have it manipulated.
This is actually addressed in Bluelock, if you haven't seen it. There's a character who previously suffered an ACL tear and whose leg could basically completely blow out at any moment, leaving him unable to play soccer for the rest of his life. Bluelock (the show)'s response is for him to push himself to his absolute limits, knowing that someday his ACL is going to tear again. Because it's better to play your heart out on the soccer field for as long as you can than to "succumb to the limitations of injury" (read: take care of your body).
@@ExplanationPointAnimeChigiri's ACL may never tear again at all
As a UK citizen this shit is also proof that media brainwashing works, bc there are so many people here who have no idea where their money is going (they might have an idea but it's never correct) and still complain about "scroungers."
and those people are absolutely right. ableism is a fucking joke unless you have suffered some grievous injury or congenital defect
@@ExplanationPointAnime They should learn from the leggendary "Young Noble of the Field," the "Ace of Glass" : Jun Misugi.
Zom100 is an interesting example: what I got from it was that it very much promoted communalism over individualism, just a healthy, shonenized version of it where everyone collaborates to help each other achieve their hopes and dreams. Beastars promoted a weird sort of Noblesse Oblige mentality and was sort of all over the place about it. Shield hero is very much a product of contemporary Japanese culture, just has an enormous splash of chuuni added: everyone has to follow the enlightened one and the order they establish - it just so happens that the enlightened one here starts out as a misunderstood loser whom you're supposed to root for and identify with at the start. Then it goes into promoting "ethical" slavery and wife husbandry, both of which are still very much part of Japanese culture! Chainsaw man is a complete deconstruction: individualism is what makes everyone miserable and/or dead in the series. Every group in CSM is captained by some psychopath or another that puts the group at the service of that individual's goals. Everyone else is just a hapless loser - regardless of how powerful they may be -, and their only sources of joy come from the mundanity of spending time with each other: no one achieves their goals, ever, and your friends are the only ones that make things suck less (or more, when they inevitably get offed). Tatsuki Fujimoto's writing is not known for being super optimistic.
Zom100 is about bros surviving in a zombie apocalypse and being free, not fucking communism.
@@Deco1ze communalism is not communism, a church would be an example of a communalist society while a minecraft server with a ton of farms everyone can freely use would be communist
@@massiveedgelord5945 well ok that’s agreeable, thing sounds pretty similar
Zom100 is way more individualistic, a bucket list before you die doesnt seem very communalistic. I mean the show is about the MC being freed from his bad workplace and experiencing life for himself for the first time in years
@@Deco1zeBeing free from WHAT exactly?
Oh yeah! That’s right! Late-stage capitalism!
Don't really have that much to add, your points were solid, so instead have a Fun Fact! One who plays Association Football was called a Soccer (short for Associationer). This eventually led to the whole sport being called Soccer, to differentiate it from Rugby football, which became just Football. Eventually it was switched, Association Football was Football and Rugby Football was Rugby. Countries who had broken off, like AUSTRALIA and the US didn't care and kept saying soccer. The UK then promptly forgot it had ever called it Soccer, and decided the US specifically must have made up a wrong word, ignoring to this day that Australia says Soccer as well. Despite thier offical team being the Socceroos.
This is also the story of the vast majority of differences in US/UK words, at least older ones. The US prefers to use the word from the 17th or even 14th century, but at some point the UK changed and the general populace wasn't taught/didn't care, and decided it must be everyone else who changed instead. A reasonable logical leap, assuming the region that invented a language would suffer the slowest drift. But the UK was an exception due to specifically England's propensity for...travel.
Oh, and it was shortened to Soccer because "first syllable+er" was a common way of describing someone who does a thing. If you do plumbing you're a plumber, if you like running you're a runner, if you play association you're an...Well, Ass-er wouldn't have worked for an official team nicknaming itself, so "Soc-er" was next.
A fun fact indeed. I have always wondered where soccer came from, with football being the base being derived from. Thanks for the history!
Soccer here in New Zealand as well (with Rugby being called 'Rugby' or 'Footy' interchangeably, although Footy is a bit more of an anachronism these days)
I will now call it Asser from now on, thank you for the justification
@@ecyor0 Ngl footy sounds like... well a handy but with feet instead of hands
@@sponge1234ifyReally interesting, I didn't know that, isn't language fun, although I still prefer football, it's more descriptive
i had scoffed at the title when i first saw it, but seeing as it came from this channel, i was still intrigued (i remember liking your previous analyses). walking away after watching it, i'm in awe at how good it is, not just as an analysis of this anime, but at how fascist ideology can manifest in a society that allows it to. well done on this video!
same here
Same
XD
Idk about you guys, but Blue Lock is actually a way more accurate description of what being in a soccer team with people you hate feels like than whatever Captain Tsubasa has going on.
Also it's interesting how much the Facist ideology of Blue Lock ironically dresses itself as a pseudo-liberitarian ideology with it praising selfishness over the common good and the talk of great men rising above naturally. Both feel like they're diametrically opposed, but they are actually cut from the same cloth, aren't they?
I play for my local club its nothing like actual football. If all the strikers in the country were to train together to find out who is the best then they would all create bad strikers cause without thr best defenders their training is worthless
Yeah agreed
Right? Blue Lock spends about half of its time so far in what amounts to a sports training camp with an absurd coach before showing why said coach is a goddamn idiot and wrong. Meanwhile, Tsubasa is literally about some kind of soccer ubermench who can do no wrong and everyone wants to be and basically constantly fellates as if to go "this is what you should be to not be a failure of a person" and somehow Generic Training Camp is the fascist propaganda? I swear OP just saw that it was popular, spun a big wheel of bad things that get lots of clicks and decided to fit that round peg into the triangle hole by any means necessary lmao
@@Dragonatrix Captain Tsubasa never painted itself to be the realistic sport anime, far from it, it painted a naive but hopeful wish for Japanese football to finally match with the best nations of the world through the eyes of Tsubasa. Blue Block is moronic because it tried to make itself seriously by being inspired by the real world event (Japan being knocked out of WC quarterfinal) while understanding nothing of the sport or even why Japan national team got knocked out in the first place
This feels less like a youtube video about anime and more like a lecture class on facist history and the American system, I'm both shocked and impressed😭
Halfway through the video(i think) and all i can think of right now is that this manga can be a facinating case study as to how fascism and facist systems get built, work and continue to operate. I'm sure that Isayama recommending it has little to do with that lol
wait what, when did Hajime Isayama recommend this
Good on him for recommending this. He usually has very good taste on what media he watches/reads(Breaking Bad, Vinland Saga, first few seasons of GoT). Still ticked off he rushed and botched the ending on his own work but wcyd. It is what it is.
Wait...wasn't he the dude that made the fascists the good guys in a shounen manga?
the illustrator was his assistant
Good fucking God, you people have the poorest grasp on what fascism is and also are media illiterates if you think Eren was a good guy.
As someone who played sports as a child in a "nationalist" training place Blue Lock is honestly unwatchable to me. People might think it's ridiculous and just edgy while for me it brings actual memories. My friend wanted me to read this after Haikyuu and I just laughed when the inspiration quotes on selfishness are from people who never even won worlds.
cry about it
Blue lock is trash@@hello-rq8kf
@@hello-rq8kf You are so weird. Criticism of fascism and nationalism should not make you so angry, it's odd that you seem to take it so personally.
@@justine4581 how am i angry lmfao. do you realize you're literally replying under an OP who said the show was unwatchable because "muh childhood trauma"?
@@hello-rq8kf i'm sorry, do you want a hug? there there, it's okay.
It's hard for me to describe just how much I love this video. As an avid football fan, I can't help but feel like the main joy of football, the collective team spirit, is being overlooked more and more. I love how you managed to connect this topic with such a serious ideological matter. Thank you!
Aw you should check out Ao Aishi then! It’s way more grounded
What's funny is that the manga/anime and it's characters repeatedly acknowledge that you need more than just strikers/one awesome striker in order to win and that everyone is prone to mistakes and that the way to deal with them is to embrace them and adapt accordingly. You can't win a team game without your team and everyone makes a mistake once in a while, duh.
But then they always go back to wanting to "BE THE BESTEST STRICKER! THE SUPERIOR FOOTBALL BEING! FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION! RAHHH!"
It's insane. It really is about ego, I guess. About how damn blind it can make you.
Anyway, I'm not even interested in football. It's just so massively entertaining due to being just completely off the wall and over the top. It's dumb but I dig it. Also, the art can be pretty baller.
Sounds like a classic case of the creator pointing out the logical faults in the message he wants to send but sending it anyway, similar to My Hero Academia.
being the best striker, and not wanting to fail are not incompatible with: failure is necessary in order to grow and you can’t win with purely strikers and need a team
i can’t explain my surprise of seeing an actual clip instead of an Explanation Point acapella cover
Honestly this is just one of the best videos explaining fascism. One of your best vids to date
Fr i was going to say that lol
the fact that you can then watch the show through that lens to see fascist rhetoric in practice rather than just in theory or in the broad strokes is an added bonus.
It's a really eye opening explanation. Both sides are doing it.
if you want an in depth explanation on fascism maybe go search up on it instead of learning it from an anime analysis video?
@@damnbammam2097 what makes you think I don't do that, and that I am not just complimenting someone on their efforts
I started your channel with the Made in Abyss video back when i was in high school, and I've since watched all of your other videos more than once, and every time I'm left dumbstruck by the depth of your analysis and just by how cleverly you put these videos together. I legit think this channel is one of my major inspirations for becoming a writer, and I had forgotten that until I watched this. You know a youtube channel is good when it leaves you inspired after watching. Thanks for helping people think critically 👍
the build up from kunigami yelling biden is not president at 19:15 to Ego's nose gradually extending to hit that blond guy in the face at 20:24 has me absolutely DEAD
I'm glad I wasn't the only one 😂. The idea of Kunigami angrily shouting "BIDEN IS NOT PRESIDENT!" made me laugh way too hard 💀🙏
I would argue that Classroom of the Elite actually speaks to how important it actually is to have people around you and to value them, but that would require the unspeakable to fully explain: reading the light novels. So I'll just say that.
As an anime only guy I think this is the way the show has to go, if the story wants to stand out. The MC has apparently been groomed by his father in this weirdly white lab to be kind of the king of egomaniacs and to use others as tools. The father didn't really seem like a caring person to me in season 2, so it would fit the tone. If Ayanokoji would achieve everything my the means of the teachings his father has given him, even if he overthrows him or something like that - the father still wins, because he created what he wanted to create: "a more cruel and successful heir". Therefore I think that Classroom of the Elite has to play it in the way that the MC has to leave this path that his father has layed out before him to actually beat his father at his own game: by proving him to be wrong.
