Be Blues! Ao ni Nare

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Ao ni nare/ Be Blues

It is a shonen manga about a kid Ryuu Ichijou who wants to turn blue ie. wear Blue jersey of the Japanese National Football team.

I say it's shonen but it is without the usual tropes. In this story the protagonist levels up by his own effort, he plans for success, and from time to time gets unlucky too. We see him struggling and he responds in a realistic manner.
This is unlike other shonen where the MC gets sudden powerups, has amazing genes due to a legendary father, and is always lucky to meet great teachers who teach them forbidden techniques.

STORY
The story ... is simple. Boy wants to be a footballer. But in this simplicity lies beauty. There are no villains here. Only real life struggles and people who overcome. Highly inspiring.

ART
The artwork is good. Football movements are well explained in matches, making it easy to understand.

CHARACTERS
This is where the manga truly shines. You fall in love with these guys, you cheer for them and wish for their success.

ENJOYMENT
Full enjoyment!! There is never a full moment here. I read 60 chapters in one day. The only problem is that only 80 chapters have been scanlated so far. But a new one comes out every week.


Recommendation:
All sports fans, football fans especially please read this. If you want an inspirational story-read this.
This is one of the most underrated manga out there!

Thanks for reading!

His manga ended prematurely, I thought we would see the protagonist going to a team, playing a world cup, but it ends with him in the second year. I always delude myself with sports manga, because of MAJOR who gave me a complete story of the beginning in sports, school, professional and world career, whenever I read a sports manga I imagine that I can get to that, apparently it won't having a manga like MAJOR that really focuses on the protagonist's life from the beginning to the professional career and the end of it.
Note 7, for the early ending.

English is not my Mothertongue so please forgive my mistakes.

Be Blues is one of the most underrated manga out their with only few chapters available despite running since 2011.

The story is new as most of the Football Mangas have similar Stories about a guy with great will power and overcoming any difficulties through it.

The storytelling and art is good and you could feel the agony of our protagonist, who is suffering from being unable to play Soccer or Football which he loves more than anything.

The Characters are somewhat cliche in nature, like the best friend who supports our protagonist all the time, Childhood friend who ... have crush on our protagonist, an arrogant rival and many more.
A good Shonen Sport Manga, try it yourself.

Be Blues is a manga about football. Now that’s obviously a little silly to say, but it’s true. Be Blues is a series that practically oozes passion for the sport of football. This is very clearly a series directly aimed at fans of the sport, jam-packed with football jargon and references that I found myself having to look up. It’s the kind of series that makes me, someone who actively dislikes football, kinda miss playing it.

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The Good:

I said that this is a manga about football, and the way it’s drawn full lives up to that. The action on display here is incredibly intricate. Motoyuki Tanaka just knows how to draw football. There’s a fluidity to the way everything is handled that makes even very small plays feel exciting and impressive.

This series also has a really interesting approach to telling the overall story of the central team. It completely skips matches that would be epic showdowns in most other sports manga. It catches me off-guard every time it does it, but I really like it.

But where Be Blues shines most is undoubtedly in its supporting cast. They range from fun and hilarious to earnest and heartwarming. The players we meet in the very beginning are a bit more one-note and less interesting, but once the series properly gets underway, we’re introduced to such a wide variety of characters that I’d be surprised if anyone were to read the series without latching onto at least one of them. There are several prominent characters who would be more than capable of carrying their own story (honestly, I’d argue that they carry this one, so that tracks), and those who wouldn’t are usually at least still entertaining or broadly likeable.

