The world is full of fascinating things
that capture our attention. We all have unique interests that bring us joy. I know
it sounds obvious, but it’s safe to say that everyone has different and unique hobbies
and interests that they love. And for me, while it isn’t really that unique of a passion,
There is one certain sport that I love, both as a little kid, and today as a.. slightly
less little kid. In the words of a certain Frenchman who has a brilliant way with words:
[Insert Eric Cantona saying “I love football”] If there’s anything I feel like I can talk
about for hours on end, it’s football. It’s a sport that I truly do enjoy. I loved it when
I was little, however I did gradually fall out of it heading into my early teens. My love for
football rekindled following the 2022 World Cup, as I was able to rediscover the things I
loved about football. It’s the raw passion, the dedicated players, the wild and varying
personalities, the in-depth tactics, the movie-like stories, the rich history,
the culmination of all these little in-depth things is what makes football, for me, such
a brilliant sport. And if there is a piece of fiction regarding football which I think captures
this aforementioned essence that I so dearly love to the nearest possible detail, it’s a show that
you’ve probably not heard of before. In fact, it’s an anime. It is one that I really do
not see enough people talking about online, despite how enjoyable and great of a show I found
it to be, and it goes by the name of Ao Ashi. Ao Ashi is a sports anime that aired in 2022,
produced by Production IG, and adapted from the 2015 manga written and illustrated by
Yugo Kobayashi, with Naohiko Ueno providing the original concept for the series. Ao Ashi
tells the story of Ashito Aoi, a young boy from a rural Japanese town who plays football for his
local school club. Ashito is a gifted player but is held back due to his lack of understanding,
technique and personality, oftentimes ignoring tactics and just moving on intuition. He
is eventually scouted by youth football coach Tatsuya Fukuda to come to tryouts for his
professional football club’s youth team in Tokyo. The standout thing about Ao Ashi that I think
captivates me a lot is its attention to detail when it comes to football. Every single play,
decision and tactic during matches is explained, which makes you understand what goes on and
eliminates the feeling of characters just pulling something out of nowhere and suddenly winning.
You can really understand that the author is passionate about football, and it reflects a lot
in the writing of the show. Real world examples from the footballing world are often mentioned
in Ao Ashi, and the anime also devotes a lot of time into explaining to the viewer how different
systems within football works. You get to learn about how the youth team of a J-League club, also
known as a J-Youth team, operates, the difference between J-Youth and high school clubs, and
rudimentary tactics and plays that are taught out at youth level. While Ao Ashi does cater to me a
lot as a football fan because of its’ footballing realism, the other thing that captivates me, and
what allows for more people to enjoy Ao Ashi, is that it is brilliant at seamlessly blending
football realism and story. For starters, the character dynamics within the team is very well
done. Characters interact with each other, learn from each other, disagree with each other and
win with each other. While some characters aren’t written in too much detail compared to others,
Almost every single character still has unique skill sets, weaknesses and personality traits,
which helps create a great feeling of variety, with characters not feeling like they’re there
to simply assist the main character’s journey, but more so giving a realistic and active feeling
of how football players work and function in a team. Ao Ashi doesn’t fit the classic sports anime
trope of winning with the “power of friendship”, nor does it take the Blue Lock route of throwing
every single trope out of the window. Instead, Ao Ashi takes a more grounded and realistic
route, emphasizing things like the mental aspect of football and the aforementioned player
dynamics, showing how life can actually be for a player in a J-Youth club. For example, Ashito
isn’t immediately accepted by his teammates at his new club; A lot of them are already established at
the club’s youth teams and a lot of them look down on people who are worse than them or don’t think
the same way as them both on and off the pitch, which leads Ashito to struggle connecting
with a few of his better skilled teammates. Continuing on about the character personality
aspect, it is one thing that Ao Ashi does well. Already in the first episodes, you are
presented with the depth of personality in the main character. It’s easy to assume that Ashito
is the “dumb but sometimes smart” character trope but if you read into it a bit more you can
really appreciate his character writing. An example is his skill, or lack thereof. Ashito is
the best player by far at his local school club, but as he moves over to Tokyo to play for
a professional football club’s youth team, his lack of knowledge about the game becomes
visibly clear, as he struggles to understand the right way to pass, control the ball, or
understand his teammates. Ashito’s strong suit is his vision and game sense, visualized in the
anime as a sort of “eagle eye”, looking down on the field from above and utilizing his intuition
to read the moves of the people ahead. While this allows Ashito to produce some exceptional plays,
it proves to be a double-edged sword as it becomes evident that he’s been riding on this intuition
for way too long, to the point where he has no idea about how to work in a tactical system.