I also like how the series differentiates the classes and their working ethics in general. This is just a feeling on my part, which I think is an interesting idea to see it, but I think that the classes represent different political ruling ideologies.
Class A seems to be a meritocracy. The gifted rule over the ungifted - those with skills are predestined to be rulers.
Class B seems to be perhaps communist. The body is one - everyone is serving the greater good and have to offer themselves up to it.
Class C seems to be authoritarian. A strong leader is going to emerge by power and virtue to lead all to glory.
Class D would be anarchy. Everyone indulge in their own obsession without regards for the whole.
Class D is interesting because I think that they are going to turn those individualistic people either into a socialist perspective ("everyone according to their needs and abilities") or reform it into a democratic structure as a whole, which makes a band of individualistic "outcasts" superior to the other systems, that either diminish the individuals or are only hyper focused on certain ones, thus abandoning those with potential.
But yeah. Thanks for listening in to my TED talk I guess xD
I'm generelly intrigued by stories that explore such things in such a detailed level and aren't afraid to do so. Those enable videos such as this one. It's just great, even if some stories are really uncomfortable in some cases. But stories aren't always only fluff and goodness. Sometimes a little bit of rough but fresh reality thesis is the right food for our mind to chew on.
classroom of the elite sounded stupid but I might actually go read it now lol
I actually had to stop publishing a web novel I was writing because I realized I'd be taking up like twenty chapters that send a message the story is meant to tear apart, which sounds kinda like what might have happened with cote? but also edgy fiction turning wholesome somehow doesn't happen much anymore
anyway serialization can really hurt narratives
lmao, last line of s1 is still cucking cote fans over 7 years later 😂
I knew from the start how insane this manga is, but I like seeing insane people doing everyday thing (in this case soccer) so I kept reading lol
" media makes normalcy, watch things wisely" say it louder for the people in the back 🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣
I’m assuming you’ve only watched the anime mostly cause a lot of these points are contradicted the arcs that the anime hasn’t covered yet, plus a lot of the more “fascist” connections about the system are directly tied to antagonistic characters.
I do fundamentally disagree with your more analytical view on the sport and the show though, as it seems more like you’re treating it like an exact science instead of a sport or an experience or even a game. “Team V should’ve thrown the match” while perhaps being the strategically smarter move, would’ve been a worse move for enjoyment of the game, and especially improvement as a player. It’s a decision that lacks effort, which in my opinion DIRECTLY goes against not just the themes of the story but one of the fundamental values of ALL sports.
It pains me to say, but this is just a bad faith analysis of Blue Lock. I know you said it wasn’t about the show, but you are writing this analysis in a way that has language that directly targets the source itself, not the characters. With points that only really work in a vacuum where Blue Lock *isn’t* a comic book about sports.
A lot of these interpretations, like the idea that if someone in Blue Lock loses they are lesser (not just SEEN as lesser by other characters, but are by the story’s own internal logic LESSER), immediately fall apart if you just read the material itself. One of Blue Lock’s themes is that it’s okay to lose. Countless characters in Blue Lock lose, and they feel bad, but then they recover, and learn, and get better. Is this shown in the first few arcs of the series? No. But does that make the theme not exist? No. The theme is still there.
I don’t want to be mean when I say this, but I legitimately believe you have never played a sport. Because the whole concept of not blaming your teammates or the world around you, and instead persevering past your own struggles, is not just a concept in all of sports, but also any situation where you have a team, like for example, marching band. And not to mention that that entire section relies on the belief that Blue Lock is never, has never, and will never be about teamwork, which again, is false.
And the comparison between the redistribution or alteration of information and knowledge either by a lack of or a distortion of education, with Ego’s return to fundamentals way of coaching, is, utterly ridiculous and a bit legitimately offensive to actual instances of that.
And again, I will say, the nationalist tendencies you claim, that characters are manipulated to fight for the glory of Japan in soccer, is again, a misinterpretation. Characters are never, EVER, motivated to win for their nation. Hell, one of the strongest characters in the series, specifically doesn’t. And the fact that you don’t mention Itoshi Sae once in this entire video is pretty telling, because his entire character and any further research on it would make the analysis, fall apart. He has the attitude of the greatest except he doesn’t fight for Japan, he’s not a striker, he lost and therefore learned and recovered and still remains on top, he legitimately enjoys working with others (despite how he portrays himself) and he’s not villafied.
And I do agree with the ending, we should watch things wisely, I even believe that there’s politics in all art. But this video uses purposeful misinterpretation, a lack of information, vague claims, and little to no legitimate citations in a way that can legitimately harm nuanced discourse, in a series that in my opinion says more about competition and art then how people should behave in the everyday world. I made this comment because I’ve seen the same thing happen with Steven Universe discourse. Now of course those were much more extreme than the video above, and I do think this video was worth making as it does spark conversation. But I think that if you’re gonna make an analysis that is so deathly important in modern times, you should probably consume all of the material, and do a lot more research on the series itself.
I mean, at the end of the day, the manga doesn't matter. We're not judging the manga here, and neither are the thousands of people who only watch the anime and never read the manga. The anime is it's own thing, separate from the manga, and until such time that the anime expands to better reflect the manga, all the points in this video are valid.
@@AraumC no, not really? i imagine you haven't watched the anime either. pretty much every point the op makes also applies to the anime. of course you don't address any of the actual points because if you did that you would realize you're wrong.
Fr I feel like the op just has no clue how sport works and pretty much everyone else who is massively hating on blue lock in the comments sport can be brutal
A basic understanding of game theory would show that their point about why it would be more advantageous to throw the match is correct. If their goal is to win, it absolutely is the smarter move to do that to ensure you have a weaker opponent in the future. The only reason not to is out of petty egoism.
@@Nanook128 just for a second act as if human beings with feelings play these games. No one in sports who actually wants to be great would actually do that, unless the opposing option is guaranteed failure. It sounds simple but you won’t get better if you don’t play the game.
Ngl approaching sports as something so purely scientific is some straight up villain shit 💀 like every sports story has someone who does that, and it’s usually an antagonist who learns it’s okay to also PLAY the game for fun (which I know is hard to believe in Blue Lock because they never tell you out right, but every player is gaining a sense of pleasure from every match)
The way you can shift from "this anime is goofy and wierd" to "the main conset of this anime is built apon fascism" is brilliant
W blue lock
@@hello-rq8kf based lock
I found the first few episodes of Bluelock really interesting because the whole setup was so blatantly messed up and contrary to classic shonen theming. I didn't end up continuing, but I was pretty confident that the show would eventually have the players realize how they were being manipulated, team up, and prove that teamwork makes the dream work.
i guess that doesn't happen, huh
Not in season one. But, I mean, it wouldn't. Doesn't seem like it's going that way, though.
It’s kind of odd honestly. There’s this whole “dog eats dog” philosophy going on, but underneath all that, all these guys are real friends and there’s even a couple chapters of the characters just hanging out in Tokyo and it’s super wholesome.
There is more focus on teamwork and some characters realizing they're more cut out for other positions than striker, but they don't let go of their egos
That's the thing though, teamwork doesn't always make the dream work. That's the whole point of the show, all the way from episode one. Isagi passes, goes for the safe play, and his team loses because of it. If he had relied on himself in that moment, they'd have won. There isn't a more clear-cut example than that. Is ego the only answer? Of course not, but this whole show is about inverting the traditional sports anime. Individual performance supporting teamwork is what your talking about, and it's why Isagi's team lost. Teamwork supporting individual performance is Blue Lock.
@@raijinwolf2248 That's not true either. Isagi just says that as cope. Maybe if Isagi shot, he would have missed because he hadn't been properly trained yet, he was still a mid soccer noobie. It was very possible his teammate could have scored but fucked up for whatever reason. That happens. Just like how Isagi might have missed had he taken the shot. It was logically the better play to pass to a teammate with a better shot, if you yourself haven't mastered shooting.
I already posted a comment but I just want to add to this video a bit. Another thing that is very Fascist about Ego is his tendency to act like his philosophy isn't being contradicted by the players when they succeed. Isagi (the main character) is a character who constantly finds success in the Blue Lock program by using teamwork better than others.
in other words Ego has to make believe that Isagi's teamwork heavy style of play is something that fits into his ego based framework...even when it clearly doesn't. Fascists will typically pretend that everything that works, is something that works because of their system rather than in spite of it, they also love to take credit for and claim the work of others as "belonging" to them.
The problem with this is that the "nationalist" motivation of Blue Lock is on the background. The players evolve for themselves, getting to play in the National Team is a consequence that most don't even give much of a comment about. No one says anything about giving glory to Japan or making the nation proud. Blue Lock is very individualistic(while Fascism is colectivist, undeniably) in its core, and even then, Isagi gets constantly praised for being able to coexist with everyone on the field no matter what. The players constantly question and berate Ego, some eventually learn to play other positions and find their "ego" in them. You can't take most of what ego says at face value because he lies, and a lot. Instead of just looking at what he says, look at what actually happens. The story recognizes that Isagi won against Naruhaya because he is talented and Naruhaya isn't, something out of his control. The story itself acknowledges Ego as a lunatic, as said by multiple characters, including the best striker in the world, Noel Noa. An obviously bad character does bad things which aren't(totally) endorsed by the story, who would've thought
there is technically an era where you could say soccer was all strikers but that would only be as accurate as saying that the protosimians millions of years ago where technically humans. they would become human but way later. the best I can find is that there was a sport called Mob ball. 1 ball, 2 goals and teams. team generally consisted of "everybody". whole villages, including livestock, would be considered players. the field of play was where ever the ball was currently located and the only rule i think it had was "don't kill anyone on purpose".
sounds like fun lol. bring back mob ball 😔🙏
If you watch elementary soccer that's literally what it is.
It's a little scary seeing how the term fascist has been nearly stripped of any deeper meaning and the actual warnings that come with its name, especially in the comments. How it's being forgotten and replaced with whatever vague feelings of it being some scary buzzword thrown around by people on TV, not sure if it's even a real thing.
I say this because there are some comments that state some version of this idea of "I thought this video is some BS or overreaching, and I got to the end of the video and it's pretty accurate actually." That gives the idea that some people in the comments genuinely had no idea how fascism worked or functioned, or if they did learn what fascism is, could not identify aspects of it in media. It's not like I'm expecting regular people to have this whole dissertation like Explanation Point made here, but not even identifying some aspects of fascism and seeing how it was being portrayed in Bluelock is scary.
