Side Character Spiral: Jingo Raichi

Every dawg has his day.

We’re going deep with this one, because for as long as Blue Lock has been a thing, two characters have been lingering in the background—Jingo Raichi and Gurimu Igarashi. And there’s an importance to the fact that they’re lingering, because some characters we initially cared about—Iemon, for instance—simply disappeared and were never heard from again.

But these two are still there. Comedic relief, you might call them, but for Jingo Raichi, he would literally rip your head off if you referred to him as comedic relief, and this is part of the reason why he has made his way into a spiral after such a long time.

When a mangaka gives a definite personality trait to a character, there’s a certain expectation of them. Iemon, for instance, didn’t have a definite personality trait. When they have a trait, they’re expected to do something. To make an impact on the story.

Raichi has that trait. He is a hot-head, but he’s a hilarious hot-head. Never annoying, frequently selfish, possibly capable of homicide.

I started to become obsessed with him early on because of one simple fact: he never scored a goal. Everyone around him, characters who are long gone, scored goals. This entire series is built on the importance of scoring goals, but Raichi never did. At least none that we saw. It became like an elephant in the room—was anyone going to address that Raichi hadn’t scored a goal, but always talked about his ability to score goals? He kept reminding us that the expectation was and still is there.

Given how much attention to detail Blue Lock has, this all felt intentional. This is a guy with an ego (which is a big factor at Blue Lock, in a good way), and yet his tenacity never gets him that release. That bulging of the back of the net.

It became this sort of dull rumbling in the background. Every time Raichi popped up, I wondered—is this it? This has to be it. And what will he do when he scores?

But that never happened. Not yet, anyway.

Then, we come to the moment that solidified Raichi in my hall of fame. Perhaps the most satisfying moment in all of Blue Lock—and let me pause for a second to let you know that this is hyperbole I will forever stand by. Barou be damned (sorry, bud), the most satisfying moment in all of Blue Lock (at least for now) is when Raichi is named to the starting XI of the Bastard Munchen team. This moment…

… is the moment. He is not a striker anymore, but a box-to-box midfielder, which literally fits his personality so well that it has completely reshaped what I want out of this series.

What I want is for the best 20 or so players to become the next Japan National Team, and I want Raichi to be playing this position. And then I want all these fictional characters to go to the actual World Cup and win.

More realistically though, I still want Raichi to score. More than anything else in this series, I need Jingo Raichi to score.

This is what Raichi did to me. Readers! There is value in every character you put on the page. Do not throw anyone away. Do not simply put them there to fill space. They are capable of surprises. Raichi was in the back pocket of Blue Lock for 200 chapters and finally, he’s showing us why.

Who is your story’s Raichi? I want to find some of my own.