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Dec 13, 2025
This is painful to read through and not for the reasons you might think.
The sexual trauma of the MC and other characters was well done with no sense of sexualization or fetish material. Even the discussion on abortion was handled with nuance. I just feel sorry for the other male character, who constantly has to put up with MC's trauma and stress himself out over her and deal with the other guy, jesus christ there's no way they'll resolve that right? I just can't believe there's no limit to his patience. Or maybe that's the point and the ending will be max pain.
Please God end
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the fucking manga already.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Dec 13, 2025
This anime is consistently good even after a decade. (rewatched 2x)
Worldbuilding and mystery and figuring out the logic of the setting is engaging and sensible-- while the explanation for how such a world came to be created is almost nonexistent, it's nothing foundational that makes a lot of plotholes as implications. There are interesting character interactions connected together by juvenile but stupidly funny gags, which makes an anime like this that ACTUALLY HAS NO HAREM SHIT very memorable; too may times there are harem tropes that the anime almost fell into but cleverly maneuvered out of.
But there's a side character romance that isn't very well
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written, not because there's no chemistry but because they had no serious moments together outside of gags that made the confession "out of left field" (iykyk). So it feels extremely jarring when they entertain living a life together in the real world.
About the messages, themes, and portrayal of women-- there's one character whose ultimate regret in life was that she was never able to get married because she was disabled and paralyzed, and calls marriage "a woman's happiness" lmao. Then a male character says that he'd marry her no matter what. At surface level this seems to go against the idea of "marriage as a woman's happiness" but it really reinforces it, because even if you're paralyzed all you have to do is find a man who would marry you and that's it lol, nothing about how you don't need to get married to be happy. Also, it promotes the naive idea that marriage and romance is the ultimate form of love, you can still love someone as a person and not be obligated to spend your life taking care of them. As typical of 2000's and early 2010's anime, some sexist shit is said, such as one female character being more vulnerable meaning she's more "feminine" lmao, and male character being misogynist and saying that "women are pathetic".
Fortunately that's all my complaints on the themes, messages, and portrayal of women, plus, a big point in this anime's favor is that the fanservice is tasteful and is never humiliating, which too many animanga is unable to do.
Overall, it's something very fun to watch with someone and show anime newbies.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Oct 24, 2025
This manga restored my hope in battle shounen, especially one being serialized in Weekly Shounen Jump.
What can I say? MC is interesting and easy to root for, characters and motivations are well-written across the board, there are solid familial themes that resonate among many characters, imaginative plays that upturn battles... all without making you feel like the worldbuilding is lacking and can't keep up with the plot like many other popular urban fantasy manga (Chainsaw man, Tokyo Ghoul are my prime bad examples).
An issue that is important to me is the portrayal of female characters, and this did not disappoint. They are relevant to the
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themes (so far) and don't seem to have any chance of being sidelined/being the weird sexual one (as happens in too many shounen/seinen manga). They are drawn tastefully (no impossibly large, physics defying breasts) and with the same approach to design as the male characters with no random exposed areas of skin, and practical clothing (except one female character, who is the only one that wears high heels to battle, it bothers me but compared to other manga I'll take what I can get). Let's pray that this doesn't end up being another disappointment like Jujutsu Kaisen.
Deservedly, Kagurabachi has surpassed meme status and is well on its way to rivalling bigger battle shounen/seinen. Finally, a new dawn rises.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Oct 20, 2025
First of all I know nothing about soccer/football (or rather just "sportsball" to me) and have never completed a sports anime or manga, so this isn't coming from a place of feeling like the manga is inaccurate or over-the-top or battle-shouneny or whatever. After binging about 100 chapters in one day and having caught up, I'm currently trying to process everything that has happened to this point and its thematic value. But let's start with the easy stuff.
A point that has bothered me ever since the beginning of the manga: the idea that Japan's collectivism makes them shit at soccer/football. Ok, that's a compelling premise
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that really makes me feel the subversiveness of the cultural context, except for the fact that their women's team has already won a World Cup, which is never addressed. Makes me wonder what the author is trying to say about women and their achievements by omission, because if Japanese women were able to win against women from non-collectivist societies in a sport that's more individualistic, then collectivism isn't the main problem. Also, it shouldn't matter that women's soccer is "less intense", because intensity or high stakes or popularity of women's sports should have nothing to do with collectivism vs. individualism. To counter this, you can say “well maybe the women’s WC win didn’t exist in the Blue Lock world” which… is a fair point, however, the new problem now has to do with the wider societal commentary on what improves a nation’s international standing, because all the focus in now on improving the men’s team when more “ego” would help the women’s team win world cups, too.