Kudos to others though who saw Bluelock and had weird bad vibes watching it, but maybe couldn't fully express why they thought it has weird bad vibes. They now know why the vibes were bad.
Good point, it is a bit scary since that means fascism could easily slip into society by just changing its name. As I would argue has started happening in a lot of countries and most people don't really notice they are using the same rhetoric just because fascism has become this both offensive and joke word which means it's never taken seriously.
Respecting the show, I always felt the odd authoritarian fascist regime vibes were very obvious and deliberate, that is why they all start putting mad eyes and speak in scary voices when they accept part of the rhetoric and all that, probably meant to reference old imperialist military japan with football instead of an actual military. I never got a feeling the show was somehow endorsing that way of doing things but hey maybe I am wrong
@@Solstice261just swap out the term fascist with nationalist and you have a description of the ideology that most Americans subscribe to
THIS. i spent so much time looking for this.
and it’s funny that he mentions to “watch things wisely” in the sense of consuming media. i feel that Exclamation Point needs to, a) not only do more than read a paragraph about a sport that COUNTRIES have instilled in their cultures and IS THE TOPIC OF THE VIDEO, but b) TELL YOUR AUDIENCE WHAT A FASCIST IS. nice job in making Ego look like Hitler for the lols, but literally replace the world fascist and soccer with nationalist and the NFL and you got yourself the same argument
and since we’re on the topic of learning new things, i suggest you look into Peter Callero’s “The Myth of Individualism” a sociology textbook that touches on individualism and the systems it can impacted/be impacted by. also the move mentioned at 8:11 is called (at least in spanish speaking countries) “el pase de la muérete” (the pass of death). literally any soccer fan that’s sees this happen knows what’s gonna go down…
as much as i like to claim i am intelligent, admittedly i do fall for a lot of things if they are flashy or seem really 'empowering'
and as much as i love blue lock bcuz of how 'unique' it is as a sports shonen, i was quite ignorant in terms of the fascist coding in blue lock
i don't think the intent of blue lock is about supporting fascism, but that said it is very easy to use blue lock to trip into hardcore rightwing movements
@@Solstice261 i think it is also worth noting that ego is unhinged, and at the very least the show acknowledges it
in the manga, he is always shown to be quite an a-hole and almost every character acknowledges this
perhaps the concering thing is that no one really opposes this aside from kira, because everyone else has something to benefit from this,
You continuously pointing out that you are not calling the Mangaka a fascist reminds me about Niccolo Machiavelli's critique about monarch power structures and the lengths nobles will go to keep their power in "The Prince" ended up with his name being attached to a personality disorder about complete manipulation.
i strongly disagree with white men losing anything due to growing equality. it might be a perceived loss but the leveling of the field gives men support and freedom, emotionally and otherwise, and from my perspective leads to a much healthier life.
I think the point of that segment was that fascists will _perceive_ this as a loss, not that it actually is one.
Yeah idk chief, I feel like your looking at this show through a heavily biased lens that's causing you to make assumptions that are incorrect. Ego was given the goal by the government to have Japan win the world cup, when Japan had never even really come close in the past. Ego's point is that, the reason Japan is so bad at soccer is that it ignores the realities of what it takes to win and tells itself excuses such as "winning isnt as important as having fun and teamwork". And I mean, that's fine and all, but Japan can never win the world cup with that mentality. I'm not saying your entirely wrong about his techniques to manipulate people; he explicitly makes clear that he is manipulating these people into pushing themselves to be better soccer players. You can question whether that's morally correct or not, but at the end of the day the reason he was given all this money was to achieve the goal of winning the world cup; it's his job.
Also, the "myth of the glory days" doesnt apply *at all*, and I think you're really reaching. Ego doesnt want a return to an old mythical soccer, but states multiple times that he wants to revolutionize how today's soccer is played (at least in Japan). That quote you showed, that's the only time he brings up the idea of a "primitive" sort of soccer. The idea is not to return to this as in terms of "this is how you should play", but to return to this as the *starting point*, because his goal is to create a new type of soccer from scratch, his idea of "turning 0 into 1".
Also, the luck comment is totally taken out of context, and youre super reaching by how you're applying it. His point wasnt that "if you get pooped on by a bird its your fault for standing under the bird", it was that "if you pay attention to your surroundings, certain circumstances have better chances for positive outcomes than others". His point being, that if you stand in a place where you could make a good goal, and luck favours you by giving you the ball while youre in that position, you can score a goal. Its not even held up as a necessarily good tactic, since luck isnt something you can always rely on, but sometimes you run out of options and its the best you can do. You took what he said and applied the opposite meaning to it. In his metaphor, getting pooped on would be considered lucky, not unlucky, at least in how it relates to soccer.
Overall, in some aspects I can see validity with comparing Ego's tactics to fascism, though I don't agree with every comparison, but I feel like this video is more so a product of your political bias, and that youre trying to fit a square peg into a circular hole. However, I'm also coming from a place where I've read the manga, so seeing as youve only watched the anime I can see why you feel this way. Going forward in the story, you see a lot of other teams from around the world, and their philosophies for winning. And yes, there is teamwork! Teamwork is important and one player cant win totally on their own, which is the whole point of "chemical reactions", which gets expanded on a lot in the second season, when they have to play a regular match of soccer, rather than the kind they've been playing.
I would ask that you give Bluelock another chance, and try to judge it less so through a bias lens, instead of already making up your mind about it and cherry picking examples to confirm your bias.
Great video, I want to preface that I agree with most of you points, but the framework that the fascist ideal are being pushed on in Blue Lock is not society, it is competing soccer/football.
I'm pretty sure that professional soccer is, like actually, a real hierarchy, not the made up one we used to win elections. I was a professional esports coach and was at a pretty high level for both martial arts and chess in my days. The truth was equality didn't matter. All that mattered was who was better. That's why things like always blaming yourself for a loss, no matter the circumstances, is a healthy way of improving because you only focus on the things you can control. The fear is real, because if my team lost a game, I lost my job. There is a genuinely huge difference between those with a competive mindset compared to average Joe's not because some made up mythical past, but because of how radically different their lives are compared to the cutthroat world of professional anything.
Your final point, learning from media, made me pause for a second. I think this show has valuable lessons to give, even the fascist ones, but under the correct context. In an actual hierarchy, blue lock teaches how to gain a competive mindset that will allow yourself to make genuine steps to achieving your goals. But if those lessons are brought out to the political world, either you will fall into some bad groups that subscribe to more fascist ideals, or just look like a crazy person.
Again, loved the video. Blue Lock is my favorite anime just because how resonant the themes were compared to my experiences. But fascist tactics is a pretty big no no, and I loved the critical perspective you brought to the show. Would have never made that comparison myself. Gives me lots to think about.
Thank you for putting the issue I was having with the video into words in a way I never could.
The self improving aspect of the show is what I loved most about the show. Not the, not-so-great ideology thats resonates with the hierarchy.
wow, it's amazing to see how you completely missed the point of the video
sure, blaming yourself for everything that happens to you is soooo healthy and doesn't have any negative consequences for your mental health. let's continue blaming individual people instead of asking difficult questions like "is my behavior making the world a better place"
if esports/chess/whatever else is structured in a way that "forces" you to have this kind of behavior, maybe ask yourself why you're participating in this activity in the first place instead of seeking employment in a nurturing, mentally healthy environment
@veram1545 I don't think you understand the point of the comment, critiquing yourself for only the things you can control is actually a very optimistic viewpoint. While the question isn't usually "Is my behavior making the world a better place" inside the competition a better question that would be asked is "How did the actions in my control lead to events I didn't want." This kind of mindset helps deture blaming things you have no control of like your team which does a lot to filter a lot of the toxicity that comes with competitions.
I think the commenter fully understands the video the issue isn't that focusing on one's self to make changes is inherently toxic because it comes from a scenario where everyone has agreed on the rules and setting of the competition before hand, while in real life there is no choice in the matter and it is better to look at the structural environment.
@@iamnotor1ous298 based
Absolutely insane video. no music and no fx and yet xou manage to captivate me. At the same time FX would actually been annoying due to the amount of pngs you layer. I really love it. Quite inspirational to break conventions like this and I mean it.
I should note the idea that fascism is individualistic is itself a form of propaganda. Think about it fascism preaches fanatic loyalty to the state, demands you fit into rigid social classifications and enforces a strict dominance hierarchy, I don't know about you but that doesn't sound very individualistic to me.
There's a lot of reasons fascism claims to be individualistic but the biggest reason is this. Those at the top of the hierarchy want the most privilege for the least effort, in order to get that they need those below them to do the most work for the smallest rewards. The attitude of life as meritocracy is a great way to achieve that since it discourages people from collective active such as unionising for higher pay and campaigning for a social safety net and instead tells people that they should work like slaves, that the work life balance of a slave is desirable even. It gets you pledge fealty to your rulers without demanding anything in return.
The social darwinist form of meritocracy is essentially a form of what Jason Stanley calls undermining propaganda which is propaganda that claims to support an ideal in the name of undermining it. This is why Fascism is such a dangerous Ideology it takes takes both the mob mentality of collectivism and the vulnerable position of individualism of nothing in return and we must emphasise that. Fascist ideology is everything it wants you to think it is not , it will enslave you under the guise of freeing you, it will oppress you under the guise of empowering you and it will leave no lie untold, no throat unslit, no atrocity uncommited until it has complete power over your life. Fascism is humanity at it's worst and if there is any good in us, we must defeat it.
Most Americans tend to just upcycle their right wing into fascism it's such a meme. Man doesnt even mention the Nazis racial community (Volksgemeinschaft) or imperial japan. Lad he read one book and thinks he can spew knowledge about this complicated subject, just another Dunning Kruger RUclipsr.
@@firedog2820 well he wants to focus on the general principles of fascism. Focusing on Germany or Japan would detract from that.
“It is thus necessary that the individual should finally come to realize that his own pride is of no importance in comparison with the existence of his nation; that the position of the individual ego is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole; that pride and conceitedness, the feeling that the individual ... is superior, so far from being merely laughable, involve great dangers for the existence of the community that is a nation; that above all the unity of a nation’s spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and the will of an individual; and that the higher interests involved in the life of the whole must here set the limits and lay down the duties of interests of the individual. ... By this we understand only the individual's capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow men. ” -AH
This is maybe your best video yet. Well done!
I like how you acknowledge the difference between individualism in something like Zom 100 and individualism in something like Classroom of the Elite at the end.
