Highlights
- Get ready for more BLUE LOCK action this Fall, with a second season confirmed for October 2024 premiere.
- The anime series gains momentum with a feature-length movie and a collaboration with Inter Milan.
- The intense Blue Lock program pits high school soccer players against each other for a chance at World Cup glory.
The official social media accounts of the hit soccer anime, BLUE LOCK, announced on Monday that the second season is coming this Fall, with an official premiere date set for October 2024.
The series is enjoying its time in the spotlight as a feature-length BLUE LOCK movie hit Japanese theatres on April 19, and is planned for a North American run starting on June 28, and it even saw a collaboration with Italian soccer supergiant, Inter Milan during the 2023/24 pre-season.
About BLUE LOCK
A Reinvigoration of Sports Anime
BLUE LOCK follows an initiative created by the Japanese Football Alliance (JFA) to find a striker who will be able to lead the national team to World Cup glory. Three hundred high school soccer players are pitted against each other in a rigorous training regiment that will take the best and only the best, leaving the remainders’ pro-soccer dreams in tatters. It’s an all-or-nothing program that seeks to bring out the very best of Japan’s talent pool in order to usher in a new era in Japanese soccer.
The BLUE LOCK manga, written by Muneyuki Kaneshiro and illustrated by Yūsuke Nomura has so far been collected into 28 volumes, with the series being serialized in Kodansha’s Weekly Shonen Magazine from August 2018 with the spin-off, BLUE LOCK: Episode Nagi being serialized in the publisher’s Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine from June 2022, with four volumes out so far.
The first season of the BLUE LOCK 2023 anime ran for 24 episodes from October 2022 to March 2023 and was directed by Tetsuaki Watanabe Ishikawa (episode director, Haikyuu!) at animation studio 8bit, known for productions like That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime, a number of iterations of The Irregular At Magic High School, and of course, the upcoming BLUE LOCK: Episode Nagi movie.
Other staff involved in the production of BLUE LOCK include series composer Taku Kishimoto (scripts, Ranking of Kings); character designers and animation directors Kento Toya (key animation, My Hero Academia the Movie -Heroes: Rising-) and Kenji Tanabe (The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic) among many other artists, animators, directors and animation directors. Cast members include Kazuki Ura as protagonist Yoichi Isagi; Sōma Saitō as Hyōma Chigiri; Tasuku Kaito as Meguru Bachira and Yūki Ono as Rensuke Kunigami, each of whom had a minor role in the Fall 2019 basketball anime, Ahiru no Sora and a number of other sports at some point, which may partially underlie the chemistry between them in BLUE LOCK.
More BLUE LOCK Incoming
Episode of Nagi In the US This June and Season 2 Drops In October
The film is directed by Shunsuke Ishikawa (assistant episode director, Nekomonogatari), with Taku Kishimoto retaining his role as series composer, and Jun Murayama returning to compose the music. The cast includes Nobunaga Shimazaki (Mahito, JUJUTSU KAISEN) as Seishirō Nagi; Yūma Uchida (Megumi Fushiguro, JUJUTSU KAISEN) as Reo Mikage; Hiroshi Kamiya (Levi, Attack on Titan) as Jinpachi Ego; Kazuki Ura as Yoichi Isagi and Kōki Uchiyama (Tomura Shigaraki, My Hero Academia) as Rin Itoshi.
Not much is known about the upcoming second season of BLUE LOCK; however, some names on the cast include Kazuki Ura returning to play Yoichi Isagi; Hiro Shimono (Zenitsu Agatsuma, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba) as Julian Loki; Kengo Kawanishi (Sōshirō Hoshina, Kaiju No. 8) as Eita Otoya; Makoto Furukawa (Saitama, One Punch Man) as Tabito Karasu; Shinichirō Kamio (Kaede Rukawa, The First Slam Dunk) as Leonardo Luna; Takuya Eguchi (Loid Forger, Spy x Family) returning to play Kenyū Yukimiya and Yūichi Nakamura (Hawks, My Hero Academia) as Ryūsei Shidō. The second season of BLUE LOCK will stream on Crunchyroll as it airs in Japan this October, no further release information is available as yet.
Source: Crunchyroll
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