Blue Lock: Episode Nagi Volumes 2 and 3 Review

Despite the anime having been off our screens for a year or so now, the Blue Lock manga continues to come out at a fast pace from Kodansha. And that includes Blue Lock: Episode Nagi, the spin-off about fan favourite side character Nagi. With two more volumes, let’s find out what’s next for this side series.

Blue Lock: Episode Nagi runs in parallel with the main series, and Volume 1 showed us how Nagi and best friend Reo ended up joining the Blue Lock program. Now they’re in the “first selection”, a round-robin style tournament, where the top scorers get a bonus based on the number of goals. Reo is pumped up and ready to win, but Nagi is less enthusiastic and finds himself simply dragged along for the ride.

But during the match, Nagi begins to wonder what drives everyone to try so hard. Should they fail out of the Blue Lock program, they’ll be barred from ever playing professional soccer for Japan, which is a big deal! But even that doesn’t explain why they’re so fierce in Nagi’s opinion.

Reo, meanwhile, is hellbent on ensuring he and Nagi continue as a duo through Blue Lock. But with Nagi so uncommitted, Reo has a real fight on his hands to ensure he musters up the enthusiasm to continue facing challenge after challenge. What Nagi really needs is a rival, which soon presents itself in the form of Blue Lock’s main character, Yoichi Isagi.

If you’ve read the main series, you’ll be very familiar with Isagi’s unrivalled passion for soccer. He’s not the best player at this point, compared to some of the people he’s paired with in Team Z, but that determination to improve and remain in the program is unmatched. And soon Nagi finds himself swept up by Isagi’s passion on the pitch…

The match against Team Z begins in Volume 2 and continues into Volume 3, where Nagi is beginning to grow jealous of the fact that Isagi and his team are having so much fun playing soccer. For Nagi, it has always simply been something he did without much thought, spurred on by Reo, but this match is starting to show him what soccer can really be like. By the end, a drive to get better and experience what winning a match against players like Isagi is like has awoken within him.

After the match with Team Z, the contestants move into the second phase of the selection process, where they’re divided into teams of three and lose or win members depending on the results of the games that follow. Nagi desperately wants to play soccer with Isagi, thinking that being by his side will help him understand the burning desire to get better at soccer that’s awoken within him. But to do that means leaving Reo behind, and that understandably enrages Reo who’s the reason Nagi is even at Blue Lock in the first place.

Although these two volumes include a lot of content we’ve seen in the main series, it manages to avoid becoming repetitive by focusing on Nagi and Reo’s feelings. This is especially true of Volume 3, where there’s a lot of time spent on Nagi’s newfound fascination with Isagi and Reo’s intense jealousy and loneliness at being left behind by his partner. It feels like there’s a lot of new content for readers here, which I was a pleasantly surprised by as the anime movie adaptation felt a lot more like a rehash than this does at this point of the story.

And of course, one of the major selling points here is Kota Sannomiya’s artwork. Although not the original Blue Lock mangaka, Sannomiya has managed to capture the dynamic and engrossing atmosphere of the original work. Certainly, as the chapters go on, Sannomiya has been successfully getting closer to the original while maintaining their own flair. It’s certainly very impressive and more than lives up to what we’ve come to expect from Blue Lock as a franchise.

As mentioned, Blue Lock: Episode Nagi Volumes 2 and 3 come to the West thanks to Kodansha and continue to be translated by Nate Derr with lettering by Michael Martin (Chris Durgener is credited for digital). Both releases read well and feel in line with the main series. Sadly, no extras to speak of for either volume, other than the usual author/artist afterword.

Since I last reviewed this series, it has concluded in Japan with eight volumes. Here in English, Kodansha has released volumes #4 through #6 and next up is #7 in April. So, we’re not too far off the end here either.

Overall, Blue Lock: Episode Nagi continues to be an interesting read for fans of the franchise. It successfully manages to avoid retreading too much of the main series and instead focuses on the feelings of Nagi and Reo as our leads.

Our review copies from Kodansha were supplied by Diamond Book Distributors UK.