Joanah Eresechima - Blue Lock's Exploration of Flow

In the sixth chapter of American Camino, the concept of flow is extensively explained in the context of spiritual walking. It is described as unification of action and awareness to create a state in which thoughts are non-existent. The hiker just moves through the world, extremely aware and focused on the wilderness around them but unable to thoroughly reflect on it in that moment. It is only afterwards that the hiker is able to recall the memories from their flow state. Flow can occur in different types of people like artists, scientists and athletes (Redick 249). I was actually very surprised to see this term in the book because it becomes one of the central components in a manga I read called Blue Lock.

The story followed a boy named Isagi Yoichi, a high school soccer player who got a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to join a soccer program called Blue Lock meant to create the greatest striker in the world. Out of 300 players, he was ranked 299^th, making him one of the weakest players there. With the pressure of getting kicked out of the program constantly looming over his head, he worked tirelessly to rise up the ranks and eventually survived the first and second round of eliminations. The first introduction to flow came in the third selection when their mentor, Ego, announced that he would select 11 players to represent Blue Lock in a match against the Japanese Under-20 soccer team. The process of doing this started with picking the top 6 players from the second selection. Three teams were created and 2 of the 6 players were placed in each team. The remaining 29 players would choose the team they would like to join based on how compatible they were with the pair of top players. The matches were played 5 against 5 and because the top 2 players would play in every match, the other 3 players would be picked at random and would have only one chance to prove themselves. Isagi ended up choosing the team with the highest ranked player, Itoshi Rin, due to his rivalry with him.

During his one match, Isagi faced a number of difficulties. He was immediately singled out by a player on the other team as the weakest, so he was constantly marked. Due to this, there were no opportunities for his teammates to pass to him, bringing his chances of scoring a goal to 0%. Through his analysis of the field and observing how others showed their worth, he was finally able to break away from his mark and link up with his teammates. There was a moment when Hiori, one of his teammates, was about to pass the ball into the goal zone and Isagi found the perfect position to receive the ball. However, the ball made it to that spot before he did, resulting in him failing to score a goal. While reflecting on what happened, he acknowledged that his assessment of the situation was correct, but his subpar physical abilities prevented him from reaching the ball in time. Isagi had a revelation when Hiori said that thinking then moving may be too slow of a process, especially since he was trying to compete at the high level the top 2 players were playing at. What Hiori said next is what intrigued me. He told Isagi that he should instead think reflexively.

The thing about Isagi is that his main weapon is his spatial awareness, giving him the ability to understand the game through observing, planning, then moving to the optimal position to score a goal. Doing all of that as a reflex would feel unnatural to him. However, as it is talked about in American Camino, the feeling of flow involves difficult activities that push a person to their limits and introduce novelty (Redick 245). This match had the perfect conditions for Isagi to challenge himself as he was not only under the pressure of performing well enough that Ego added him to the Blue Lock 11, but he also had to stand out against the top two players on his team who were performing exceptionally, making his situation more urgent. By facing and overcoming these challenges using an ability he believed was impossible, he would have the chance to discover something new about himself and use it to evolve as a player.

When the match restarted, the same situation as before occurred where Hiori passed to the goal zone to the spot where the top two players were heading over to in order to score. At first, Isagi fell into the trap of consciously thinking about the best position to put himself in but quickly discarded it because there was simply no time to contemplate his next move. He decided to follow Hiori’s advice and use his reflexes instead, trusting in his abilities. This activated his flow state, leading him to push between the top two players and beat them to the ball, allowing him to score the last goal of the match. An interesting thing I noticed was how the author used the visual aspect of the manga to convey the flow state. Due to Isagi being the analytical type that is constantly thinking of new plays and trying to make sense of the field, the audience gets a constant barrage of text that displays Isagi’s thought processes. However, during his dash to that scoring position, the panels were completely void of text. This is a great representation of the flow state since it shows just how focused he was. Also, right when his foot made contact with the ball, he looked shocked, almost as if he was waking up from a trance. Afterwards, one of his first thoughts was confusion about what he just did, which falls in-line with Kip Redick’s experience with flow where “Since no thoughts manifested in language while flow was happening, there is no immediate way to describe the moment by moment unfolding between the hiker and the place” (Redick 241). Due to having no thought processes while in the flow state, Isagi was unable to understand or express what happened on the field. As discussed in American Camino, the flow state itself is not an experience because the person in flow is not aware of their awareness (Redick 259). It only becomes an experience once the person reflects on what happened during flow. For Isagi, he is only able to properly process once he watched the game footage later. When he explained to his teammates what he felt at that moment, it was his attempt at thematizing his encounter into an experience that he can draw meaning from.

Another interesting thing that happened right after the match ended was Rin voicing his annoyance about Isagi being unable to explain his goal, calling it a fluke. Rin is also an analytical and logical person so a goal scored through pure reflexes would most likely not make sense to him. When I thought about his character a bit more, I started to wonder if he had ever been in the flow state before. After all the matches were finished and the top 11 were picked, Ego explained to them what flow was, guaranteeing that all the players had experienced this state during their time at the Blue Lock facility. However, I have doubts that Rin had. Itoshi Rin is a child prodigy, having always been good at soccer ever since he was young. Throughout the entirety of the program, he has maintained his first-place rank with barely any effort. Flow requires a balance between the difficulty of the challenges faced and the abilities of the person so, if the task is too difficult and the players’ abilities are not good enough, they are stuck in an anxiety state. If the task is too easy and the player is too good, the player experiences boredom. I would assume Rin fits into the second category because while he has been challenged during his time in the Blue Lock facility, up until this point in the story, it has never been that hard for him to overcome it. Because of this, I think he is a good example of someone who may have a harder time reaching the flow state due to the environment not being stimulating enough.

The last thing I would like to discuss is the Blue Lock facility itself as an artifact that facilitates flow. As discussed before, while Rin may have been an anomaly, I believe almost everyone who made it to the third selection had experienced flow at some point. While that sounds far-fetched, the challenges each player faced could not be understated as players were constantly pushed to their limits. There had even been instances where players betray their own teammates in order to stand out and win. With all the difficult tasks they had to overcome, the players only grew stronger, leveling up their abilities in order to face the next obstacle. Also, with the Blue Lock facility being isolated from the rest of society and players having no access to phones, there is no chance for outside distractions, forcing the players to only focus on soccer. With these conditions, it is understandable how so many players were able to reach the flow state,