Ashito is too used to his former school club where everyone was below his skill level and would
just pass to him. Over the course of the season, Ashito slowly bridges the gap between him and
his teammates, through training, communication, hardships and challenges. This ties back to a
previous point I made, which is that Ao Ashi is not just football. To be honest, Ao Ashi isn’t
incredibly spectacular when it comes to the overall plot, it is a fairly simple plot, but the
reason that Ao Ashi’s plot shines is because it’s a simple plot that’s executed brilliantly, because
it talks about the off the pitch aspects as much as the aspects on the pitch. Ashito trains, fails
and goes through setbacks. He doesn’t magically get better at football because he trains a
certain thing once, you can still tell over the course of the season that Ashito is still at a
big deficit compared to the rest of his teammates, but he still shines through because of his
personality. And when it comes to the personality, there again is the “double-edged sword” character
aspect that I love about Ashito. Ashito is shown as a stubborn, determined and hard-headed
player, one that refuses to go down without a fight. It’s his passion to succeed within the
world of football that fuels him along with his stubbornness which takes him to places that other
players would never be able to reach, but he has a tendency to self-destruct or get stuck in
a negative loop when faced with a challenge. Without spoiling too much, there’s a lot of things
that do fuel Ashito’s desire to perform well, but when faced with a difficult predicament,
he has a tendency to become overpassionate and extend himself way too far. This character aspect
is briefly touched upon in the anime, Ashito’s tendency of getting too obsessed is something
that’s a bit more explained in the manga. Ao Ashi also nails its supporting characters very well.
A lot of them are decently nuanced, carrying strengths and weaknesses which I enjoy very much.
One character, for example, is presented as one of the best forwards in the youth team but struggles
heavily with self-confidence. Another character is presented as an outsider in the youth team, due to
past fights with other members of the youth team, not agreeing with the philosophies and morals
taught by the club that the more established youth players follow. There are some tropes that
still creep in, yes, there’s the perverted comic relief character, but even he possesses actual
footballing skills and contributes to the story instead of just being comic relief. The
fact that all characters play a role, interact with each other and hold friendships and
grudges with each other makes every character feel different and alive, and that’s once again
what I really do like about the characters. I briefly brought up the plot of Ao Ashi,
explaining how it does a simple plot very well, and I believe Ao Ashi achieves this through the
medium of “relatability”. The reason Ao Ashi has been recommended by real-life professional
footballers is because it is a realistic football story, not only because they play realistic
football, but also due to the stories off the pitch. Ashito, for example, isn’t some weak
no-name who sucks at football and suddenly becomes the best in the world over the course of one
season, nor is he some destined “chosen” player. While Ashito has a great natural talent, he is
still human. In the first episode, it’s revealed that Ashito comes from a poor upbringing, with
a mom and a brother who are constantly working so that their family can stay afloat. Despite
this, Ashito’s mother wants nothing but the best for his son, and has supported Ashito’s
footballing passion since childhood. This, in turn, acts as a drive to succeed for Ashito,
knowing his family’s financial situation and their unwavering support, to become a professional
so he can give his family a better life with the money he’ll make in the future. While this
may seem like a generic sob-story to some, it is a very common and realistic motivation
for a lot of footballers around the world, especially those from poorer countries. One
player this makes me think of is Endrick, who came from a poor upbringing in Brazil, having
times where his family couldn’t even put food on the table. Despite this, Endrick promised his
family that he’d become a professional footballer to save them from poverty. With support from his
family, and his love for football, Endrick now plays for the Brazilian national team and Real
Madrid as a 17-year old, still working hard as ever for his love of the game and his family.
