What is this movie? I just went to see this because I had a free spot between two other things I needed to do in a small city in Finland. Yet, as I look at this, there’s only (as of this writing) 34 ratings of this on IMDb (one of them mine), so basically no-one has seen this. Although, in my experience, IMDb is not very popular in it’s native Japan.

For the record, I have not seen the anime this is based on. I didn’t even realize it was until I went to IMDb to rate it.

As an advance warning: This seems to be an attempt to start a franchise. While there is kind of conclusion to a storyline, this is clearly just a first act of something bigger planned.

Isagi is a football player. Striker, I believe, is the correct term, being the center who has most responsibility on making goals. The movie starts with him making a judgement call he feels is wrong and leads to them losing an important game. Soon after, he is invited to secretive football camp, which turns out to be the titular Blue Lock. Three-hundred most promising high school level strikers have been called together to find the one who can lead Japan to a World Championship with the threat of everyone else losing their right to play for the national team.

There’s a commonly used leadership method called Rank & Yank. It basically means that the top performers will get most of the raises, promotions and other benefits, while the worst performers will be dismissed, encouraged to find new roles and so forth. The problem with this is that this is basically sabotaging your own company.

For example, let’s say there’s a thing I could do that would give me 1 point, but I would be helping someone else get 3 points. Do I do it? Maybe. If the person getting those 3 points is way below me in the rankings, sure. But if the person is just below me, that would be risky for me. That might push them above me. So, instead of doing this thing that might be very good for the company, it would be in my interest to sabotage the whole thing, because my motivation is not to look at what would benefit the company, but instead to look at what is best for me within this game.

Sure, you could make the rules of this game in such a way that they are well balanced and makes everyone always do what’s best for the company, but no-one has ever attained this and never will. It’s just impossible.

Like in this movie, the first thing they do at the camp, is stick together to take out the best player in their little 12 person group. Even though the person managing this thing gives a shitty explanation on why this was good, it obviously isn’t.

The problem is that I don’t know whether the movie understands this. Is this a satire of Japanese corporate culture or is this just straight attempt at telling a story about it? I don’t know.

The weird thing is that Isagi, the POV character, tries to maintain a veneer of civility, but the movie constantly pushes him into being egoistic. This isn’t even subtext. The manager tells this outright to the players. They are supposed to be narcissists, who are more interested in personal glory than how the team is doing. So, are we supposed to sympathize with this person who is becoming an asshole?

The movie is not bad, but it’s not really good either. It works as an action movie, but the concept is just weird. One movie that came to mind is Battle Royale, but the difference is that the absurd concept of that movie is handled much more interestingly.

The movie kind of feels like they are trying to get as close to the anime as possible, with one character, for example, screaming in much the same way you would see in an anime.

Is it worth a watch? Let’s put it this way: This is mid-August and I’ve seen over 40 movies in a theater. If you see as many, this want be an addition you would regret. Also, it is different from what you would get from your typical Hollywood fair. That is valuable in itself.