blue lock vol 5 by Muneyuki Kaneshiro

Illustrated by Yusuke Nomura
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Team Z has been fighting hard against Team V and has tied the score up 3-3 even though they're down a member, but suddenly, Nagi decides that he doesn't want to take all of his orders from Mikage, and he starts to become aware of his massive talents, include his unnatural speed. Isagi, at first, can't account of Nagi in his spacial awareness because Nagi becomes very unpredictable, but then Isagi has his own awakening and realizes that Nagi is seeing the best moves, and Isagi can counter him before he makes them. Once the game is over, Team Z is sequestered to strength training and not allowed to touch a soccer ball until the rest of the wings are done with their elimination tournaments, but Ego wastes no time in setting up the next round of trials, and revealing some secrets to how the first round's brackets were set up.

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There are some surprises in this volume that make the first round of competition make a lot more sense, especially given how our main characters were in the "bottom" of a very difficult competition, and I was not looking forward to the amount of struggle the would have to go through to get to the top. I am also glad that the second round of competition is going to be set up a little differently than the first round, but sat to see some of Isagi's teammates are not going to be with him anymore. This does mean that some of the cool characters from other teams that we met throughout the last four volumes are going to be more important now, so that means that was work Kaneshiro spent wisely building up some of his side characters.

Sara's Rating: 9/10
Suitability Level: Grades 9-12

Reviews of previous volumes in this series: vol 1, vol 2, vol 3

Publisher: Kodansha
Publication Date: February 21, 2023
ISBN: 9781646516629

​Tags: Rating: 9/10 Suitability: High School, Manga, Sports, Action Adventure, Survival, Kodansha