In his own words: “We weren’t born into wealth, we were born into football”. Stories like
these that are written into Ao Ashi is what makes it so great, not only from a footballing
perspective, but also an emotional perspective, as it shows that passion for football can take
you far no matter where you come from. It’s what makes Ao Ashi a true testament to football
and why it is nicknamed “the beautiful game”. While I still believe that most characters in
the Ao Ashi anime are interesting and unique, the Ao Ashi anime doesn’t elaborate on too
many other characters’ backstories in detail, which is a shame because the characters that
do get backstories are absolutely brilliant in terms of emotion and writing. I do kind of
wish we got to know a bit more about the others, as well. There are a few other things that I did
not enjoy as much about Ao Ashi. There’s a whole romance aspect of Ao Ashi as well, and while I
don’t have anything against romance subplots in fiction, it’s not executed that well in Ao Ashi
and honestly feels like it’s a bit unnecessary and cheesy at times. While I still found the
relationship between Ashito and Hana fun and wholesome… Did we really need a love triangle
drama in an anime about football though? I guess it can be excused since they’re all just
teenagers, but it feels kind of haphazardly thrown together and it feels like, most of
the time, it doesn’t contribute much to the story. Ao Ashi also isn’t exempt from the classic
anime corniness at times, while the dialogue in Ao Ashi still feels very good and natural,
I found it to sometimes be slightly corny, but I feel like that’s kind of expected when it
comes to the medium of anime. Ao Ashi is obviously not a perfect anime, but it still has other
things that I really did enjoy, for example, the animation. The production studio behind
Ao Ashi is the same as those who made other acclaimed sports animes such as Haikyuu, Kuroko’s
Basketball and Diamond no Ace, and I think that they did a pretty good job animating Ao Ashi. The
football scenes feel realistic and well-paced yet they still get you excited, characters look
natural while playing and while I kind of felt that the animation quality does drop slightly
towards the later end of the anime, I still found the scenes where they play football to be
very good. Ao Ashi also handles pacing very well, as football is a sport that’s difficult to pace
and animate due to the length of the matches, and there’s no big pauses or monologues that
feel like they break up the flow of the matches. Ashito’s progression as a player doesn’t feel
forced either, it feels nice to see him gradually improve, instead of suddenly skyrocketing
up the ranks. Another standout feature of the anime was definitely the soundtrack, composed
by Masaru Yokoyama, who also made the soundtracks for Horimiya, Classroom of the Elite’s second
and third seasons, and MASHLE. I personally think it’s one of the things that set the Ao Ashi
anime apart, because it’s a great soundtrack that gets you hyped or emotional in the right moments.
It's obvious to say that music can really elevate moments in shows, and a big factor for me on why
I love the Ao Ashi anime. I don’t even listen to anime soundtracks at all, but I often have the
Ao Ashi soundtrack on while I’m playing games just because of how hype I find the soundtrack,
so I think that says something about it. In fact, throughout the entire video, all of the music
has come from the Ao Ashi original soundtrack. As I’m trying to keep the video spoiler-free, I
unfortunately can not go much more into detail about the characters. If you’re looking to get
the full picture of Ao Ashi and their characters, I can’t really go in-depth about a lot of
different aspects without spoiling major bits of the anime and the manga, so I’d genuinely
recommend you to witness Ao Ashi for yourselves by watching the anime, and also reading the
manga if you do enjoy the anime, since it elaborates massively on a lot of characters. This
series has really not been talked about enough, I’ve seen almost no one talk about Ao Ashi
online which absolutely shocks me since it’s an absolute gem of a sports anime and manga, and
unfortunately a season 2 seems to not be on the cards for Ao Ashi as of now, as there’s been
no updates at all on a new season of Ao Ashi. To sum it all up, Ao Ashi is a brilliant piece of
footballing fiction in my eyes. It encapsulates the passion of football and shows why football
is so fun and endearing to many. It’s a great show for football fans to find a footballing
story written by an author who is passionate for football while also providing a gripping and
emotional story, and for non-football fans as it can enlighten you about true side of football,
showing both the fun and difficult sides of trying to become a professional footballer, while showing
everyone that’s it’s more than just a simple ball game. Whatever may happen in the future, if a
season 2 does get animated or not, it’s safe to say that Ao Ashi is one of the most faithful
and brilliant adaptations of the Beautiful Game.