I thought that Blue Lock would end up being a criticism of facism and hyperindividualism because the head guy is so obviously evil and the system is so obviously messed up. I’ve only watched a few episodes but I thought that was where it was going
I haven't read the manga, but I've read some synopses of what's going on right now, and it doesn't seem like it's going in that direction. Ego is pretty clearly a bad guy, but I don't feel like it's going to do a moral heel turn, especially given what I've heard about Kaneshiro's other manga. Maybe it will, though! That'd be cool.
Having read the manga, I highly doubt it. If there would be a big moral shift towards the end, I'd expect at least some little hint at it throughout the story, but so far all I've seen is, "Big dog gets chewed by bigger dog" with the character's relinquishing any sense of traditional "sports manga teamwork" and only working with each other to achieve their own personal goals.
Most of what Ego says end up being bullshit in the manga.
As he clearly was cultivating players and putting them in different positions that best suit their skill and talent. A player with a similar ability as Isagi, is becoming a godlike defender; Or the guy with crazy instinct and flexibility was made into a monster of a goalie.
Don't get me wrong, Bluelock is still there to make 1 guy be The Guy (Clearly Isagi); Make the whole team revolve around him.
Fascism is collectivist, not hyperindividiualist.
@@dankee7421 From what I have heard, yes and no. Everyone is in service of their higher ups, but this video already addresses that and uses hyper individualism in different context. Fascism usually comes with the belief that everything good or bad that happens to you, you deserve it. It's a big part of how it justifies its hatred towards those in worse positions. So it is individualistic in that sense. But yeah, that confusion is exactly why I am against using individualistic and collectivist without contest, something this video never does.
This is legitimately one of the most succinct and easily digestible videos about fascism and the importance of media literacy ever. It comes at a very important time and thank you for doing this so much you're doing God's work.
i think the emphasis of the striker as solitary and the rest of the team as unimportant really only takes the anime's material into account because while emphasis is certainly placed on the striker as a central figure, the series as a whole actually makes it quite clear that a tyrannical playstyle like Barou's is fundamentally unsustainable. I also don't think Ego genuinely believes that positioning and strategy is actually bad, he's mostly just doing it as a means to get people to develop their skills in a certain way.
Yeah haha that's so clearly laid out in the opening premise of the story; it's not that pure striker focus is inherently superior, it's that current soccer standards already are so good at teamwork and strategy that they've refined it to a point of perfection but little progress and need a bit of recklessness and pride thrown in to shake things up and see what happens. Ego isn't trying to wholesale invent a new type of soccer to replace the old, he's trying to find a specific really good kind of salt for the wider soup of traditional soccer.
Blue Lock gave me a weird vibe right off the bat. At first I thought it was because of how aggressively "only look out for yourself" the mentality was. Glad to know I was justified in the weird vibes I got
Same here. I knew something was off about this show and was concerned that so many were raving about it. Now I know that anyone who says they agree with the mentality displayed by the characters in this show is genuinely morally suspect.
@dandarr5035 lmao imagine thinking that liking a sports series makes you a nazi.
@@idonthaveacreativename6504 Notice how that's not what they said.
@@Hawkatana They intentionally ignored what was said and replaced it with their words. The video just talked about anti-truth and anti-logic.
@Hawkatana oh yeah, my bad liking the sports anime "may" mean that they're a nazi and anyone who enjoys it should be judged. Because that's much better, right?
I think it’s interesting how naturally the comparison to fascism occurs when translating certain shounen tropes like ‘power scaling’ and ‘special abilities’ to an ostensibly real-world setting. I’m aware this is absolutely not an original thought, but the idea of someone destined to be a savior or hero inherently serves the fascist myth of individually great men, whose abilities are irreplaceable as a result of some factor of their birth.
In this setting, the characters don’t have any magical blessings to back that trope up, which is why I think it’s difficult to suspend your disbelief when it comes to Ego’s rhetoric implying that those ‘great men’ are real. At least, compared to someone like Satoru Gojo from JJK- separating him and his role in the plot from the real world is completely natural, given that he’s basically an alien who’s got the same power set as a little kid playing pretend during recess (i.e. ‘I’m immune to all your attacks and get through your shields!!’).
Edit: This isn’t to dismiss your point that many anime coming out recently rely upon these ideas, and that this can be harmful. I’m mostly thinking about why it’s so much easier to notice in this instance, and why the writing has so many more direct parallels with fascism. Because I genuinely believe it’s unintentional, I feel like it’s a product of the writer’s worldbuilding to make the story function.
To be honest there's probably plenty of anime and media with similar themes that code be fascist coded that most people never pick up on. Personally, it's probably the nationalist theme of finding the next Japanese Soccer Hero combined with the manipulative rhetoric Ego feeds them priming audience members more familiar with how fascism works to pick up on it. It most definitly is unintentional as it really just looks like whoever wrote it wanted to combine a shounen tournament arc with Soccer in a more realistic setting to flip the typical sports anime trope of learning to work as a team on it's head.
Be careful about dismissing every single thing in fascism simply because it's fascism. Just because it's a fascist belief doesn't mean it's wrong.
Hitler was against animal abuse, I hope you don't think we should start abusing animals.
Likewise, there are people who are 'great' and had a profound effect on the world, without which history may not have gone the same way.
@@TheRedHaze3 I don’t honestly think there’s any real evidence to suggest that there are individuals who shaped history solely by virtue of their own abilities. Sure, there are people like Alan Turing or Nikola Tesla who genuinely did have exceptional, natural-born abilities that nobody else could replicate. However, their discoveries would have one day been discovered by someone else, perhaps a bit later. Sure, that would have altered the course of history, but in unpredictable and indirect ways- those individuals didn’t shape it with their efforts, that significance was an incidence of when. If they were born in a different time, their abilities would not have been so urgent and far reaching, either. Conversely, the individuals who we can say *did* shape history, such as emperors and conquerors, were rarely entirely irreplaceable in terms of their actual abilities as rulers. Rulers are most important as symbols of those subject to them, and while not everyone can be an effective one, there are too many humans to say nobody else could’ve done the job better given the chance. Likewise, each of them also had hundreds or thousands of people working under them, without which their empires could never have been run nor built.
That isn’t to diminish their accomplishments. I’m mostly saying that people do not do great things for society as a whole purely on their own. They stand on the shoulders of giants, and their preoccupations, upbringing, and talents must coincide with certain contextual factors. There are a whole constellation of things that must occur for one to change the world, and even then it’s rarely done purely alone.
In the case of this anime, it takes the inverse conclusion to its extreme- that soccer games are won purely on the back of the spearhead of the team, the striker, and that we don’t need to bother training people for other positions or roles. Ego is looking for the next Messi while ignoring the fact that a team full of Messis wouldn’t necessarily be optimal (by my understanding, at least- I know very little about soccer, and maybe that would be optimal. regardless, historical figures are different). He just looks the best because of his exceptional abilities. That’s a convenient belief for fascists to have when establishing the importance of hierarchy, so that they can maintain a ruling class via the process explained in this video, but it has no basis in reality.
I am not calling this brand of individualism bad solely because a fascist happened to believe in it one time. I’m calling it bad because it’s far more complicated than that, and constructing social theory around this mythological archetype of ‘Ubermensch’ is harmful to that society in virtually every way.
@@mindfulselfindulgence Do you think Christianity or Islam would have appeared even without Jesus or Muhammad? Or even religions similar to them, that had similar effects on the regions they had influence in? (Europe and the Middle East respectively).
There is no Hellenic king who could or would have conquered Persia, so without Alexander the Great we probably wouldn't see much, if any, hellenic influence in the Middle East. No Library of Alexandria, for example.
I'm sure there's plenty of other examples, these are just the ones I could think of off the top of my head that aren't really debatable.
As for the anime, it's not taking the position you're claiming. Even Ego isn't taking that position. He makes it clear that Japan is perfectly capable at teamwork and the defender and midfielder positions, and this is shown to be true in the manga when the Blue Lock team clashes with Japan's National U-20 team. That's why Blue Lock is about creating a world-class striker.
His point is simply that you can't win without scoring goals. In the World Cup, even if you draw, you just go to penalty shootouts for who moves on to the next stage.
Personally, I like how many characters in Tokyo Ghoul don’t follow this format. Pardon me for forgetting all the terms, but I really liked how Amon and the rest of the “ghoul-hunting” squad were treated. They aren’t special, they don’t have four tentacles coming out their backs. You’d expect a series like Tokyo ghoul to treat ghoul powers as a step above everything else, and they often are, but the fact that the ghoul hunters are able to make solid progress and serve as a powerful force without any macguffin plot devices (except for their weapons, but those are highly limited so I don’t count them).
One of my favorite quotes came from one of their members, who remarked that people like Amon may be so good it seems futile to try to match them, and maybe it is futile, but if a common person tries, they can become *good* and that’s all that really matters. Lowkey motivating.
You seems like missing the overarching philosophy of the show. Blue Lock bases itself on the notion of egoism, Max Stirner's concept of egoism, to be exact. I will try to break down the points dicussed in the video:
-The game strategies employed by Blue Lock is definitely not about being tied down by the past. To borrow Stirner's idea, it is the "creative nothing" proposed in his work, "The ego and its own". "I am not nothing in the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing, the nothing out of which I myself as creator create everything". Stirner suggested that we flexibly use ideologies and contructs to our satisfaction, out of our egosim, and not be shackled and subservient to them. Similarly, Ego's point was that Japan's soccer was being tied down by a long-standing (the past) culture of collectivism, and that the egoist soccer player should only satisfy his ego, that of scoring a goal. Remember, the players here want to be the "best striker in the world", not be "a catalyst for a winning team". Comparing winning the game and scoring like your points in the video misses the point of Blue Lock. Ego's idea of "scoring the goal only" is nothing related to the glorious age of soccer. It is instead meant to unshackle the beliefs in "one for all" that could tie down players, and to prioritize practicality in the moment (or the furthest possible foresight) to accomplish one's desire of scoring a goal, instead of adhering to a unchanging ideal out of subservience. Isagi adopted this idea by accounting for the "egocentrism" of other players into his model of predicting the best moves, which essentially requires him to envision the unique protaganism of everyone on the field, *instead* of having preconceptions.
