Blue Lock vs. U-20 Japan Episode 2 Discussion

This series isn’t very good in keeping the characters they’ve introduced being even somewhat relevant for a period of time. I mean I don’t remember half of them at this point, and neither these characters who got teamed up with Isagi. Yeah, and for some reason dude has really bad luck that he landed in the team with Rin and Shido, or more like I guess, he the main guy that’s why he landed. Leaving all that stuff about hyping these seeded players aside, what is actually happening with the matches lol????

I held back from saying anything over animation last time but yeah, this is just moving manga panels lol… coloured manga panels, to be precise. I don’t remember this series struggling this much last season with the matches, but yeah here, just the second episode and we’re out of juice. At least the characters seem to be running fine enough, so some saving grace. Not sure anymore, but can only hope it’ll get decent enough(?). Btw the usual with Isagi… he’ll bounce back, we know.

I hate hating on Blue Lock but at this point I can’t defend this animation man. They somehow made it worse than last season. It legitimately looks like a slide show that has moving parts. The only reason I can think of why the quality is so poor is that they’re saving the budget and work for the U-20 arc. As a manga reader, I am so disappointed.

Other than the animation, the story is still entertaining for the most part, even if this arc is kinda filler/set-up before the U-20 arc. Some of my favorite characters in this arc too, so I can’t complain when Hiori gets screen time.

All in all, I’m holding onto hope that the studio turns this around by the U-20 arc, if not sooner.

@Mirror_Mage any idea why the the quality is so bad this season? Did first season do so bad in Japan that they didn't have any budget left for S2, even after the profit from the movie? Or this is just incompetency on the studio's part because it doesn't look like they were working on many projects either.