On that subject, I don't expect any focus on female characters in a story about men's sports (which is why I avoid men's sports manga), but the only named, regularly appearing female character... hm, not sure how to feel about her portrayal. Her large chest is pointed out constantly but at least is never drawn in a distasteful way, and you do get many panels highlighting the male character's nude bodies and focusing on what makes them attractive; but then again, the males get character development and thematic value on top of that, she doesn't. Sure, everyone is an object to some degree but she is more of an object than other characters and that's bothersome, especially when there's potential for a compelling dynamic with Jinpachi Ego and we only get crumbs of relationship development (platonic or romantic doesn't matter).
TLDR; I'm dissatisfied at the very least with the messages about women in this manga, something exacerbated by the point of women's sports earlier.
The hype of binging successive matches and beautiful artwork has finally passed (there is a reason why I binge read this), so let's look at the thematic value of everything else. Anyway, from the start, Jinpachi says that your soccer career ends if you don't make it in Blue Lock. First of all, that just ends up not being true for no reason, Blue Lock ends up producing a TEAM not a single player, and second of all, it was obviously all talk; there was never any reason to believe that losing in BL would end soccer careers, what measures were even in place to ensure that, the soccer higher-ups aren't even united on their sports ideology or whatever. This is a very poor foundation for the rest of the manga, because it's all about what makes a good striker, you shouldn't pass to others, etc, yet to filter people out, they make them play in teams. But in the end, even someone like me understands, it's a fucking team sport isn't it? Hence why a "team" was formed at this point in the story, lmfao. My suspension of disbelief finally broke when the Blue Lockers inspired some foreign team to be individualistic and completely changed their playstyle. Nah that's enough for me. I read this because I had a feeling that it would be a while before I'm in the mood to read a similar manga, and I guess I found out part of the reason why.
Character relationship wise, for a manga that can be abbreviated as "BL" and features a lot of "character x character" titles for combos, of course there's going to be intense relationships between male characters; however it was very underwhelming, even for someone like me who doesn't even read Boy's Love. Nobody really has friends or people they like being with, and nobody really is friends with Isagi the damn protagonist because the whole point of his character is that he inspires people to develop their own ego and evolve, so even if they do develop a friendship with him they're eventually consumed by ego or whatever and they stop having powerful moments together beyond a sick combo, and it doesn't help that protagonist-kun keeps insulting everyone to the very end. So do these people even like playing soccer with their teammates? There's only one relationship that can truly be classified as good friends, but the current development of one of them isn't satisfying because it was setting him up to believe in friendship and teamwork instead of hyper-individualism, but then he gets an ego-fueled reason to play soccer out of nowhere in the recent chapter.
Overall, this manga is not completely my taste at best and thematically worrying at worst, but I can't really hate this manga with its questionable themes because the ideology really resonated with me at this point in my life. All aspects of life are just extensions of the need to survive, and if you don't believe in yourself, you die; there's a very raw and evolutionary message here. There's the point it excels best at, drilling in this idea of never being content with where you are and always aiming for growth and surpassing all your obstacles, also very impactful, because for me, when you do develop "ego" your life really changes, you know how to advocate for yourself, and it really does feel like you're actually living.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Sep 18, 2025
I have no idea what this manga is trying to do.
I was expecting a story simply about how the two try to live happily after an accidental pregnancy in a manga of this length, but there's clearly a lot deeper issues than that that don't get addressed.
For one, didn't the teacher force himself on the student in their initial sexual encounter? She kept saying "no..."
Another problem is that the student also seems to be deeply psychologically troubled even before that. She thinks a child would be the meaning of her life, so she kept pestering the sensei like the usual sexually assertive student of a
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teacher/student romance would do and then gets scared when he makes advances which is kind of disturbing.
Then when she does get pregnant, it was never clear why she never got an abortion. Was she pressured into not getting it or not? The narrative includes many scenes where she misses high school life, which makes no sense if she's simultaneously also an edgy disturbed outcast.