-Fascism emphasizes the strongest leader and subservience to such, whereas Blue Lock's idea was for all players to be egoists, to never be under the rule of any individual, and to only follow one's own ego. It's exactly the implementation of Stirner's "union of egoists", wherein the "relation between egoists is continually renewed by all parties' support through an act of will", and that "if one party silently finds themselves to be suffering, but puts up and keeps the appearance, the union has degenerated into something else". This is precisely illustrated at multiple critical points in the series. Might doesn't make right, the individual makes it himself. Of course, that means "total obeyance to the might" is not really that, it's just what the individual's ego wants the most at the moment, whether it be their survival in Blue Lock (to further their chances of learning and scoring more), or crushing other players (Isagi crushing Kaiser, etc). That example clip from the 1st episode of Blue Lock where Isagi wondered if he could've won by trying to score the goal himself is only a small case study, and doesn't reflect the nuances of egoism. You may be generalizing it as the philosophy of the show.
-Your comparision of Blue Lock's philosiphy to that of Fascism misses the point of egoism. All prominent egoists, even when regarded as the best, don't (can't) order around. Other supposedly less ranked players don't submit themselves to a higher-ranked player, and instead strive with egoism to overcome him. Players portrayed in the series do take in the opinions of others when they know it serves their improvement, and change accordingly. Unlike a fascist dictator, players have to (in the later parts of the series) take the thinking, the egocentrism of others into account, and make the correct plays. They take in as much input as possible to envision a path to improvement, or a way of playing to achieve egoistic success. Baro is a good example. Early on, he sees himself as the king, to whose decisions all must obey. When he was outplayed by Isagi, he felt defeated and passed the ball to him. Later, he was in utter despair seeing how he was left behind - he was no longer the king, as no one submitted to him for no reason. Later in the manga, Baro in the Ubers had to follow Snuffy's plans to win the match against Bastard München, specifcally to surpass Isagi. The plan failed, as Isagi was able to predict the moves, and Baro broke out of the plan and scored a goal when everyone thought Isagi was taking it. The Ubers from then on followed Baro's play in the match, precisely because Baro demonstrated himself worthy of such.
-You pointed out that in the tag game, Isagi shouldn't have touched the ball when passed to by Bachira. Isagi's motive behind this seemingly irrational decision is because if he can't defeat someone else stronger than him, then there's no point. That's his ego speaking, not bound by the theme of the show. Internally, he could have assessed that Bachira's ego was more in tune with his thinking than Kira's idealistic heroism, and that this may give him better chances of satisfying his ego (becoming the best striker), since the act of taking the ball and kicking it to Kira was totally within Isagi's ability. The goals of most players in Blue Lock is to become the world's best striker by facing challenges and overcoming them, since they fully know that is most helpful for their development of skills. Admittedly, there are times of risks, but many of them are either perceived as low-stake, or in cases of high-stake risks, players opt for the next most feasible option for continuing their egoism.
-Anger and fear in the series are rewarded when real, tangible progress is conceived. Of course, cheating occurs, but the player is ostracized immediately since it infringes others' egoism.
-The system pointed out in the the rewards section of the video, in my opinion, is better compared to and discussed about in relation to meritocracy. The goals scored is a factor, but so is the perceived degree of egoism subjectively ranked (but in good faith, I believe) by Ego. And since I don't recall seeing players complain their ranks affect their quality of basic neccessities to the extent that hurts their performance, it safe to assume they are creature comforts, and that nutritional-wise, it wouldn't put them at too big of a disadvantage. They also have access to the gym, and while the higher-ranked players have better training facilities, it could be argued that Ego planned it all so that those without - if could overcome those with such and subsequently improve on themselves - could prove their ability to advance further. It might be unfair, but the ranking may make one strive further or become complacent, the latter which may subsequently improve upon being humbled (Rin, for example).
-The point that "Japan can't have poor babies" I believe is a misunderstood follow-up of Ego's speech. I think Ego is stressing how players in Blue Lock at that moment may not have the same survival drive for football as others in other nations partly because Japan's culture of collectivism means people help each other out so that they can at least survive, even at their poorest, hence they may not be in such a pinch as others who may have to starve to death while competing for resources. Ultimately, it is to stress that players must take football seriously, on top of most things, to engrain it into their egoism, such that when it is in line with their own ego or desires, they will strive to their best ability and overcome themselves.
-Ego's supposed "villinization of the truth" only appears so because the act seems so. Footballers may need creativity/flexibility in thinking instead of sticking to an idealized form of playing, and this is true for many other walks of life. Ego alluded to the removal of total adherence to ideals / theories, and promoted the ultilization thereof for one's success in scoring. We saw how, if employed blindingly, football became a game of children soccer. By using constructs to one's advantage, each player has their own egocentrism, and the following of constructs, be it playing assigned roles in the team, merely becomes a means for their own scoring. It is important to understand Ego's "condemnation of truth" actually targets the adherence to it, for, to quote Nietzsche "Supposing it (the truth) is believed, then the will to examination, investigation, caution, experiment is paralyzed", and that in a play, multiple truths (strategies) can be employed, which is a central idea of Stirner's egoism.
-Ego's lies were a means for promoting growth in players. Besides, the inequality among players, beds and all, are observed to mostly be lies (www.reddit.com/r/BlueLock/comments/z98glp/ego_jinpachi_lied_to_us_but_not_really/). It isn't fear and anger that is promoted, as they are only the byproduct of their ego. Fear and anger like Kira's aren't promoted precisely because his ego isn't good enough to convert them into winning actions, and he instead blamed the circumstance even though he could have well reacted in that split second even if it may have been to no avail.
-Blue Lock encourages the satisfaction of one's ego, and this is in direct contrast with what you call "the greater good". All players play for themselves, for their own desires to win, a will to power, essentially. They play for their own satisfaction of their ego, and they regard that to be a matter of life and death (figuratively, though mentally, it's close).
I may get some points wrong. Feel free to point them out.
Better analysis than the video
@@zanebruce2546 Nope.
@@Hawkatanavery RUclips for someone to post a large block of text, and then receive comments that are not even sentences.
@@asphaltshingles8594 If an entire block of text can be disproven in a single word, then maybe said block of text wasn't very good to begin with.
Westerners try consuming an apolitical piece of media without shoehorning an analogy that affirms their political beliefs (difficulty impossible)
idk man, this guy is not sane. how do you go from a soccer anime to fascism.
Because the vast majority of media is infact political regardless of were its from.
@@user-sm4mi8ug9q No it's just Americans specifically are insufferable...too much brain damage from twitter i guess
Part of the "football (not soccer, murica) only had strikers" is true and that's because the beginning of football was just some people running around with a ball, the beginning there were no rules, no positions, nothing. If you watch kids playing football, you will notice how each one of them runs towards the ball so they can make a goal. All of them want to be the striker.
I was thinking about that too. I imagine that over time more effective strategies were formed, and the teams who established them started winning more, meaning other teams adopted them, then other teams improved on them, or countered previous strategies, which lead to new ones, and on and on. Like someone must have realized that leaving your goal open while everyone went on offense lead to getting scored on more, so they started holding people back to defend.
That's an assumption and a half. Before anyone taught me and my friends the rules, there were plenty of people who did not want to run to the ball, or let other people run first. Lot's of people let our best grab the ball, and became goalies or defenders. Even reallly young children know it's a stupid idea to charge into a bunch of kids also running at the same spot, at least someone will stay behind. The only way this could be true, is if somehow all children are stupid and immediately throw themselves out to grab the ball and shoot, even if they hit their heads against each other.
@@popopop984 Nobody said kids are stupid. They just want the ball. Every single one? No, obviously not. But I’ve been to enough of my kids’ soccer games to know that, even with coaching, most of the time they’re all charging right after the ball. The number one thing being yelled was always, “spread out! Don’t bunch up!”
@@gido9467 oh hey we yell that a bunch in military sims 😅
@@oscaranderson5719 😆 Seems like it’s sound advice in multiple settings then.
Ego is absolutely an evil man but god I love him haha. Great video with a great message at the end. The more you talked the more I was reminded of the time we are living in I'm afraid. Love your editing style btw
RUclips, would you please just start recommending me channels again. Seriously, I haven't found an upload of this guy for ages. And then all of a sudden, I find out there's a new video that's over 3 weeks old.
As a French, I can confirm a live in a slum surrounded by crime and poverty. My only hope for survival is the ball, sadly I had to settle for an AI develloper certification since I'm not an Übermensch.
So about everyone becoming a striker as a soccer strategy. The Spanish national team barely won anything at all until the year 2008. Before that, it was know for the "Spanish Fury" which was basically being very aggressive and go on the offensive in lightning quick attacks. Of course, any team worth its salt had a good defense and was able to not get scored, and that offensive would always leave gaps in the defense if the attack didn't work. So, head coach Luis Aragonés and later Vicente del Bosque decided to switch to a more balanced approach based on good positioning, a lot of passing and having as much possession of the ball as possible. From 2008 to 2012, the team won The Euro Cup, the World Cup, and the Euro Cup again. So yeah, making everyone a striker is a stupid strategy that will leave holes all over their defense and the other teams will beat their ass.
not to be anal, but the show literally addresses this in the first game that Isagi plays
The purpose of Blue Lock is not making everyone a striker, is reinforcing the striking capabilities os the japanese soccer team, because they lack in that.
its still stupid though
@@swagguy7515 How? They lack good strikers and they are making a good striker in Blue Lock.
i mean, just looking at the trajectory of the manga U20 japan is s till gonna be like 7 strikers basically so....thats fucking stupid
My goodness, I love blue lock and this is glorious
Someone should make a fanfic about Isagi having a brake-down over this
using word "glorious" here is pretty sus
@@louzo5175id say he's calling the video itself glorious. Even still, this will enhance my reading experiance
"Media Makes Normalcy" what does normal mean? How does Media make normalcy? Does all media make normalcy or only some? Normal in what context? What makes media make good normalcy? What about bad normalcy? How many people is this new normal effecting? I really don't like this incredibly vague justification for media criticism. I mean yes there is dangerous media out there don't get me wrong, but you have to make a way more solid case then that for people to be wary of a piece of fiction.
Simple, an author can use his or hers form of media to push theyr own agenda (something that happens all the time) and people who become fans of that author and theyr works will often adopt the same or similar beliefs due to successful indoctrination that the author intended, and the more popular an author,s works and messaging becomes wich results in even more people potentially picking up and agreeing with the authors ideology, and many of those people ether work for or in the government or on theyr way into working for the government
@@user-sm4mi8ug9qGreat. Way to ignore basically everything in my comment and then get on your soapbox. You could've at least answered the first question: "What does normal mean?" Also your using vague terms like "often" and "potentially" like any of that is concrete reasoning to denounce a piece of fiction. If you think people should be wary of a piece of media you need something solid. Vague reasoning isn't solid. That was my point.
