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Aoi Ashito, a third-year middle school student from Ehime, possesses undeniable raw talent on the field. However, his straightforward personality frequently hinders his progress. Tetsuya Fukuda, the youth team manager of the J1 club Tokyo City Esperion, recognizes Ashito's immense potential and invites him to attend the team's tryouts in Tokyo. This invitation marks the beginning of an exciting journey for the young player, who is destined to revolutionize Japanese football.
Note: Winner of the 65th Shogakukan Manga Award.
At around 230 chapters in I have to say it stopped being enjoyable, the focus drifts from the main character too much to characters that instead of being established from early on just get infodumped onto the reader as they show up. I understand that you can't have everyone developed but I can't really care about a character that suddenly gets 3 pages of backstory.
After over 200 chapters I still don't really know some of the characters on the team, I feel like that should be the base in a sports manga especially if you want to shift focus from the main character but here it felt flat.
It's definitely a more realistic approach instead of just shounen battle type sport mangas, if you are into that then it might be fun.
Art is mediocre, action scenes are hard to follow and don't really convey what's happening, couple that with some characters looking very similar and it can be quite confusing and not that engaging, the hype moments happen don't IMO get enough space so the payoff from watching boring passes for a whole chapter is pretty low, honestly not a soccer fun so this part of the manga for me was pretty tedious and others might get more fun out of it.
At the end of the day I want to read a story about a character or characters I'm invested in, the manga has a few core characters that have backgrounds, sure, but considering it's focused on the various relationships and emotions it should have focused on that aspect a lot more, drama in the team doesn't really work if I just learned the characters name after 150 chapters, I just couldn't care less about them sadly.
Literally 30 chapters in, and every antagonist keeps just beings shots and trying to ruin Mc mood, if this formula is repeated throughout the 300 chapters, imma drop this manga,
Ok after chapter 40 or 50 is starts to get better I'm willing to give this aa shot
OK in regards to the romance aspect, the Mc is a dunce. He legitimately cannot tell if a girl likes him. He somewhat like Rex from Xenoblade 2 when he is talking to Nia near the end of the game. The one where she is different from other blade users. Regardless, the Mc was very stereotypical in the beginning, but he gets a little more fleshed out as the manga continues, what is rhe best though are the other characters as they all have a unique personality and they are not stereotypical. Lastly, in regards to how this and bluelock differ, this manga seems to focus on breaking down the characters prior beliefs and start building up their confidence from there, whereas in bluelock, the characters egos are not broken down first, instead they are stroked to new heights
Chapter 225 is exactly what I mean by him being a dunce regardless of how the girl convey their emotion. I hate it when manga do that, but other than that, the managa is good
Its a very good manga.it may look like a slow pace one but when you really understood the concept you can enjoy it . There are no supernatural powers or anything it purely depends upon the talent and they will be some love , family problems and also it is based on the real world problems that are face by current league players . You will surely enjoy it
This is an entertaining albeit rather slow-moving football manga. It took inspiration from Giant Killing (there's an interview between the respective mangaka in a later volume) to depict football like it would look on TV: many panels are drawn in bird's-eye view.
This makes it very different from most football manga which came before it: the protagonist has weak technique but good eyes; there's a very strong focus on strategy, tactics, and positioning; there are hardly any genius-style players who outclass everyone in 1-on-1s (and even they can be stopped by man-to-man marking and strategy; etc.); there's a strong narrative focus on defenders; etc. I don't follow or watch football, so I can't tell for sure, but the series certainly feels realistic in a way other sports series often do not.
In any case, this manga is overall very intriguing and feels entirely unique, though I occasionally find some of the smaller bird's-eye panels a bit hard to follow. And as already mentioned, the pace is rather slow.
The character's challenges are relateable, his impetus is uplifting, plot conflicts and minor suspense and brattiness are not too overdone.