It's just... weird.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Sep 10, 2025
It's an average shoujo romance story, with good themes, a well resolved love polygon, and glaring issues.
-Two characters are allegedly childhood friends yet their is absolutely no substance to their relationship and they're only like that because plot.
-Kazu as a character is boring and makes no sense. He's advertised as the airhead character who doesn't know about love but clearly is the opposite.
-Personally, it's just annoying to see FL pine over this guy until he returns her feelings. Guess I'll read about a yandere next.
Great themes and side characters though. There's a lot about making excuses to yourself to explain why you don't improve or
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chase your dreams, which resonates with me at this point in my life, and it helps strengthen the bonds in the romantically involved because they recognize that and improve and help each other improve.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jul 2, 2025
I get why Berserk is at the top of MAL's manga section, but it's really only because of the Golden Age arc. It's in the character development and outstanding writing. We get to see how the characters react to different developments in their lives (especially Griffith) and how their relationships and motivations change. Characters like Griffith are detestable, but they are completely understandable and even relatable. All the events that come to pass to culminate in the Eclipse make sense. It's legendary.
My biggest problem is with the portrayal of the female characters.
To start off, there's an evil group called the "God Hand," consisting of
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5 members. And the only woman just happens to also be the weird sexual sexy one while all the males look very ugly and different from one another and aren't meant to be sexy like she is. And of course, how this series handles depictions of rape. In one character's backstory we see that his childhood rape gets handled tastefully with no unsavory camera angling, another pimps himself out and all we focus on is his trauma and regret and feeling of being dirty, but the rapes of women go on for way too long and are heavily angled to emphasize certain areas; the women are all perfect looking with no saggy tits or anything. You can argue that "b-but it portrays the brutality of the world!!" ok so why aren't all the male soldiers bishonen? Not to mention how, you know, men DO get off to the rape of women. You can't honestly argue it's meant to horrify you.
And I didn't even get to how the female characters are actually handled. If you look at them without their contexts they do seem very decently written, with carefully thought out motivations and dialogue, but in the context of the story as a whole they are sidelined and used as plot devices. For example, the main female character's motivations center around one man, and later another man (whose character is primarily influenced by that other man). That's not a bad thing in a vacuum, but the narrative seems to paint her romance with the latter man as "true love" when in reality they're both acting as replacements for someone else (if you really analyze the scenes they're in, scenes that would remind them both of that male character they idolize, it's clear why they would think that way about each other). None of these issues are resolved or addressed, especially since that female character is "absent" for a large portion of the narrative so we never get to see her thoughts on anything until a small portion where afterwards she is rendered a damsel in distress again.
I also can't wrap my head around how fantasy creatures only ever seem to want to rape women and incorporeal beings also want to do the same. But this concept is as old as Genesis where male angels apparently find human women desirable enough to rape and impregnate, so you know these concepts are so clearly written by men who can't conceive of a perspective outside of their own sexuality.
And the female side characters are handled no different (female children aren't spared and are also given strange naked camera angles). A prominent female side character's story is overly sexual, is almost raped by an animal and also sexualized, and her "character arc" turns her from the weird sexual one in a leadership position to the meek, demure one following the team. I get that there's nuance in the other bits of that narrative but in the wider context of the story it's just so coincidental that she has to have those traits, especially when a certain male character's attitudes towards sexuality are handled with much more taste.
Due to all of this, this work feels homoerotic, not in the sense that it's yaoi, but that there is a clear love for and preference towards men and the deep, transcendent relationships they form; women are simply middlemen or vessels of lust for the viewer (and often also the male characters).
Guts is a well written protagonist, as likeable as someone who follows the same tired formula of "man regards other man as the most important thing in his life more than his female romance interest who regards him/both of them as her most important people." He becomes more stable as a person later on but he's really just a trauma magnet. Nothing ends up changing about his situation and he continues blindly on his clearly pointless and meaningless goal of defeating villain man. But that's not his fault, that's the fault of the writers for padding out the main conflict; Guts wants revenge on the main antagonist, who the writers have no idea what to do with. He's way too powerful and every arc ends in some kind of horrorfest where everything keeps going wrong, so they move to another area, and villain man keeps getting powerup after powerup while the few powerups Guts gets are killing him whenever he uses them. It gets tiring after a while, seeing this predictable parade pan out, because you cant tell there's no clear goal. There's never going to be an end to this godforsaken story.
