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A great example of a simple concept executed masterfully.

I don't think I've ever been so entranced by a bunch of walking feet before. But honestly, yeah I can't say enough good about this. The different pairs of feet (along with the environments) are all exquisitely drawn and express such different personalities, and while they're not always walking on beat, they still feel vaguely on-time and mix things up when the music does, tying the steps to the music without making them feel robotic or robbing them of their character.

And this is all backed by a song with a perfect swinging cadence. Obviously it helps ... that I'm a big fan of Yorushika's music anyway, but this song feels like a perfect song to put on when going for a morning walk and just vibe to. I can so easily imagine myself walking to work with this song putting a little skip in my step.

But yeah a great song and a great music video.

Blue Lock… is not a football manga. Blue Lock is to football as Dragon Ball Z is to martial arts. This is a superpowered battle shonen in a football skin, though that skin is, admittedly, absolutely gorgeous.

Now that’s not necessarily bad — Kuroko’s Basketball does the same thing pretty well — but Blue Lock is plagued by a myriad of other issues. Of these, the most pressing one in my mind is its focus on the idea of egoism. See, Blue Lock desperately wants to say something, and the something it lands on is the idea that the best football players are those that discard ... the idea of winning and trample their teammates all in the goal of attaining personal glory. Now, whether or not you think that idea has any merit, it is at least an idea, and a pretty refreshing one at that. Where it falls flat, however, is in the execution.

I find it difficult to believe that Blue Lock’s ideas were fully thought through in the early stages of its serialisation, as many of the series’ stated themes are actively proven to be wrong even within the context of this story. At times, the series can feel like it’s fighting itself, almost as though its themes are getting in the way of the mangaka telling the story. The series perpetually feels like it’s on the cusp of realising that its ideas don’t make sense, which can make it pretty frustrating to read.

I also struggle to imagine anyone who’s fond of football finding much to like here. At its worst, Blue Lock comes off as a grotesque bastardisation of the sport, and feels almost disrespectful to those who play any role other than striker. It feels like a series that kinda… hates football, caring far more about the aesthetic and pointless showboating than about representing the sport in a way that is anything resembling authentic.

Now all of this can still work for a series with a strong enough cast. A good cast can make up for some of the worst grievances in fiction. And at a cursory glance, Blue Lock might appear to fulfil this requirement. It has some really bright and vibrant designs, and a lot of the characters have really bombastic and fun personalities. However, the characters that we spend the bulk of our time focusing on, especially as the series progresses, are some of the most dour and bland characters imaginable. Many of the series’ most prominent characters suck the joy out of any scene they’re in, especially when on the field.

The area that Blue Lock undeniably excels in most is its artwork. It’s dynamic and fun and it packs a punch in a way that few sports series do, but this is marred by the numerous issues I mentioned above, which often results in moments that would otherwise be fun leaving a bad taste in my mouth. I think that if the series were to play more to its strengths, being a rip-roaring good time, rather than attempting to frame things around Ego’s ideals, it’d make for a much less disappointing series.

Truthfully, I didn’t start this review intending to be this negative. But the more I thought about this series, the more its issues stood out to me. Blue Lock isn’t a series I could ever really see myself recommending to people in its current state, but hey at least it’s pretty.

Tsubame Tip Off! is a basketball manga.

Now there are a lot of sports manga out there, and basketball is one of the most commonly depicted sports in the medium but, as far as I can tell, girls’ basketball has always been weirdly untapped. That alone was enough for me to pick up the series, and I was very pleasantly surprised by what I found.

Tsubame Tip Off! is a somewhat unique sports manga in how it depicts the sport being played. Specifically, I’d say it’s unique in how… normal it is. Manga and anime focused around girls’ sports tend to skew erotic or overly soft ... and often don’t do the sport in question much justice, so it’s incredibly refreshing to see the sport here being handled with the same kind of aggression and physicality you’d expect to see in a manga about a boys’ team. The art, while not always stellar, does a good job enforcing this portrayal of the sport, and the illustrator really knows when to go all-in and make some beautiful double-page spreads.

Now just because I said the series depicts the sport in a fairly normal manner doesn’t mean everything else follows suit; Tsubame herself is a pretty unconventional protagonist. With her awkward demeanour and self-consciousness regarding her own height, she’s a far cry from the intensely passionate and egoistic protagonists that are typically associated with the genre. I do think that really works for this series, though. With its very route A approach to basketball, I think it was a good move to make the main protagonist stand out in this way.