One thing that concerns me with mainstream anime culture is the lack of discussion of Isekai anime and their undertones of wish fulfillment for hikimori/incels and their overlap with the men’s rights narrative. There must be discussions but I doubt the fans loving these shows run into those discussions
Oh for sure there definitely should be. I like the world building and character writing in Mushoku Tensei but I’m not some rose tinted glasses type enjoyer. I can see some rough ideas translated to the page and some character choices while impactful make me pretty uncomfortable. I think a lot of isekai is like what hunger stones are to drought when talking about the hikikomori/incel problem. These guys don’t see a future in this world so they project on the blank slates(not super applicable in a series like MT but some people still do🤢)and think the first step toward the harem of big tiddy anime women is suicide. That’s really bleak to me. And while I think mra people identify problems their solutions almost always seem to be the opposite of what should actually be done. Tl;dr as a fan of some of the genre I consistently see things that hurt to read or watch because some guy out there, instead of going out and trying to find someone and using this as just basic entertainment, wants to be the character that was killed and taken to another world which I’d say is a form of suicidal ideation or at least close.
Idk there definitely is a lot to talk about and unpack here but I’m afraid that once we pull the string a big bad knot is gonna come undone.
I follow a fair number of video essayists, sir, and unsurprisingly several of which focus entirely on anime.
You are, in my humble opinion, the best, and I hope to see more from you in these coming days.
Ego's not wrong when it comes to improving at what you're skilled at, if you start from the beginning and "relearn" it from Zero to One
But that's about it bro just mentally abuses his favorite twinks like a Helicopter Parent
bro really teached me about fascism over a soccer anime 💀.
but another note and SPOILERS:
Noel Noa and Marc Snuffy began to have a quick conversation about blue lock and when Snuffy mentions Ego and Noa's rivalry with him, Noa immediately said that he doesn't even want to be near that maniac implying that even he knows how fucked up Ego is.
Be mindful of your media consumption, but do not cleave all problematic themes from your diet. You need to be able to watch things with bad themes and engage with them responsibly.
Also, people nowadays need to remember that their interpretation isn't the only correct one. "Death of the author" and all that, but nobody is immune to bias.
This has gone straight to my "saved for forever" playlist. You have a very clear and concise rundown on why Blue Lock displays fascism and also have a clear-cut and actionable message that our media has an effect on real people and the way they see each other. Thank you for this video, I will be highly recommending it to many in the future.
I gotta be honest, I this is a grossly off-base read of what Kaneshiro is going for. There's no longstanding double-reacharound arc condemning Ego's philosophy in the background and there's not ever gonna be one either, and further, I think it's about as *anti*-fascist as something could get.
While there are superficial similarities in propaganda, fascism is ultimately about finding solidarity as a group (and thus giving the group's leader/dictator supreme control over the people he's duped) while Blue Lock repeatedly and expressly rewards characters for taking the most self-serving actions possible, even when it hurts or alienates the group they're a part of. It really, truly is about empowering the individual and espousing meritocracy with no ironic manipulative meanings hidden behind that message, which should be clear from the people that don't or can't subscribe to Ego's methodology (the vast majority!) getting remorselessly cut loose rather than further strung along.
It's not about unethically forcing his ideas on everyone, but rather proving that the hardy few that can withstand it without mentally breaking are the ones that reach the top in life. Something that tackles this idea from a more realistic standpoint without denying it is Whiplash.
Bro just made a video calling it facism when its an optional program people signed up for and could walk away from at any time. Literally everyone there is self selected. It has nothing to do with fairness either. The goal isn't to be fair, its to create top tier strikers. It doesn't matter if circumstances are outside of your control, if you don't make the cut you don't make the cut. While I appreciate his perspective on the issue he seems to grossly misinterpret alot of things. Especially the cultural differences of ego and individualism and how the show IS indeed trying to encourage BOTH team work AND individual excellence. Ego doesn't want you to take the shot every time instead of passing it to your ally. He wants you to be willing to take that shot every time instead of passing it to your ally every time. He wants 2 threats in that situation, not 1 predictable threat. The job of the striker is to turn 0 into 1. The create the opportunity for a goal where there was little to none. And being predictable is the best thing you can do to shut down your own chances at scoring. Being unpredictable and more capable only enhances the chances of both people being able to score.
incredible how many people miss the point of the video so completely.
ego/any fascist leader is SELLING you the concept of empowerment. that's what EP has been saying - ingroup/outgroup mentality. if you're one of the "hardy ones" as you say, you're in the ingroup. if not, you're in the outgroup.
and sure, in the anime this succeeds because what kinda propaganda would it be if the message in propagates would be shown to fail?
but take this into the real world and ask yourself, how empowered are these individuals really? are they happy? are they making the world a better place with their actions? is their life worth living?
I'm genuinely sad for you if you don't recognize that you don't need to suffer to succeed and that everyone deserves their needs met (like sleeping in a bed for f's sake) regardless of ranking/ability/performance
@@veram1545 This perspective fails to me because IMO a major part of fascism is lacking a basis in reality - it's propaganda for the sake of blinding people to the wider picture of what's best for. It's incredibly disingenuous to claim that Ego is trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes, because one, as I said earlier, the people in the "in-group" are repeatedly depicted as being enriched by their new life of adversity, and two [Spoilers!] he later briefly loses hope in the project's ability to keep getting funded and plans a way out for the members at his own expense if the worst occurs.
There's no manipulation involved, no matter how much it may appear like it to you. Ego genuinely believes in what he's selling, because he was once a player like that himself, and the few players that make it to the later stages of his program are likeminded. I often see this misconception among people like you that people who constantly display frustration and stress in highly competitive environments can't possibly be "happy", or "having fun", and that's simply untrue. Many globally competitive athletes, gamers, actors, whatever (and even in more mundane situations - Dark Souls SL1 challenge runners? speedrunners?) get a high from being in that kind of environment that to them justifies the pain that comes with it, and you can't tell them they're not happy just because you yourself wouldn't be. You're not inside their head.
@@veram1545 The irony is that social rights and equal rights movements also sell your the concept of empowerment. There is nothing wrong with the concept of empowerment itself. Empowerment is a good or bad thing entirely dependent on who is being empowered. And really it comes down to results. If the results are there then we have a real moral argument about ends and means. If the results are not there then its moot and self defeating either way.
Love this. Also, I really liked Blue Lock, until I tried reading Muneyuki Kaneshiro's other works like Jagaaan.
Which uhhhhh was so bad it made Blue Lock retroactively bad. Like, now I get why Anri feels like literally the only woman in the series.
Welll, that sounds interesting, care to elaborate?
@@ExpertContrarian i don't think that was the point
Even As The Gods Will? I thought that one was pretty good
@@rommdan2716 Sure! It's about the deepest darkest desires of the human heart manifesting into physical powers.
So of course one of the main protagonists, oh I'm sorry "antagonists", has the ability to graphically rape women for something like ~20 chapters.
Meanwhile all of the women who get powers get them from uhhh *checks notes* wedding rage, "no baby" rage, having had sex with a more important male character and then being smooshed into a Cerberus rage, and getting raped rage. Oh, and being able to heal! How deep and dark and ugly, a real reflection of the human soul.
Oh, and as the Gods will was laughably bad. At least, the first iteration was, I didn't get into the second.
All I remember was he killed off the girl the audience liked, so he tried to bring her "twin sister" in as a replacement. Like telenovela levels of bad.
The video was fun and entertaining which is all that really matters but if we're gonna be honest, any basic scrutiny to your claims shows the arguments are super weak even from your own points you bring up. Like you said there's no glorious past or anything similar they latch onto, one throw away line never mentioned again to get them to start thinking obvious does not fit the bill. The striker as an authoritarian father also doesn't make sense when the show instead shows a main character not forcing and bending his teammates around him but using them as they are to fully maximize their strengths. The same criteria could be used to say anyone who wants to act like a team leader is being this supposed father figure. And third blue lock never makes a point of saying normal people or some lower people are the enemy. If anything the most recuring enemy the characters fight against is themselves. And that because the show is the exact opposite of authoritarian principles. It's highly based on individual libertarian ideas. You know the whole screw hierchy and social norms it's about what's best for me because I'm better? The show screams this and such ideas would never be tolerated in any authoritarian group. Also your example of it being better to always pass the ball to try to win the game is super wrong and that entire section kinda shows you don't really understand sport psychology or the message of the show. But this comment is long enough without going into that.
Hey! That's an interesting and bold video to make lmao.
I will add a few cents where it is worth it, as someone who *is* also into soccer.
I do not disagree with the notion that Ego is somewhat fascist in his methodology. However, if you stick solely to the Anime material - which I assume you are - there is a lot of later material that gives more depth to his philosophy and to the show's messages. Slight spoilers for manga arcs below.
The thing about 11 Strikers and even the Striker-focused methodology of Blue Lock was a bluff. It was the hook he needed to make the project start, but it is becoming increasingly clear that Blue Lock was not solely about creating the Best Striker at the expense of the other kids, but providing to them, through failure, the means of finding new identities. It is, to a degree, a dog-eat-dog philosophy of "if you're not good enough to be the Number One striker, consider something else of perish", but the opening IS there. Many characters have transitioned into other roles, like defenders and even a goalkeeper, and current matches display those people as just as important as the strikers. As you said - truth is a weapon to Ego. He picked hundreds of kids that had the dream of being the best striker in the world, which, as a citizen of Brazil, I can attest is the dream of every kid that cares about soccer - and then put their dreams to the fire. And the simple reality of sports is that there is no room for 100 strikers in Japan's national team, and some people simply will never be as good as Isagi or Barou. But they got to, organically, through experimentation in the shadow of that failure, find new paths for themselves.
In that sense, Isagi is the protagonist precisely because he is the one that is not allowing his dream of being The Striker fade even under the fires of harsh competition - despite the fact his skillset is much more suited for other positions truth be told, and he excels much more as a playmaker than as a striker up until the very last match of the manga, in which finally he seems to be becoming the pure striker he always wished to be with the chops to back it up.
I will also point out - Fascist is a collectivist philosophy; not in the left-wing sense of collectivism, of course, as the collective good it seeks is the "collective" good of a small chunk of people, but within that chunk, it is not an ideology that promotes individualism or individual thinking. Ego, and Blue Lock, are fundamented in Individualism, as you pointed out. So while I agree Ego displays some signs of fascist methods at the outset, I am not sure I'd apply the label to him when taken as a whole with the material as it is now (not to mention what future revelations may bring - I'll be honest, I'm skeptical that the whole "folks eliminated from Blue Lock will never get to play again" thing is true).
