What Makes Isagi Yoichi Such a Good Forward?

Key Takeaways

• Isagi’s Metavision grants him an omnipotent view of the field, allowing him to exploit opportunities others can’t see.
• Isagi’s spatial awareness, like Messi’s, helps him pre-empt scoring paths through understanding tactical weaknesses.
• Isagi’s flow state, combined with adept off-the-ball movements and underrated skills, makes him nearly unstoppable.

Blue Lock’s Isagi Yoichi is a hungry young footballer who aspires to become the best striker in the world. However, the path to greatness is paved with countless hurdles, as he is tested at every turn and pushed to prove himself. But driven by his seemingly impossible dreams, Isagi always finds a way to emerge on top and remain in contention to achieve his goal. Becoming the best forward in the world requires a unique set of skills that are rarely mastered by a player.

Despite his young age, Isagi has already shown glimpses of greatness to demonstrate that he has a bright future as a striker. In this article, we look at Isagi Yoichi’s skills to understand what makes him such an effective forward.

Isagi’s Omnipotent Field of View

Legendary footballers like Cruyff, Zidane, Xavi, Pirlo, and Xavi are gifted with an incredibly evolved perspective of the field that allows them to analyze all the pieces of the gameplay to have an accurate understanding of the flow of the game. In Blue Lock, this ability is described as Metavision, which gives players an almost omnipotent viewpoint of the field and allows them to exploit opportunities that other players can’t even see.

Bastard München’s Michael Kaiser beautifully incorporates this skill into his gameplay to play a brand of football that is not just artful but ruthlessly effective. Kaiser’s transcendent vision inspires Isagi to evolve his omnipotent field of view by relying on central and peripheral vision. With the skill pushed to the extreme, Yoichi is able to accurately predict opposition players’ spatial positioning and foil goal-scoring opportunities.

If I don’t change, I’ll still be the same person. I came here to change my life. I came here to become the best in the world. Unless I beat someone stronger than me, nothing will change.

Perhaps Metavision’s best benefit is using the evolved transcendent vision to create goal-scoring chances. Great footballers like Zidane and Cruyff do it beautifully, and Isagi slowly learns to get good at it. Aided by Metavision, he even learns to steal the ball from the opponents at crucial junctures, dramatically altering the game’s flow and shifting the control in his team’s favor.

Messi-like Spatial Awareness

Yoichi’s Natural Gift

Footballers who can smell the goal and turn those premonitions into reality have made a mark in the sport’s history. Perhaps its greatest example is the Argentine Forward Lionel Messi, who observes the game closely with an almost supernatural intuition, allowing the gaps in defenses to fully materialize with the help of his unique spatial awareness. As soon as these vulnerabilities in defense are fully understood, he pounces in to exploit them before the opposition can begin to even grasp their tactical oversights.

In a similar fashion, Isagi’s intuition for the flow of the game, the opposition teams’ strategy, and an understanding of players’ weapons create visions for potential scoring paths that others cannot foresee. These premonitions of goal are heavily reliant on his extraordinary spatial awareness that takes into account every player and move on the field.

With my eyes and brain, I can see into the field’s future.

Much like Messi, Isagi seamlessly turns these visions into actions, exploiting the enemy’s tactical weakness to an advantage. Yoichi’s premonitions are not only accurate, but they also materialize remarkably swiftly. If it wasn’t for his special spatial awareness, Isagi would not be able to feel the scent of a goal, taking away one of his most effective weapons as a striker.

The Nearly Invincible Flow State

Isagi’s Greatest Weapon

Described by Hungarian Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as a state of optimal experience, Flow State is achieved when a person is fully absorbed in an activity. The experience can be so strong that some people even lose track of time and ignore all distractions. While explaining the concept to his mentees, Jinpachi Ego describes it as a state of being zoned in. The energized focus allows players to use their weapons simultaneously, making it an incredibly difficult task to stop them.

Envisioning a play and overthinking is too slow. That thought pattern is outdated. Just sense it and move. Believe. Trust in my abilities. All of my nerve fibers. All of my senses. Pour all of it into this moment and react!

Yoichi Isagi, in his flow state, uses Metavision to get an omnipotent view of the field, which then allows him to create a vision of the goal. With the premonition as a blueprint, Isagi uses a combination of different skills like direct shots, positioning, and off-the-ball movements to turn the vision into a reality and score a goal. When he is overcome by this state of pure focus, Yoichi becomes almost impossible to stop as his opposition struggles to read his moves. For this reason, the flow state is arguably Isagi’s greatest weapon.

Incredible Off-the-ball Movements

Yoichi’s Unglamorous Recipe for Mastering Positioning

While ball control and possession are an important part of the game, off-the-ball movements are seldom appreciated. Some of the most legendary players who have played football and reached the pinnacle of the sport rely heavily on it to read the game and gain a split-second advantage over the opponents. Christiano Ronaldo, Robert Lewandowski, Son Heung-min, and Kylian Mbappé are all well-known for positioning themselves suitably for scoring opportunities by breaking through defensive lines.

When Isagi realizes the importance of off-the-ball movements, he reinvents himself to accommodate the skill in his arsenal by getting good at it. He observes how good strikers exploit blind spots to put themselves in better positions and create goal-scoring opportunities. Despite not being coached about it, Yoichi displays incredible adaptability and learning capability to evolve by inculcating strategic positioning in his game. The off-the-ball movement later becomes one of Isagi’s most useful weapons that helps him score many goals.

Underrated On-Field Skills

Apart from Metavision, flow state, spatial awareness, and off-the-ball movement, Isagi Yoichi possesses several other skills that make him a dangerous rival. His direct shots are not on par with the best players in the world, but they are still powerful and accurate enough to score clean goals, even from unconventional positions. Isagi’s technique is almost flawless when it comes to striking the ball, which, coupled with control, makes it extremely difficult to defend against him.

Isagi is also gifted with incredible reflexes. He has used it smartly for defensive and offensive purposes. Interestingly, some of his most beautiful direct shots were made possible because of his exceptional reflexes. Yoichi’s positioning is another one of his most underappreciated skills. He has demonstrated over and over again that he knows exactly where to be to maximize his goal-scoring opportunities. As an ideal striker, he understands the many facets of the game and combines his different skills to develop an effective and well-rounded attacking style that helps him compete with the best of the best.