And obviously I couldn’t talk about Tsubame Tip Off! without mentioning Ibis. Every sports manga has a genius, and Ibis is this series’. She hasn’t really been explored in much depth yet, but enough has been shown to make me feel secure claiming that she’ll get some really good development in the future.

My only real issue with the series so far is how underutilised the supporting cast has been in these early chapters. It’s done a good job setting up a couple of rivals, but most of Tsubame and Ibis’ teammates are woefully underdeveloped. I can’t really hold that against the series, though, considering how early into the story we are.

We’re only in the early stages of the manga now, but I’m optimistic about what’s to come, and I’m very excited to see Tsubame grow as a character and potentially grow to see her height as a blessing. I don’t really expect this series to ever top people’s lists of must-read sports manga, or even maybe must-read basketball manga, but it’s got a unique feel to it and I really appreciate what it’s doing.

Isekai Izakaya “Nobu” is a manga series that is about characters having their minds blown by food. It doesn’t waste any time explaining what this izakaya is doing in a medieval fantasy world, nor does it need to. It knows those kinds of things aren’t really important and would likely detract from the ethereal feeling that gives the series so much of its charm.

I also suspect that it’s for the sake of preserving that feeling that we take a while before we get any real focus on the characters running Nobu. The first few chapters are focused almost exclusively on the customers and their responses ... to the food, and I think that was a wise choice, as that’s undeniably where the heart of the story is.

One of the standout things about this series, to me, is the way in which this world has been thought out. The author has a very clear idea of what the city and world are like. In this setting, it makes total sense that people would be hesitant to order fish and would be shocked by the use of paper as a disposable item. They’re minor details, but they give the story a little extra flavour, if you’ll excuse the pun. It makes the world feel very lived-in, and the way it’s all integrated and written into the dialogue feels very organic.

Truthfully, I’m a bit of a sucker for manga like this. I’m basically guaranteed to enjoy any story that celebrates food in as pure of a manner as this. That said, you’d be hard-pressed to find another manga that is as single-mindedly focused on celebrating the experience of eating as Isekai Izakaya “Nobu” is, and I think that’s kinda beautiful.

I feel I should prefix this by saying that I’m not a fan of baseball. I think it’s dull to spectate and, despite its prevalence in the medium, I don’t think it’s a great fit for the conventional sports manga formula. Due to the nature of the game, the only players who really receive focus in a match are the catcher, the pitcher, and any particularly notable batsmen. This can have the effect of making the world of the series feel a little small and insular, and it doesn’t feel like it explores the sport as best it could.

The reason I bring this up is ... because I think Bungo is a very pure example of how to make full use of a sport's strengths to tell an enjoyable story. While I did say that baseball is a poor fit for a conventional sports manga (where the focus is always on the team, the tournament and overcoming all odds together), it functions pretty well as a lens through which to tell a small-scale story about a few key characters and their relationships, and that’s exactly what Bungo does.

So far, Bungo is a relatively small-scale story. Its characters have big aspirations, but the driving force behind the story is definitely the interpersonal relationships of the core cast. I care far more about Bungo’s relationship with Noda than I do about his long-term goals as a player. This might be a turn-off to those who feel that "plot" should take priority above all else, but I actually think that not prioritising plot lends it a level of unpredictability that sports series sometimes lack. Because the relationships are front and centre, the sequence of events doesn't really have to conform to our expectations of a sports series. It can skip large portions of matches (important when portraying a sport like baseball), or even entire matches if it wants, because the matches aren’t as important to the story as the characters are. We’re only really shown what is necessary for the characters, and that results in a story with very little fat, which I think will serve the series well in the long run, as sports series are quite susceptible to bloating, especially as they start to get longer.

Despite being 118 chapters in, I still feel like Bungo is in its very early stages as a story, and that it could be taken in any number of ways from where it is now, so I am incredibly excited for whatever comes next.

Ahiru no Sora might come off to some as a similar series to the likes of Haikyuu, with a very short player competing in a tall man’s sport, but that’s about where the comparisons end. Ahiru no Sora is definitely a different kind of story to Haikyuu, and I think you’ll be disappointed if you jump into this expecting them to to scratch the same itch.