Another point in which I think the comparison fall apart is the fact that - yes, Fascism prepares youth for war and Ego is preparing youth for the "war" of football. But unlike real world, in which this is a mean to exploit these youth for political gain and the war would be entirely evitable otherwise, you cannot really avoid the realities of the challenges of professional football if you want to be a pro player - which all of those kids do want to. It *is* a meritocratic, dog-eat-dog world that they are entering out of their own desires.
Ego wanted to create an ego-driven brand of football in Japan in which people evolve by trying to outperform their teammates just as much as their opponents; in which the player is at war with everyone in the field. It is crazy, but I genuinely do not think it is destructive for these kids. They're not being all fed to Isagi and, as of the most recent manga chapter, everyone that made it through the first round is starting to get international exposure and some even millionaire contracts.
The one big ethics dilemna of it all is the ultimate faith of those eliminated from Blue Lock - of Ego's words of ending their careers is true, then it could ultimately be ethically impossible to justify. But considering how some of his lies have taken shape currently, as I said, I remain a bit skeptical.
I agree with all of these points and personally disliked the video as a result. While I think its an interesting thought, I dont think it actually holds any water and is more representative of what's needed for a good competitive mindset more than anything.
Also some things definitely are twisted to try and make the analogy work. I thought a great example was when the video pointed out that ego pushed the players to blame everything on themselves. Of course he would as the only player you can control is yourself. It's a great mindset to have and one that helps to improve yourself and you see this mindset with anything team oriented.
I am an anime only though so it sounds like this video gets worse and worse when accounting for the manga. Overall felt like the video was a very big reach
@@fiery1865 yeah... Like, I get the points, but to claim that Ego's philosophy is exploiting and hurting these kids is factually untrue with what has been presented in the text. Literally the most recent chapter a character has managed to surpass his childhood trauma of being raised to conform to his parents expectations by embracing Ego's individualist philosophy. It has even started to have positive impacts on the lives of people not involved in Blue Lock - Barou out-ego'd a professional player and managed to get him out of a slump caused by a very traumatic backstory event.
Ego's philosophy lights a fire under everyone's asses. And yes, this is a philosophy that could be extremely destructive in a different context - but in the context of aspiring professional footballers, I do not think it is.
I think ExPo went a bit too clickbaity with this and it muddled the strongest point in the entire video: that the anime industry and therefore the japanese cultural mindset as a whole is shifting from collectivism and individualism, and that philosophy can have either positive or negative impacts (just like collectivism can be positive or negative). I think he could have crafted something much more interesting by focusing on that thesis rather than just drawing half-valid analogies between Ego's methods and fascist methods - but "Blue Lock is an individualist anime" would have made much less clicks so I kinda get it lmao.
Btw even in an anime only context we can see the positive aspects of Ego fostering individualism in these kids - for example, Bacchira learning to surpass his loneliness by relying on himself (and the whole Nagi/Leo mess, although the core of their arc is still to come).
@@lucasrosa1108 yeah I didn't even think of that and now reading some other stuff along with my own thoughts this has to be my least favorite video of all time so far ngl. 100% because i romanticize competition probably to an unhealthy degree.
I think what you said about Japan shifting from a more collectivist to individualistic society would have made for a much much better video that covers a more interesting topic than one that feels this superficial. This video was definitely taking something out of context and completely ignoring everything surrounding it to try and fit the analogy so i think one just focused on the cultural mindset shift would make for a better video. Plus you could do fun stuff like analyze trends and see if you find any additional stuff that could support that.
I haven't seen any of ExPo's other work so I'm wondering what his better videos look like
@@fiery1865 it's a good channel. Do not let your opinions of this video dissisde you from checking the rest. His video on the changes that Frozen undergoes as the song Let it Go gets adapted in multiple languages to the point of completely shifting the themes of the work is genuinely incredible
The entire show seems to be a condemnation and critique of fascism, a commentary on how it works, and it feels like a sort of "presumption of malice" present almost everywhere these days, to present it as otherwise. I also note that many of the traits you include in your definition of fascism are actually "merely" those of cults and abusers. Which, while definitely a core part of fascism, the blinding oneself to rationality and truth seems present all along the political spectrum these days. And I'm not going to try to say where that started, on a political axis, but I would assume that it's a byproduct of algorithmic content sorting. I kind of fell deep in radical feminism (not the transmisogynistic kind, at least?) and cult-y SJ, which often horseshoes when it comes to thoughts on Jews and Athiests, and though at the time I was in deep it hadn't gotten as genuinely horseshoe-y as it is now, or at least I was oblivious to them at the time.
Anyways, though fascism is innately misogynistic, it has always been weirdly popular among women, possibly due to how it's generally *complementarian*, which gender conforming people are super into for some reason.
Edit: also, not sure how the show handles it, but to say that the target demographic of fascism is well off is is false. The target demographic is the *majority*- people who are both privileged *and* disenfranchised. “Proving” the outgroup is “inferior” is just one of the reasons they’re forced from jobs, the other being that the promise of “increased prosperity” has been achieved. It works by appealing to the hopeless- Nazism rose to power due to hyperinflation, and you need only look around you to see the economic reasons for the Alt Right to rise.
This is very informative and great essay to teach what fascism has been or could be. Also I’m a big fan of video essays with visuals of one png image layering on top of another into a sloppy collage. Love to see it!
This is one of the best explanation of how fascim works and how it perpetuates itself, using a dumb soccer show as an example, and somehow you managed to make me understand something a teacher in college failed to.
Something to be wary of is that “Hard Work and Dedication” do matter quite a lot, and to relegate the notion as “Right Wing Propaganda” you secede the very concept of self improvement to the Right wing.
And I shouldn’t have to explain why that’s bad.
That being said the reverse view is superimposed by the Left, I remember when Obama said “You didn’t build that, somebody else made that happen.”
He implicitly states that no amount of success comes from what you did to make that happen, you were just lucky by circumstance that someone who already has success simply shared it with you.
Take that mentality and apply it to a majority populace, no one is going to want to recognize their own failures and attribute all Ill in their life to the “Evils” of some other faction, typically those with more money and success.
You get a populace that in no way wants to achieve anything themselves, but rather want to take it from others.
This is the dangerous flip side of the Fascist argument that there can be a kernel of truth in their lies.
An example I can give is Affirmative Action in Collage which is only now being removed, if you made such an argument only a few years ago you’d be called a racist and fascist.
When all Affirmative Action has accomplished is prevent qualified students from entering their desired halls of education and admitted student who are in no way prepared for the challenges of those halls. So they drop out or fail school. It actually benefits no one except the collage in question who receives Government incentives to fill out a quota.
Bottom line try not to prescribe a concept to only a single ideology, it only creates problems.
surprise, you were racist and fascist 5 yrs ago and you're still racist and fascist now, calling it as I see it. affirmative action is good and necessary to even out the power imbalance of POC having less resouces and less support than white ppl in the us
Yeah, I'm getting kind of a bitter vibe from some of these comments lol. "You're not special and the actions of one person have never mattered" is sad af and it's also like... objectively wrong lmao.
Also, some people ARE just talented and no amount of political theory is going to change that.
@@error-try-again-later true.
Honestly, I agree. There's been a real and noticeable uptick in right wing talking points in media. It's usually fairly subtle, but it has been enough even for me to notice. And, frustratingly, the response I'd usually get when bringing it up is along the lines of, "Don't worry about it. Just turn your brain off and enjoy.". So, I extra appreciate this analysis. Likewise, I know it's not animated, but it's a part of why I appreciated Everything, Everywhere, All at Once so much. Despite Waymond being initially depicted as a bit of a joke, the whole film illustrates that there is strength in his kindness and compassion. So, thank you for doing your part and raising awareness of being mindful of the media one consumes.
Absolutely HILARIOUS calling bannon fascist. That's like calling obama communist, like, you have to be a cultust to actually believe this.
Ikr, it’s sad how politics in the news and online is screwing with everyone’s heads these days… Splitting us up into tribes and having us fight each other… kind of reminds me of that one saying… “Divide and conquer.”
When I first saw the logo for this anime, I was like, "Huh, I wonder if that's fifth column symbolism".
Yes, yes it was.
Man, from the sounds of it, this anime should have been about American Football.
Friday Night Lights 2: The Good Old Days
Hilariously, the actual anime about American Football very quickly debunks the ideas in and around BlueLock. It get real weird about race, but it clearly tries to course correct (perhaps a bit late for my taste, but the effort is noted, and in the context of a Japanese show from Japan? Pretty good.)
no sport will be more american than monster trucks. fuck football. can any of those guys beat Grave Digger in a fight? DIDN'T THINK SO. MY earliest memory is of Bad To the Bone I BLEED red white and blue! USUSUSUSUS!
@@thisgoddamusernamestoodamnlong monster truck anime which tackles social issues and the pursuit of life's meaning _when?_
It is an interesting take, but I think the association you make between the context of a competitive sport and the context of society makes the whole concept of the video fall flat. Competition, in any sport or discipline, is about being better than the other, even better than your teammates since you want to be in the starting line-up. To thrive in a highly competitive context, you need to be an egoist that only thinks of himself, even in a team sport, because your whole livelihood depends on it.
What happens in this case is that Blue Lock makes it explicit. Something that most sports anime try to hide, the harsh reality of competition. No matter how good of a person you are or how much you care about your teammates or your rivals, in the end it is you or them, that's it. If you win you are better and if you lose, you are not worthy of being the champions, simple as that.
What I'm trying to say is, that your arguments in this video can apply to any competitive sport or discipline and I don't think that is right. Society, where real fascism exists, is not a competition and it only exists because we collaborate.
Yeah especially the bit about "the myth of equality". Like, some soccer players *are* just better than other soccer players, at playing soccer. That's just reality. It's not the end all be all but in the world of soccer, it certainly is, because you either win, or you lose. And yeah, this applies to competitive sports as a whole.
@@brogot420 People only ever like watching the whole "teamwork is everything" story because eventually that teamwork will lead to growth, or a win, or a new power-up. If there was an anime where the team is all about teamwork, but get *crushed* every single game, no one would be enjoying the show; teamwork in sports anime is only ever enjoyed because it builds to triumph.
In the real world of sports, there is no guaranteed triumph, that's why performance trumps everything, that's why some managers put up with bad personalities, because it gets the win. Within this paradigm, your value is based on how good you are, and it's odd to expect people who thrive in that environment to not take pride in their standing.
