I really enjoyed watching season one of Blue Lock so I decided to continue the story to see how it pans out in season two. After the grueling tryouts in the first season this time we see the surviving members of Blue Lock prepare for a match against Japan’s U20. Their toughest opponents yet where defeat means the end of Blue Lock.

Story wise there were some nice elements to this season. This was all about everyone taking their skills up to the next level and reaching a point called “The Flow” where all of your skills can be used on instinct at their peak. It makes a nice departure from the first season where it was all about finding and awakening skills and pivoting to learning how to master them. We also get some nice background information on characters like Rin and Reo. There’s more than that but it involves characters introduced this season so I don’t want to mention them by name. The story is nice but it’s really not the driving point for this type of show but instead it relies heavily on its characters and the action.

So moving onto the characters they all continue to impress. Each one is vying for their spot as the best striker and while their goals are the same their motivations are entirely different. These differences not only make for fun unique characters but are also reflected in how they play soccer. It’s actually impressive how the season gives most of the characters a chance in the spotlight even for brief moments. Even though Isagi is the lead because everyone is their own main character the season gives everyone a chance to show them essentially trying to take the top spot. I also really love how this is a departure from a lot of animes I’ve seen. Most rely heavily on the power of friendship and unity. There is unity here as the members of Blue Lock have to function as a team but at the same time only one of them can be the best and so their actions balance working as a team for a common goal versus working independently for the end goal.

As for the action I have pros and cons for this season. The pros are the same as last time as the action is intense and it’s easy to get excited for what’s happening. This is what really makes this show easy to get invested in as the action consistently entertains, but not as well as season one. The animation quality took a dramatic step down as a lot of the action is reflected by still images with minimal movement where season one everything was more animated. I feel like this was a design choice made to get season two out faster. Overall I don’t hate it as I still got the intense feeling I wanted from this show but the serious decline in movement is very noticeable. This is something they stop doing right at the last moment to make the big climatic scene pop and you can notice an immediate difference. In a way it does add hype for the biggest moment of the season but I can’t help but wish we got that for the entire season.

I’m also a little mixed about the pacing this time around. Because season one had 26 episodes we got a wide variety of matches plus they were all fairly short. This season was only 14 episodes and eight of them were devoted to the Blue Lock Vs. U20 match. They entertained but at some point it felt a bit dragged out. It made binge watching season two harder than season one. For the brief matches in season one they didn’t last long enough to where the excitement died down at any point and that’s where season two’s main problem lies. Because so many episodes were devoted to the one game there were moments where they just couldn’t keep the excitement going.

Overall season two was really entertaining. It manages to balance a group of people all vying to be the main character all while still proving Isagi is the star of the show. We got a lot of insight into new and returning characters and fun action to boot. Though this season had some shortcomings in that it was mainly devoted to one match where it’s length meant it couldn’t maintain the excitement consistently like we saw in season one. Then the drop in animation quality made everything look more stiff. None of this resulted in the season being any less entertaining; however, it does mean it’s a noticeable step down from season one. I’m still excited to see what season three has to offer though.