But when themes are handled excellently, they do hit hard, especially coupled with lovely, unparalled art, which was what allowed me to read 300+ chapters. But I'm not keeping up with this manga any longer. I do not find value in works that regard women as lesser creatures.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Jun 20, 2025
Ughhhh. Why is it always like this?
The ML is so damn cute and looks insanely good in glasses and he's just so charming and adorable when he blushes. The romance is sweet and believable, too. Unfortunately, everything else about this manga sucks.
First, the MC. She has NO PERSONALITY outside of ML... which is fine, but everyone whines about how this guy isn't dropping a hobby he's been devoted to since he was a little kid just for her and how she's hurting etc. etc. but they never tell her to stop being so codependent. She doesn't care about her friends until the very end of
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the story, which makes her look even worse.
And ML isn't free from criticism either; even beyond his karate obsession, there was so much bare minimum he could do to to make MC-chan happy, such as actually retorting to an intrusive side character who keeps asking all sorts of questions that are none of his business (it takes ML-kun 50 billion chapters to actually TELL HIM THAT despite not being established as an actual shy person like the premise claims he is). Oh yeah and he allegedly is unable to talk to girls for NO REASON. Why is he like this? The story never explains. Is it misogyny from being socialized to treat girls like they're a different species? After all, he often devolves into tangents about how MC-chan doesn't understand guys etc. etc... what's wrong with this guy? So poorly characterized I was genuinely confused the entire time as to his every action. I don't know what the author's angle with him was.
The side characters have wack relationships with each other. As mentioned before MC doesn't think much about her friends until the very end, but there's also a side character who seems to like MC just because his besto friendo likes her...? Weirdo... the story keeps going on and on about how spechul they are to each other, meanwhile MC's world revolves only around ML-kun. So tired of this homoeroticism (not in a literal sense but in a sense where male relationships are once again the most deepest or whatever while female characters are sidelined, and this is in a shoujo manga lmaooo). The rest of the side characters hook up with the most random characters ever, as if the author added them in last minute.
Art is amazing, chibi sprites are charming and memorable, character designs are consistent all around. Too bad good art is the only thing going for manga like this.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Jun 16, 2025
Eh it could have been better.
Main guy is super damn hot and cute and I completely understand why MC-chan would want to be with him romantically. They have sickeningly sweet interactions.
But oh no there's the age gap!!1! The story seems to attempt to treat this seriously as there's an overprotective "she's a minor bro" dad who keeps wanting a super special deep reason for them to be together. LI-san's reason ends up being "well she's the first girl who admires me and my body type and i want 2 marry her uwu" and MC-chan is "ummm because... I like hot guys with hot body types...?"
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(because she pretends to like the boring bishie twinks at school but with him she's honest!!1!1!)
That's why the drama fell flat. It wanted to be a comedy but perhaps author-san ran out of ideas to pad out more chapters and decide to immediately go full throttle into le age gap in modern days forbidden tabooness. Would have benefitted from more chapters and more build up into MC and how apparently isolated she feels (shown in like 3 panels where girls admire normie bishie twinks).
Artwise the character designs are rather inconsistent and they look very strange at times.
Everything (besides the hot wrestler body type you came her for) was executed better in tsubaki chou.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jun 16, 2025
Really weird with questionable messages.
Everything seemed to be within the tone of the work until weeks leading to the point the girl gives birth where a bunch of elementary schoolers all kumbayah and decide to help out (including boys in 90's japan who are somehow not misogynist or gross about the process of giving birth or raising children)
I'm not sure why a young girl giving birth is seen as a good thing. "If you're pregnant then that means your body is meant to support a pregnancy" NO SHE ISN'T and this is coming from an adult, how the hell can you say that? Her pelvis
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is not wide enough to survive childbirth.
I'm also disappointed with the handling of the feminist character who had a mental breakdown and then got pregnant for no reason at the end.
The work seemed to set out to challenge the misogyny and oppressive gender roles of 90's Japan but because its childishness and idealism somehow seems to end up reinforcing them.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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