I think a lot of anime fans don't get this because they know too much about sports in anime and too little about sports in real life. When you've seen sports at a high level, or played competitively, you can appreciate why ego plays such a big part.
@@raijinwolf2248 Yeah, I really appreciate the realist approach that Bluelock takes to sports. Later on in the manga, they even talk about how being a great superstar can also lead to your own downfall, due to the huge amounts of money and fame you get, and not being able to handle that. You can tell whoever made Bluelock really loves and understands soccer, and sports in general, and the fact that Exclamation admitted he knew nothing about soccer and that he even only did very shallow research into it, and instead decided to interpret it purely politically, and sloppily at that, is pretty disappointing.
@@brogot420 I'm up to date on the manga and remember the moment you're talking about; it hit me like a truck.
It really does feel like EC just wanted to make a political video about Blue Lock, and then did the bare minimum in terms of research; it's to the point where they attribute many aspects of the sport to be failings of Ego's morals/ethics. It's actually quite hard to watch, considering the work EC's does on the back-end is normally a bit more thorough.
One of the interesting things about blue lock and fascism is the presence of very heavy homoerotic themes. And Im gay, so this isnt a "all bigots are secretly gay" message.
Rather, fascist ideology, as opposed to something like fundamentalist ideology, is one that really, really, really loves MEN. Like, in things like ancient medieval christian and muslim texts, you see a lot of imagery about how beautiful and pure, and good women are. And sure, they are still subservient, but they are an object of beauty.
But 20th century fascism mostly forgets about women. It´s all pictures of beautiful, muscular young men, because women are, to them, fundamentally BORING, uninteresting, made solely to be sex toys and breeders.
That combines for a society that is simoustaneously deeply homophobic and homoerotic at once.
And it leads to this weird interaction where fascists online will complain that queers "hate men" and want to "destroy masculinity" and that portrays gay men as small, effeminate and weak. When in reality, gay men are the ones that adore men and masculinity the most, and also worship the gym and athlethes.
This compares a lot with traditional JAPANESE steriotypes of gay men: straight men in anime are typically fit, but not muscular, a bit generic, clean shaven and shy (think the average salarymen or isekai protag) whereas gay dudes are hulking, hypermasculine predators (think Puri Puri Prisoner).
Of course this is not intentional I think, but the boys in Blue Lock also has a very constant undertone of "dominating other men", often with very sussy methapors, which is part of the humor really. You notice, for example, that unlike many modern shonen series, which are composed of ONE male character and his harem of babes, women are basically non-existent in Blue Lock, even as supporting characters and love interests.
You know ive actually never thought of it until reading this comment. That is an incredibly interesting point especially since it seems a lot of people who go from extreme right ideologies to more left ideologies end up being apart of the LGBTQ+ community in some way, myself being an example.
Fascists really do have a bizarre obsession with other men lmao
Whats crazy is that all the characters in the show love men too.
Isagi and bachira are obsessed with eachother, ego is obsessed with his previous rival noel noa, reo and nagi literally have a gay spin off I could go on abt it forever
1:40 You have absolutely no fugging idea what fascism is. This is like the worst form of the most normie assumption. Just to clear something up. This is a rough summary of N*zism. Traditional Fascist states like in Italy did not have racial hierarchies (racism was not integrated into law, so it was actually less racist than America at the time), and were more just socialist states with injected nationalism. Also another Traditional Fascist named Mosley (british fascist guy), was fervently anti-war and anti-colonialism.
The issue with having extremely incorrect views of radical idealogies like fascism is it makes you highly susceptible to falling for it.
There are tons of issues with Fascism though which makes it far more dangerous than other ideologies.
That actually reminds me of Ben-To (It's way older than the other show cited here, but it's obviously quite similar)
So, in this place, people needs to fight to death to get their meals because of forced scarcity. Some people works together to secure and share their meal, and originally our hero joins them. Until he gets a change of heart and ends up betraying them. Except... They're framed as the bad guy, and him as doing the right thing.
I don't remember everything because I watched it a long time ago, and I didn't have the same understanding of systemic oppression as I have nowadays, but it really rubbed me the wrong way at the time.
Hero backstabs friends forself profit. Is somehow the hero and not a twist villain.
I mean, the chapter 2 is basically I drew myself as a chad and you as a wojack, and the process repeats itself again and again
what?
I understand using a high velocity word like “fascist” to reel in the views but with this many qualifiers on your definition it really has nothing to do with fascism anymore. Much less calling it a fascist show.
“A character in the show Uses techniques commonly associated with fascist propaganda” is so loosely qualified to the original term that you’d have been better served saying it was a fascist show because the main character has a haircut commonly associated with a real world fascist dictator.
Great analysis by the way, i love the in depth look at themes and the differences perspective shown in this video. I disagree with the title choice of course and the hoops jumped through to use it but that doesn’t mean i hate the entire video or the content itself.
Keep it up
Been trying to convince people Blue Lock isn't Sports Anime like Haikyuu or Ao Ashi. This is a great video essay I will use to further expand on that so I highly appreciate the effort of this channel and the creator for this great content. What I find great about Blue Lock isn't the athletic aspect but its protag, Isagi who subverts & overcomes the Fascist prison he finds himself albeit as it affects his character.
This analysis is so bad, you missed the point of the whole show Jesus Christ I’m tempted to make a response video and I don’t even make RUclips videos
1:40 He also uses the stupidest most normie definition of fascism ever.
He's an idiot..how he tries so hard to spin the narrative and fit it around the anime...it's a fun show..everyone involved probably knows it's cringe but does it gloriously...It's shonen genre so basically a children's cartoon...it's not that deep really
Another part you didn't touch,
is that, empirically speaking,
this kind of environment has been shown to be more likely to decrease performance of an athletic team,
(and not just for the obvious reason that all strikers is super dumb)
as it creates bad practice habits and mentality issues
In particular it tends to kill "growth mindset" and creates a more fixed one,
as the super-focus on results over effort (or worse, assumption that results *are* effort)
tends to make people who are underperforming with high effort feel like they are impossible to make better,
and many on the top feel like they are just born talented and don't need to work as hard, as they've already created results
It saps away at your sense of "self-efficacy" (we'll call this confidence) when you're laid low, which, as it turns out, is actually a predictor of performance in athletics.
More so, the lack of interdependency that's promoted can sap away at teammate *created* sense of confidence, as that sign of a teammate trusting you can actually improve said confidence.
like, the entire concept of "we are made stronger by this fear to improve" is bullshit, if anything things like telling all your students they're at the bottom in this big heirarchical system will create burnout and depressive death spirals
this true...
when it comes to general development
when it comes to individual development? not so much
yes, this kind of environment will not benefit most of the athletes and some of them will be affected negatively
but the ones that don't already are the best and they will grow a lot more due to being able to respond to the pressure in the correct way
and how could they not? recovery, mentality, performance, focus, emotional stability, sports IQ, everything that makes you a better athlete helps you to recover/escape from the burnout/depression spirals
a stronger more capable person needs harder challenges than the average, and I think that's the point of the blue lock project
most of the 300 players don't matter, only less than 25 that will play in the selection kind of matter, from them only around 8 true strikers matter and only the one that wins will truly matter
@@NuwandaLunaDragon I think you missed the other part of the problem here: Not only will the bottom falling out create a lack of competition for those at the top,
but also it's been shown that people who start to indulge in a "fixed mindset", and begin to believe that their success is just "being better" (a common result of a results-oriented style of coaching), that they tend to be *less* likely to take on more challenging tasks or do very much beyond their purview. Only doing the things they *know* they're good at, and avoiding things that they're not. Which clearly runs opposite to *actually improving* in these situations
Not to mention, from what I can tell about the show is that *all* the players get told they're on the bottom. Which can't be good for building their confidence in themselves.
@@meiliyinhua7486 the bottom wasn't real competition for the top to begin with
and I'm telling you this as an athlete, someone worse than you will give you nothing unless you actively put a handicap, what you want is people at least slightly below you and preferably slightly above your level
you're right with the second point, people with that mindset are less likely to take the challenges required to progress, but here comes the most important part, the pursue of a better challenge. Both in blue lock and real life an athlete must move towards a bigger challenge, ego kept this idea in the player's head by making the best play against pro adult players and obviously get destroyed
comfortability will never bring adaptation, that's why regardless of mindset both the athlete and the coach must never remain stagnant
and then again with the last point, if you lose confidence in yourself for being ranked the lowest, how were you going to accept defeat against national selections? how are you going to train when you are alone and in a bad environment? how about a family tragedy? and not to talk about injuries
Someone with the correct mentality will not let their confidence be affected by that, they will remain as a machine or even get excited from the expectations of better opponents
And this is not only a way to separate the strong minded from the weak minded, it's also helpful
the more you keep moving forward against obstacles, both physical and mental, the more obstacles you can overcome without sacrificing performance
@@NuwandaLunaDragon The bottom wasn't competition, but they fall out, then the people just above them, and just above them, etc.
And while I understand the perspective of "resilient mentality overcoming", after prolonged experience with even your best efforts continually creating the *worst* results, you have to be a literal robot in order for that to not get to you at all.
And the great thing is that like fascism irl, bluelock falls into the great pitfall of its ideology: underestimating your opponent. You think that you're so special, that hte underclass is so impossibly weaker, that you win by default, and nothing can ever go wrong. Then you open your eyes from the delusion and you've lost pretty much everything as that blatantly inferior foe cheated by, using strategy, or staying outside of your range, or getting other people on their side by not being a death cult. Who'd've thought?
Fascism relies on its enemies being weak and stupid yet strong and devious at the same time, depending on what's convenient. You can't be a hero without a monster to fight, but you ALSO can't be superior if they're your equals, so naturally you just do doublethink and make them both.
@@error-try-again-later Yup, just feels like that whole "pure sports is when you kick and kick and kick" aligns closely to blitzkrieg, which boils down to "how much can we get away with by using meth", and it turned out quite a lot, for a few years, but then you get your teeth kicked in. Or take the US's """strategy""" of bombing your opponent into the dirt, then finding out that people don't like you when you kill their friends and family.
They call them weak because they don't use the kill everyone weapon, and stupid for not using the everyone hates you tactic, yet strong for the having friends, and devious for daring to not move in exactly the right way the fascists want.
@@error-try-again-later An individual can be physically and morally weak, while cunning and devious, thus them dangerous foe. This is not a logical inconsistency.
I went in expecting a hilarious romp and got a big lesson on media literacy for anime fans. Kind of great actually! You're doing good, necessary work.