Blue lock and fencing and sports comics

[mozaikmage]

So I binged all of Blue Lock in about three days, after turning my nose up at the very premise when it first dropped in 2018. And like... I like it. But not the way I like Haikyuu!!, which is also a sports manga that occupies a lot of my brainspace. Blue Lock doesn't make me want to draw fanart or write fanfiction. I don't even have a favorite character in it. I guess I like Bachira and Chigiri if I really had to pick, but I don't think about any of them often enough to do that. But it gets me fired up in a way Haikyuu!! rarely did, because its pace was a lot more...slow and steady?
Blue Lock is operating at 200% intensity, all the time. Every soccer game is accompanied by characters burning with symbolic fire, usually fire with skulls in it. Every single soccer player wants to be the bestest in the world at all costs, unlike Haikyuu!! where for most of the characters high school volleyball really was just a school club they didn't continue with after high school. They're all doing crazy soccer things at all times, and even though I know basically nothing about soccer and have no interest in it, seeing them doing their crazy soccer things illustrated with sharp, graphic visual metaphors like disintegrating puzzle pieces, fire, lions and tigers and snakes (oh my!) makes me feel excited.
But not about soccer. No, it makes me excited because my first thought is, "Oh, I can draw people fencing like this. I can make fencing look cool if I draw it like this. I want to draw my fencing comic again."


I've drawn at least 4 different comics about high school girls fencing, the quality slowly improving with each attempt. I've finally landed on a group of characters I think could really work for a longform story, but my art still has a ways to go before it's publication ready. So I'm practicing!


There's a lot of manga about baseball (obviously), and more than a few series about volleyball and soccer (Farewell, My Dear Cramer is honestly slept on even though it got cancelled before its time. The anime was a very sad excuse for an adaptation. Feral girl rights!), but as far as comics about fencing that are available in English in any capacity go, we've got the webtoon Infinity (genuinely slaps hard, art style's an acquired taste but the writing is smart, characters fun and they do make an effort to make fencing look cool while taking advantage of the vertical scroll format.) And the Boom! series Fence!, which I liked when it first dropped and then slowly realized it was in fact falling apart at the seams. And each new issue just makes the holes bigger. One of its biggest failings is, quite honestly, the art: the fact that it makes fencing look boring.

Fencing is not actually as visually interesting a sport as swashbuckling swordfights in movies make it seem: everyone wears white, faces are totally obscured by black wire mesh masks, and you can't even move from side to side in it, just back and forth! You have to use visual metaphors and, if working in color, emotionally expressive color to make fencing look interesting in a comic. But Fence! doesn't even differentiate the fencing uniforms from different schools realistically: it's impossible to keep track of who's from where when they're standing around. Infinity manages that and more. Like, okay, just look at this.





AAAAAAAAAAA.
Anyway, the other thing I realized is that the last few comics I've felt insane about, Blue Lock and Pyramid Game, have both been... unhinged. Lots of people behaving in ways normal people would never. Hand in unlovable hand toxic female friendships and singleminded homoerotic soccer obsession. But when I write original stories/make original comics, I tend towards things that people call "cute" and "sweet" and "nice." I don't think my work is cutesy or anything, and I'd like to believe I make things with at least some bite to them. At least a little darkness. But why am I so scared of writing the over-the-top intensity and character drama I love reading about so much? Why am I so afraid of writing failgirls, and totally unhinged girls? How do I channel the energy Blue Lock awakens in me, or the spite Fence! makes me feel?
Anyway, Blue Lock should've been a yuri manga.

Comments

all fired up

[shrimpchipsss]

as someone who wrote off blue lock once I knew it was going to be more along the lines of prince of tennis as far as realism about a sport is, I loved reading this take on it

I have been thinking recently about how some sports series make you love the sport by being an insufferable nerd about all of the technicalities and details of that sport (haikyuu, chihayafuru), and some sports series are more using the sport as a vehicle for something else, be it the characters or their relationships or whatever

and then the gradient in between (run with the wind is somewhat technical it's almost more about the relationship between the runner and running than the technicalities of running. tsurune also has some amount of technicality but you don't get quite into the weeds of it, it takes a backseat to the character dynamics. I'm stuck in the early episodes of ping pong because I want to savor it too hard so can't say either way)

sorry to write a whole dw post in your comments haha but it got me fired up! maybe this will get me to write the full post that I've been meaning to. I'm excited for what your blue lock read will mean for your fencing comic and how you imagine the storytelling of it from now on. I always love when a story convinces you that something, but especially a sport, is interesting. like I always thought baseball was stupid until I read a mdzs fic that went deep into the reason why this or that thing happening had significance in the game

Re: all fired up

[mozaikmage]

Blue Lock is actually closer to Haikyuu!! in terms of realistic sports activities than like... okay I haven't read Prince of Tennis but I've watched about 5 episodes of Kuroko no Basuke and read half of Baki against my will and on a scale of Haikyuu!! to "literal actual superpowers"(KNB) and "the doctor character straight-up lying about human anatomy and physiology to the audience" (Baki), Blue Lock is approaching "literal superpowers" but not actually hitting "can break down someone's skills into numerical stats with a single glance." They do fitness tests to determine those stats. The main character gives some of his skills special names and I think his abilities are somewhat heightened but not, like, actually defying the laws of physics? The mind games can get a bit Death Note-ish at times though. But the visuals look really cool so it works for me.
Ping Pong is fantastic and I also really recommend the manga! The anime is honestly stunningly faithful to Matsumoto's unique art style, they're both great experiences.
I would love to see that MDZS fic because I watched two and a half seasons of Daiya no Ace and while I did develop attachments to several of the baseball boys I could not develop an attachment to them playing baseball. Which is ultimately why I stopped keeping up with Daiya there is so much baseball in that thing and not enough not-baseball.

[queenlua]

oh wow. i've read some haikyuu & enjoyed some other sports anime in my time, but it had never even occurred to me to think of fencing as a potential subject—what a cool writeup!

i really liked reading this post & the bits about the trickiness of translating fencing mechanics to a visually interesting comic, etc, thanks for sharing~

[mozaikmage]

Thank you for reading! I did fencing in middle and high school for 4 years and was on my high school team for a while that's why I'm so attached to it as a narrative subject haha. Someday I'm gonna figure it out.
But that's not actually how I connect to sports stories generally I wasn't that passionate about or good at fencing, it's the way I feel about making comics that I think about every time I read a sports manga. Like I can't do anything else.
Thank you for enjoying my post!