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The thing that draws me in most about this story is its approach to passion and commitment. It’s the rare case of a manga acknowledging that not everyone can have that extreme passion that drives characters like our main protagonist ... Sora, especially when they’re only familiarising themselves with the sport in question. Even more impressively, it doesn’t criticise those characters for not matching the level of commitment that the more passionate characters have. Instead, it’s strangely compassionate and seeks to make the readers understand and empathise with these characters. Now that’s not to say that it’s unable to be critical of its characters—on the contrary, when these characters mess up (and oh boy, do they mess up) the series is more than willing to punish them severely for it—but it definitely prioritises compassion and it never demeans its characters in the process. Its way of criticising the characters tends to have a bit more of a... melancholic undertone. This series is as much a delinquent redemption story as it is a basketball one, and that’s really apparent here.

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I also love that this series takes full advantage of the sport being played. A lot of sports series shy away from characters changing positions, but since basketball is a sport where positions aren’t actually mandatory, this series opts to do something fun and has players’ roles drastically change depending on who’s on the court at any given time. That gives the matches a really fun energy and keeps them from getting stale, which is important as the matches in this series can be a little long.

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Ahiru no Sora is a series that, despite playing around with the format of basketball in a fun and naturalistic way, always places its characters and their growth ahead of the sport itself. For some readers, that will be a flaw, or even a deal-breaker, but for me it really makes the series stand out from the pack, as one of my favourite sports series to date.

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.

Ao no Hako is honestly one of the best fits for a one-shot of any I've read. It's that kind of sweet, pure romance that would risk becoming stale in a serialised story. It's nothing too complex, but that's to its benefit considering the format, and it's well aware of genre conventions and when it's best to abandon or lean into them. It's surprisingly funny, but not so funny that it takes away from the sincerity of the characters' emotions (and, boy, these characters are nothing if not sincere), and it all feels about as natural as manga really can.

I really don't think I could ... ask for much more. This is one of the best one-shots out there. I'd highly recommend it as a quick pick-me-up.

Just as an aside, though: I also appreciate that the story focuses as much as it does on the characters genuinely getting to know each other. That's kinda the bedrock of any romance, and it's shocking how many series skip over it.

Personally, I've always felt like football has been a bit over-represented in the manga/anime scene. Its prevalence is only really one step down from the three B's (basketball, baseball and boxing) that seem to take up around half of all manga/anime sports series on their own. And, considering how common it is, I've been surprised at how many areas of the game have been left kinda untapped by the industry. Fortunately, Ao Ashi is here to shake things up with an incredibly refreshing take on the sport.

Our main protagonist, Aoi, is obsessed with scoring, not unlike the average child when they first get into a ... sport. In itself, that isn't particularly unique, but I think the degree to which the series is critical of that obsession does stand out. It takes him to areas of the sport that don't typically get a lot of focus in sports manga, due to being less flashy and conventionally "cool", and I appreciate that it gives those areas the attention I feel they deserve.

I also have a great appreciation for how messy things are at times. In a team of young teenagers, it can take a long time for people to sync up and figure each other out, especially if they don't get along particularly well. Ao Ashi depicts that in a way that feels very true-to-life, with people misunderstanding each other, fighting, and generally just not being very nice, both on and off the pitch. It's also a long-running problem that is gradually being worked through, rather than a moment of drama that everyone spontaneously gets over together, which is how I most commonly see it depicted in manga.

And even when people are understanding each other and communicating effectively, they're still generally having to be pretty direct about it. Like... shouting instructions to each other. Too often in manga do I see all the players coordinating perfectly all the time without ever really needing to say anything to each other, and that's one of the hardest things to suspend my disbelief around. I think that degree of unity only really works in a story if it's been properly built up to and we've seen enough of the hurdles along the way, and Ao Ashi encapsulates that perfectly. All the difficulties make those few moments of perfect communication so much more meaningful.

Ao Ashi is a very refreshing series that enjoys challenging its characters to take them to greater heights, and I love it for that. For now, I have it sitting at an 8/10, but I would not be surprised if it were to impress me even more, further down the line. I highly recommend this series to anyone who feels that sports manga have gotten a little stale.

If I had to describe this story with a single word, it'd be "emotional". This is a story that is largely about emotion, as we follow the titular elf Frieren in her attempt learn about and understand humans, and it is fittingly jam-packed with emotion. It's rare for a series to make me feel so consistently emotional with every chapter.

This series has one of my favourite depictions of the way different fantasy races must interact and view each other, due to their lifespans, as well as a great depiction of magic as a technology that progresses over time in the same way technologies do ... in the real world. In general, I think it handles the flow of time and the disconnect between how it affects society and individuals in a really interesting and unique manner.

I highly recommend this manga to anyone who is interested in a less conventional fantasy story. There are only a few chapters out at the moment, but I've got high hopes for the series going forward.