As of September 17th, 2024, the world-renowned and best-selling sports manga of 2023, Blue Lock, officially released a new trailer, revealing crucial animation, character designs, and insight into its second season's future debut. Alongside this trailer, which was released two months after the initial teaser trailer for season two, 8-Bit Studios has promised BL fans a quality TV anime series, which will air in October of 2024. However many fans are massively upset and complaining due to the overall style and look of the animation; with the studio facing heavy backlash for its singular frame usage and reliance on CGI. All things considered, the majority of viewers and watchers think that the animation won’t live up to their expectations or even be better than season one. Many fans find themselves asking the same question; will Season 2 follow in its manga counterpart's success or be held back by its lack in creative animation?
Release and Controversy
As the fall and Halloween season approaches, so is the release date of Blue Lock’s season two. It will officially come out on October 5th of this year. Initially, when the anticipated sequel was announced alongside the actual reveal trailer back in July of this year, fans were immensely hyped and excited to finally receive news on the much loved anime/sports manga. However, with excitement came fans' expectations. Blue Lock manga readers wanted the second season to either be on par with the first season’s animation or be better by incorporating the manga's successful new U-20 Game arc in a sporadic and exciting way that would perfectly capture its high stakes tone. With that being said, by the time of the second trailer's release, people were not happy. Social media platforms, including Instagram, Tiktok, and Youtube, were all devastated when they saw the cutthroat-style animation. Characters would stay in still frames while the soccer ball was the only thing moving. Not only that but they didn’t show anything from the actual U-20 game, but rather the mini player elimination arc that happened before. It turns out, however, many people believe that 8-Bit Studios wishes to save the important footage/best animation for when the season actually comes out.
What Fans Can Expect
Even with the major controversy surrounding long-term fans and manga readers, anime-only watchers can still expect massive progress within the plot. Blue Lock's upcoming season will focus on a pivotal point in Isagi’s journey to become the world's best striker as he must face the under U-20 team and win to take their national spots. With high stakes and new important characters being introduced such as Shido, Kurona, Karasu, Hiori, Yukimiya, and Kiyora, they are all vital players that will play in the actual U-20 game. Thus this will determine the fate of whether or not the program will get shut down. Having the plot and story being firmly established at least, Blue Lock is also confirmed to have 14 episodes. Due to the huge success of both season one and the manga, it would be suspected that season two would ultimately be longer. However for this arc, 8-Bit Studios wants to solely focus on giving us a quality experience over a downgraded quantity-type experience. This can be seen earlier this year when they dropped Blue Lock: Episode Nagi. It primarily focused on giving us a short but monumental jump in animation quality compared to season one, although fans may remain skeptical over the still frame animation style. Even so, story, plot elements, new characters, exciting/dramatic moments, or iconic panels will still be included, no matter what. This institutes that the audience shall receive a fairly positive experience even if the animation does not get better. Only time will tell if 8-Bit Studios will fully manage to capture the experience of the U-20 arc. Regardless, Blue Lock’s season two will be available to stream on popular anime website, CrunchyRoll, this October, and I highly recommend that you check out the best-selling sports manga of all time. Â
Sources:
Commenti