Is Blue Lock Real or a Made-Up Story? (& Could It Become Reality)

Blue Lock is one of the most popular sports manga today and is currently being adapted into an anime as exciting as the original material. It follows a grand journey where many characters are competing to become the world’s strongest striker. With its vast content and many turning points, fans started to wonder if Blue Lock’s story is actually real or just a made-up one. If the latter, could it actually become real?

The events that happen during the Blue Lock series are fictional, even though some real events and real characters are mentioned during the story. Theoretically, it would be possible to create a situation similar to that of the Blue Lock manga in real life, but it seems too far extreme to be approved by any nation in the world.

Blue Lock seems too brutal to the participants to actually be considered to be translated into real life. However, the series took many inspirations from the real world to create its plot and features many things that do seem to have been taken from the real world. Let’s take a lot at how similar Blue Lock’s canon is to real life.

What Is Blue Lock?

Blue Lock is a sports manga originally written by Muneyuki Kaneshiro, while it is illustrated by Yusuke Nomura. It began serialization on August 1, 2018, in Weekly Shonen Magazine, the same magazine as Hajime no Ippo and Rent-A-Girlfriend. The manga was even recommended by Hajime Isayama, the author of Attack on Titan, a manga series that Yusuke Nomura worked on as an assistant.

The story begins in 2018 after Japan lost the soccer World Cup, it was truly a big defeat since they finished in 16th place. Because of this, a very mysterious and intelligent man named Ego Jinpachi is hired by the Japanese Soccer Union in order to improve their national soccer team. What Ego comes up with is a training camp that pretty much resembles a prison where promising young men can train together to become the world’s best striker. In a battle royale fashion, part of these young men is expelled if they fail to complete each step in the program, with the remaining person being defined as the winner and the best striker Japan has seen. Those who fail will also never be accepted into representing Japan ever again.

The protagonist is a guy named Yoichi Isagi, an average high schooler who is a fan of soccer and does not feel confident enough in his abilities. As he sees an opportunity to improve his abilities and become the greatest, he enters Blue Lock. There he will meet even stronger opponents, but also make lots of allies and make his way through this battle royale.

The series currently has 22 manga volumes published and has been adapted into an ongoing anime season of 24 episodes. The manga was nominated for various awards and even won the Kodansha Manga Award in the shonen category in 2021. It has more than 10 million copies in circulation.

Real Life in Blue Lock

Blue Lock takes many inspirations from real life to build its characters and the world where the story happens. During the manga and the anime, many soccer players and real-life events are mentioned with the objective of getting people who are already fans of soccer even more excited with the story.

These are some of the events and characters that either appear, served as inspiration, or are mentioned throughout Blue Lock:

Meguru Bachira Is Ronaldinho

The former Brazilian soccer player Ronaldinho was cited as Meguru Bachira’s inspiration in an interview with Blue Lock’s author Muneyuki Kaneshiro. Given that Bachira and Ronaldinho both have exceptional dribbling skills, the similarities are obvious. In addition to his unmatched dribbling prowess, the famous player is regarded as one of the greatest players of all time for his ability to score goals and set them up with trickery, feints, and overhead kicks. Brazil’s bronze-medal performance at the 2008 Summer Olympics was led by him as captain.

Pelé

Pelé was another Brazilian soccer player that was cited on Blue Lock. The renowned Brazilian has often been praised as one of the greatest in the world. He completely transformed Brazil’s style of play during his prime and was the inspiration for many of the country’s victories.

Jinpachi Ego quoted Pelé at the beginning of the Blue Lock series as a way of encouraging the candidates to participate in the Blue Lock program.

Eric Cantona

Blue Lock’s Ego quoted Eric Cantona’s remarks when defining an egotistical striker. Cantona seemed to solely care about himself, as shown in the anime. In an effort to stand out, he wanted to do well. Ego desired a striker with this mentality—someone who would go above and beyond the call of duty to create chances and excel.

Jinpachi Ego quoted Cantona at the beginning of the Blue Lock series as a way of encouraging the candidates to participate in the Blue Lock program.

Neymar

During episode 2 of the anime, in another of Jinpachi Ego’s speeches, he is explaining the importance of the Blue Lock program and how it pushes soccer to a new level. In this speech, he also referred to another extremely famous Brazillian player, Neymar who is one of the biggest stars of his generation, as one of the heroes that exist to make soccer evolve to another level and continue doing so endlessly.

Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo

Two of the biggest soccer players of our generation, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo were also mentioned by Jinpachi Ego during his signature speech. He mentioned both of them when he was talking about the fictional soccer player Noel Noa, who supposedly did better than Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo and succeeded in taking the Ballon d’Or, one of the biggest soccer-related trophies, from them.

Both of them are also referred to again as soccer hero, who relentlessly pushes the sport forward.

Could the Blue Lock Program Happen in Real Life?

The Blue Lock program as it is depicted in the manga would not function since it violates human rights since participants are not informed of all the regulations before entering the program. However, if Blue Lock required participants to agree to the conditions of a standard contract, it might function.

It would be a highly competitive training environment where your sole goal in life would be to push the boundaries of a soccer player. You won’t have access to the outside world and nobody can stop you from doing your daily exercises. It will be even more difficult if Blue Lock makes you follow the same training regimen as Cristiano Ronaldo.

However, a program like Blue Lock might be unfit to train professional soccer players since soccer really is a team sport. Even though the Blue Lock series focuses on creating the greatest striker and developing one’s ego, in real life it really matters that the whole team has a good synergy and has the ability to face other well-versed teams.

With this, it is pretty clear how Blue Lock would function in real life and the inspirations it already has took from the real world to create is characters and give a close connection to the audience. Now we just hope to see a real player make a official appearance in the story and participate somehow in the plot.

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