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The Bad:

I’ve always had a strong dislike for Mary Sue type characters, especially when they’re placed in the role of main protagonist, and Ryuu Ichijou undeniably falls into that category. The synopsis of this series had led me to believe that Ryuu’s struggle with the remnants of his injury would be a long-term focal point for both him and the series, but I was incredibly disappointed to find that he only really struggles with it in the very early stages of the story. However, the story seems to prefer to use his injury as a way to congratulate him on his prowess even further. Instead of looking inwards and exploring its main protagonist, the story is much more interested in celebrating how exceptionally good at football he is, which makes for some cool moments, but it can leave some of them feeling a little empty. The series also seems to bend over backwards to avoid criticising him. Whenever other players criticise him, it’s just so that they can be proven wrong when he makes a flashy play shortly after. Whenever something he’s trying to do on the pitch isn’t working, it’s probably because his teammates aren’t fully cooperating with him. He’s rarely, if ever, at fault. And on the rare occasion that criticisms of him are taken seriously, they’re usually overcome with a few chapters, treated as immediate obstacles to overcome rather than longterm ones, which leads to his improvement feeling more like divine blessing than effort.

The thing that bugs me most, however, is that I do get the feeling that the story thinks it’s about a hard-working individual triumphing against all odds. It seems blissfully unaware that it’s actually about a near-omnipotent football god with superhuman kindness and determination.

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In spite of its chronically uncompelling main protagonist and accidental celebration of innate talent, Be Blues is a series that strays dangerously close to greatness. It’s got an exceptional cast of supporting characters and some gorgeously-drawn action. It’s nothing too complex but it’s really good at what it does… for the most part.

Let's make this quickly as possible (it won't be). Be Blues is a very good manga in the beginning, but as story progresses, everything turns mediocre to the point I dropped after 350 chapters, kinda first 100 chapter are very good, 200-300 are good, 200-300 are between good and very good, but after chapter 300, the quality dropped severely. It's not that changed everything radically, on the contrary, it does not change. The pattern starts to annoys too much.

Story
As a spokon, is a 10. The football stuff are almost 100% accurate and every topic related is on point. BUT, as any other context, it sucks. ... The drama starts to get cheap; romance is trash, is not a romantic manga, but at the end it gives you harem feel (i don't have anything vs harems) that you start questioning how the heck it reached that point.
8/10.

Art:
I like it, good designed characters (drawing) that becomes more and more well drawn progressively.
7/10.

Characters
I give it a 5/10 because the associated word (mediocre) it represents this category the better. Altough I like to give it a 1/10. Definitelly the reason why I dropped the manga. It's just painful to see how the character development it never comes, or their issues are resolved in 4 pages for almost every secondary ones.
It all turns around the MC. It doesn't even give you the chance of watch a glimpse of friendship, a boss-minions relationship. It's like trying to create the most perfect person ever, but at the end that feels like you are watching a story of a robot, the MC doesn't feel human, you can't be identified or admire him, you just can't thought this is a good character.
In my opinion, secondary characters are more interesting and relatable, but just one or two have a decent development. The rest is just static, at least at the point I left. It's a shame because I see a lot of potential on them, but the author doesn't give a damn. It just want to constantly buff the MC and anything works without him. I think is because the premise that "the MC must never give up on his dreams, even if everything is lost". Anyway, it would be a great manga if characters weren't that idealised, I get disgusted just thinking about. It's algorithmical.

Enjoyment
I really enjoyed the matches that are most of the content. I have to say I can't predict some stuff in them, I really like that. Anything else gives me indifference.
7/10

Overall
I think is a good manga, for atleast 300 chapters. If you realise before how things are gonna be, that would turn in like 100-150.
7/10

I will keep it simple.

Be Blues has the worst Mc in a story I´ve ever read I´ve never seen a more boring and bland mc.
The characters are all pretty bland but he is by far the worst one.

The story is basic too, we follow the journey of the mc and his desire to join the japanese soccer team. He gets injured while prottecting his friend, struggles for 2 years but quickly gets better, there`s no internal strugle nothing, he genuinly feels like a robot.

The matches and the art are the best thing about the manga, the matches are genuinly entertaining, so if you dont really ... care about anything i complained about, and you love football i would still recommend it, just because you might enjoy the matches.

Be Blues defnitely deserves the praise it gets which is none.
It`s a solid 6.
I would probably rate it lower if i kept reading, because i doubt the characters and story gets any better